Angela Rayner: the teenage mum from a council estate who become deputy PM

ANGELA Rayner said “for a teenage mum from a council estate in Stockport”to serve at the highest level of government was "the honour of her life' as she resigned over her tax affairs.

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She quit as deputy prime minister, housing, communities and local government secretary as well as Labour Party deputy leader after ethics watchdog Sir Laurie Magnus said she had “acted with integrity and with a dedicated and exemplary commitment to public service” but concluded she had breached the ministerial code.

In her resignation letter, she told Sir Keir Starmer:"The challenges of government are nothing compared to the challenge of putting food on the table and getting a roof over our head when I brought up kids working as a home help!”

She added she could only hope'‘the changes I made in government will have the same impact for young girls growing up on council estates like I did’

Ms Rayner once described herself as “John Prescott in a skirt” and, like the former deputy prime minister before her, she is to many Labour supporters the authentic voice of the party's traditional values.

Like her predecessor, she worked her way up the hard way, leaving school at 16 and cutting her teeth as a trade union official before embarking on a career in parliament.

Openly ambitious, her popularity with the party's grassroots saw her increasingly touted as a replacement for Sir Keir as Labour struggled during its first year in office, before her purchase of a seaside flat triggered the chain of events leading to her downfall