Following yesterday’s announcement about plans to increase the number of affordable homes, the deputy prime minister has pointed to the sudden work pressure of the job since taking up her post.
Speaking today on ITV’s ‘This Morning’ programme, Angela Rayner described her work pattern since this month’s general election as “Eat, sleep, work, repeat” before admitting that, “I did fall asleep on the Red Box”.
Red boxes are the dispatch boxes that have been used by ministers and the monarchy for centuries to carry government documents in the UK.
Suggesting this work schedule was not necessarily a problem, Rayner did though comment that, “Every day it is not work, because I enjoy what I am doing”.
Contrasting her role in government with her time in opposition, Rayner said, “I think, and maybe with the chip on the shoulder from my background as well, that I am impatient to make that change, and to prove to people that we can do things differently”.
In a sofa interview on ITV’s flagship morning programme, Rayner gave an interesting insight of how she unintentionally first became involved in politics through the union movement.
Rayner said, “I worked in the private sector as a care worker, and that was really rubbish and they paid the staff horrible. And then they said go and work for the council and they will look after you and pay you better”.
Describing her time working for the council, Rayner then said, “I was moaning because they wanted to privatise us, and I said I have just worked for them, it is terrible quality care. And they said you should be our union rep, and I am what is a ‘trade union’, and that was it, and it took off”.
Providing advice to the programme’s viewers, Rayner said, “Some of the people that have done the most amazing things whether in the community, or the voluntary sector, or in politics, have got involved because it was something that they like”, adding “I think you should lean into what you enjoy doing”.
Rayner who turned 44 in March this year was first elected to parliament for Ashton under Lyne in 2015. Prior to entering parliament she had risen to become the convenor of the union, Unison, in the north west of England.
She joined the Labour Party in 2012, just three years before first being elected to parliament.
Referencing how her policy area of housing was one in which the impact of policies will take time to flow through, Rayner argued that, “There isn’t a family that hasn’t got a housing need that isn’t met in the UK at the moment”.
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