ANGELA RAYNER is Labour’s Deputy Leader and has been the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne since she was elected in 2015.
Rayner was married to Mark Rayner until 2020, but who is the former trade union rep?
Before she was a member of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner was a trade union rep with Unison.
Angela met Mark Rayner through her work with the union, where he worked as a union official.
Angela told The Guardian he brought stability to her hectic life.
To support her career, Mark stepped back from his job, and focused on childcare.
Rayner, whose maiden name was Bowen, married Mark in 2010.
Mark became stepfather to Angela’s first child, Ryan, whom she had aged 16.
They had two children together.
Angela Rayner separated from her husband in 2020.
They’d been married for ten years when they split.
They continued to share a house together along with their two children.
Mark and Angela have two children together.
Their first, Charlie, was born prematurely at 23 weeks and is registered blind.
She told The Sunday Times magazine that her 1lb son “looked like a baby sparrow”.
The couple went on to have a second son, Jimmy.
Mark is also stepdad to Angela’s firstborn, Ryan, who she had at the age of 16.
Addressing her experience as a teenage mother in 2017 she said: “Even though getting pregnant at 16 and having no qualifications is not the best start for anybody, you’ve got to understand that where my life was.
It actually saved me from where I could have been because I had a little person to look after – I wanted to prove that I could be a good mum and somebody was finally going to love me as much as I deserved to be loved, and that’s what pregnancy was for me.”
Angela Rayner
Ryan made Angela a grandmother in 2017 at the age of 37, and dubbed herself “Grangela”.
The Shadow Cabinet is the Labour Party's top team, and who hope to lead the next Government. Here's are some of the main figures...
Leader of the Opposition: Sir Keir Starmer
Deputy Leader of the Opposition: Angela Rayner
Shadow Chancellor: Rachel Reeves
Shadow Foreign Secretary: David Lammy
Shadow Home Secretary: Yvette Cooper
Shadow Health Secretary: Wes Streeting
Shadow Education Secretary: Bridget Phillipson
Shadow Energy Secretary: Ed Miliband
In February 2022, Rayner told the Sunday Mirror her sons needed panic buttons and a police escort after she received a threat from a stranger who warned: “I know where your kids are.”
Since separating from Mark in 2020, it was reported that Angela was in a relationship with fellow Labour MP Sam Tarry.
They got together in the summer of 2022, before splitting in 2023.
