Angela Rayner aims to be Labour's North Angel to help recapture the Red Wall

If a stereotypical MP existed, Angela Rayner wouldn't be.

Yesterday, for example, the deputy leader of Labor wore the Dr. Martens tartan. She loves quirky shoes — she secretly points beaded numbers at a passing guy. But that's not why she's wearing those boots. It's because her feet hurt, having just returned from a vacation in Spain where she danced one night from four in the afternoon to five in the morning to the anthems of her favorite club.< /p>

Does she have any musical tastes in common with frontman Keir Starmer? "He loves Blondie," she smiles. However, the most compelling way in which Mancunian Ange, 43, differs from the vast majority of MPs, is his nagging discomfort within the Westminster bubble, and his stark contrast to the demands of London's Metropolitan socialist elite who are often waved accusingly at Labour. .

Her roots and her life are now firmly anchored in the north, and what she loves about her job is going out and talking to those who live far from the capital, who often face very different problems. . Which is why, this week, she ditched summer vacation to become Rayner on the Road.

The purpose-built tour, backed by the Mirror, took her in a motorhome to the industrial heartlands and coastal towns of the North East. To watch, and to listen. Hard. She knows that Labor's success in the next election depends on it.

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Speaking fast forward as she ate a biscuit on the train to Newcastle yesterday, she recounts how, even eight years after her election to the seat of Ashton-Under-Lyne in Greater Manchester in 2015, she is still not a fan of Westminster. “My favorite part of my job is going out,” she says. "Being in London I find the most difficult. I once described Westminster as Hogwarts. It's a bit like boarding school because you have to stay away from your family and read a lot.

"I like to see what's happening on the ground. We politicians produce data, but physically seeing the challenges that businesses face and the struggles of families, that's when that you understand why this data is so important.If a disconnect between London and the North has caused Labor to lose its red wall, Angela may be in the best position to reconnect with the workers.

The difficulties linked to the cost of living crisis and poverty are not only political problems for her. They were his life. She grew up in extreme poverty on a housing estate in Stockport, Greater Manchester, where, from primary school age, she helped care for her bipolar mother who could not read or write. Her father was unemployed and she, her brother and her little sister lived on a weekly transfer.

The hot water came courtesy of her grandmother, who let the family come to her apartment to take a bath once a week, sharing it in row order. And there was no mu...