Look down on me at your peril: I’ll eat you alive

Angela Rayner is perhaps the only Labour MP who works with a picture of Theresa May hanging above her desk. It’s there for inspiration, she says, a daily reminder of the general incompetence of the Conservative government and the need for its removal. ‘That picture motivates me, in a strange way,’ she says when we meet. ‘They are doing such a bad job of Brexit, and a lot of people will be let down. Again. The people who already think that politicians are lower than a snake’s belly.’ The anger is with politicians in general. ‘It just feels that this generation is not doing a very good job.’

Ms Rayner, 37, has been a politician for not even three years and her rise has been nothing short of extraordinary. A few years ago, she was a care-home worker with an interest in politics but no career plans. She stood for Ashton-under-Lyne in the 2015 general election and ended up becoming Jeremy Corbyn’s third shadow education secretary in the space of a week. Not, she says, because she’s a Corbyn-ite, but she couldn’t work out why every-one else was resigning from his team. ‘You never, ever give up the chance to change things, ever, no matter how hard it is. If you’re elected, and have got the opportunity to make a difference, you take it.’

Her difference has been dragging Labour education policy more towards the centre, softening its hostility to free schools and prioritising nursery-care spending before subsidising university tuition fees. She has been one of Corbyn’s most effective shadow cabinet members while keeping her distance from him — refusing to sign a loyalty pledge demanded by Momentum, his personal campaign group. She’s making her own progress on her own terms: Tories talk about her as the party’s most effective shadow education secretary for a generation.