Angela Rayner’s Queen of the North act is tiring – but it works for me

It’s a big deal when a major politician acknowledges that half of this country feels like an afterthought, and we’d be served well by being able to dictate our own destinies

I never know quite where I stand when it comes to Angela Rayner. On the one hand she’s a witty, well-informed paragon of working-class excellence, whose presence in Downing Street is a testament to both her own perseverance and the notion that in the UK, hard work reaps vast rewards no matter your background.

On the other… well, she does say a lot of really weird stuff, doesn’t she?

The deputy PM kicked off proceedings at the first day of the Labour conference in Liverpool today with an optimistic, at times emotional speech on housing, worker’s rights, and the party’s vision for the future.

She got some great digs in there – including at her boss, whose penchant for flaunting his working-class credentials became a running joke during the election. “I should probably tell you that Keir’s dad was a toolmaker – and if you didn’t know Keir’s dad was a toolmaker, I probably need to tell you he’s the prime minister”. Let’s hope that Starmer – a man who looks like an undertaker’s accountant moonlighting as the lead detective in a gritty Scandinavian crime drama – has a sense of humour.

She also took an absolutely brutal swing at her opposite number in housing, Kemi Badenoch, and her well-documented feud with one of Britain’s most cherished acting treasures: “After three months as shadow housing secretary, she finally expressed concern about a tenant. It’s just a pity it was David Tennant.” Between that and her claim earlier this week that her job in McDonalds magically made her working class, I’ll bet Kemi wishes she could regenerate into somebody less embarrassing right now.

It was a far cry from just this morning, when she was grilled in an interview with Laura Kussenberg about her party’s acceptance of “freebies” – which, though not illegal, is about as bad a look as it gets for a politician. Her defence? “MPs have accepted gifts for years”, she told the famously lenient interviewer. “All MPs do it”.

Oh, that’s grand, Angela – the classic “well they did it first” defence. People famously love that. It’s why eight-year-olds are considered such skilled negotiators.

And as much as the media tends to come down on our nation’s illustrious second in command, it’s actually sort of a miracle that they don’t come down even harder. And not even the gaffes, I just mean her as a person. She’s got regional accent. She’s working class. She’s a woman. It’s like she got a full house in Unelectable Bingo

But maybe that’s why people like her. It’s why I like her. She’s got a bit of a rough edge that’s easy to identify with because, believe it or not, most normal people have a rough edge to them. Political robots who do power stances and talk like the guy who tells you to “mind the gap” are all well and good, but give me somebody who drops their consonants any day.

It also helps when she says stuff like she will help “change the future of the North of England” through devolution, “so Northerners will no longer be dictated to from Whitehall”, and that once devolution is achieved, it will be “irreversible”.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before – in virtually every single one of the 200+ articles I’ve written for this newspaper – but I’m actually from the North of England. When I hear a leader of this country, after 14 years of Tory rule, say stuff like that it gets me singing “Champagne Supernova” and warming up a Hollands steak and kidney pie.

It’s a big deal when a major politician acknowledges that half of this country feels like an afterthought, and we’d be served well by being able to dictate our own destinies. It’s often felt to me as though there are two Englands – the “London and its immediate surrounding areas” one, and the “everything else” one – so maybe it’s time we started governing with that in mind. Not just in terms of the North vs the South – places like Devon and Cornwall are on the precipice of devolution too.

Rayner’s Queen in the North act can be a bit tiring at times, but it serves her well. How long it will see her well for is another question – but for the time being, I’m quite happy to kneel.