London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Sep 18, 2025

Angela Rayner: ‘We don’t want to be an opposition, we want to be a government’

Angela Rayner: ‘We don’t want to be an opposition, we want to be a government’

Labour’s deputy leader opens up about being a carer, byelections, and achieving a ‘cultural shift’ in the workplace
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has said her own experience as a care worker helped to convince her more flexible working could be a “win-win” for staff and employers.

Speaking to the Guardian after announcing new policies last week on employment rights and flexible conditions, Rayner said she had helped negotiate family-friendly working when she was a trade union representative.

“We were frontline manual workers, delivering 7am till 10pm care in people’s homes. We introduced a flexible rota that worked for the staff, and we saw productivity go up. The wellbeing of the staff, as well as the outcome for the service user, was they had the same staff going in – and sickness levels went significantly down as well, so it saved money for the employer. It’s a win-win,” she said.

“Of course, not everything can be achieved in every single workplace, but there are flexible options I believe in every workplace. If an employer looks after the employees, the employees will look after the employer, and it’s reciprocal,” she added.

Rayner announced this week that a Labour government would legislate to give companies an obligation to provide flexible conditions – including compressed hours, and accommodating caring responsibilities such as the school run – unless they can show it is unworkable.

It was part of a package of measures, drawn up with the shadow workers’ rights minister, Andy McDonald, that also included ensuring all employees gain rights from day one in a job.

The plans have been welcomed by the Corbynite campaign group Momentum, and helped to assuage fears among some in the party that Starmer would ditch the radical 2019 manifesto wholesale.

Speaking after a visit to a flexible working hub in Hull, Rayner said Labour’s aim was nothing less than to achieve a “cultural shift” in the workplace.

“It’s about changing the culture in our country. The whole emphasis to me is, yes there’s individual nuggets in here, but it’s about a cultural shift away from people being inflexible, and not looking for new and fresh ideas about how people can engage in the workplace,” she said.

Rayner shrugged off suggestions that she has been at loggerheads with Keir Starmer – or could even challenge him for the leadership, as some supporters had urged her to do before the Batley and Spen byelection earlier this month.

“Me and Keir have been working incredibly closely together since the start of the pandemic,” she said, comparing the day when they were both elected in the depths of the first lockdown to “an arranged marriage, almost, by telephone”.

“We bring different things to that leadership. And I think that works,” she said, calling them “yin and yang”.

Labour’s loss of the Hartlepool constituency in May sparked panic about Starmer’s prospects of leading Labour to a general election victory, with some MPs quietly casting around for a candidate who could gather the 40 signatures necessary to mount a challenge.

But his leadership has appeared more secure since the party held the Yorkshire seat of Batley and Spen.

Rayner said she and Starmer had different approaches. “You know, my style is more robust as people know: I’m more bombastic, in the way in which do things, I say it how I see it: and therefore I bring that freshness to the partnership.”

“Keir’s very forensic, he’s very intelligent. He’s very passionate about making sure that the country is a better place,” she said.

Rayner has spoken in the past about growing up in poverty, and becoming a carer for her mother, who struggled with mental illness, from the age of 10.

“I like to think I overshare and Keir undershares,” she said. “If you look at Keir’s background, it’s not dissimilar for mine: he looked after his mum, I looked after my mum,” she says. “Keir wasn’t from a privileged background”.

Challenged about a dip in Labour’s membership, Rayner said she was focused on voters. “Of course we want to attract people to be members of the Labour party, but what we need to do is we need to attract voters as well. And what we’re doing is we’re speaking to the country: we’re saying that actually we don’t want to be an opposition, we want to be a government,” she said.

Labour is in the process of laying off up to 90 staff via voluntary redundancies, as Starmer seeks to repair the party’s shattered finances after costly election battles and a string of legal cases.

The former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott criticised Labour this week for simultaneously seeking to hire staff on six-month contracts to handle a backlog of complaints against members.

“So Keir will make Britain the best place to work – unless you work for Labour,” Abbott tweeted. Rayner rejected that, highlighting the importance of ensuring the party is financially viable.

“We don’t want to be making staff redundant. It’s an awful situation but we can’t lose a general election, like we did, and then not look at our organisation,” she said.

And she insisted the complaints-handling staff will not be on zero-hours contracts, but were being hired on “a fixed-term contract for a specific piece of work”.

“I’m a trade unionist. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything that was detrimental to our workforce but you know, we have to be financially viable as an organisation,” she said.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Massive Strikes in France Pressure Macron and New PM on Austerity Proposals
Trump Seeks Supreme Court Permission to Remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook
Hillary Clinton’s Reckless Rhetoric Fuels Division After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
NASDAQ Rises to Record as Intel Soars More Than 20%, Nvidia Gains 3%
Nvidia’s $5 Billion Bet on Intel Reshapes AI Hardware Landscape
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Trump’s Quip on Biden and Google Lawsuit Revives Debate Over Antitrust Legacy
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
USA: Office Depot Employees Refused to Print Poster in Memory of Charlie Kirk – and Were Fired
Proposed U.S. Bill Would Allow Civil Suits Against Judges Who Release Repeat Violent Offenders
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
×