‘Good as any bloke’ Rayner scorns all-female shortlist

ANGELA RAYNER was opposed to the all-women shortlist that led to her election, a new book has claimed.

The deputy Labour leader, who entered the Commons in 2015 as the MP for Ashton-under-lyne, said she would have preferred to compete against both male and female contenders for the Labour nomination.

But despite her local party having unanimously voted for an “open” list for both male and female candidates, it was overruled by Labour’s National Executive Committee.

A biography of the 43-year-old by Lord Ashcroft, the Tory peer and author, claims she criticised the allwomen shortlist system in 2019 during a talk at Oldham Sixth Form College.

Ms Rayner is said to have told students: “When I was going to be a Member of Parliament, I didn’t want to stand in an all-women shortlist. I wanted to stand on an open list.

“I’m as good as any bloke, and I’ve proved that since... I should have been selected years before I was selected. I had to get selected on an all-women shortlist. I’m more successful than a majority of the men that are in Parliament, but I had to prove I was even better than them, like miles ahead of them.

That’s not fair. That’s not equality.” Labour has reportedly dropped all-female candidate lists

Ms Rayner was one of 31 Labour MPS elected from all-women shortlists at the 2015 general election, when a further 46 all-women shortlists were drawn up.

Twenty-eight Labour MPS from allwomen shortlists were elected in 2010, while 35 out of 38 candidates from allwomen shortlists became MPS as part of Sir Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide.

A majority of the Labour parliamentary party is now female, which has led Sir Keir Starmer’s team to reportedly drop female-only candidate lists for the next general election.

At Labour’s party conference in 2016, Ms Rayner said “it took just 183 years and an all-women’s shortlist” for her to become the first female elected as the MP for Ashton-under-lyme.

Lord Ashcroft’s book, Red Queen? The Unauthorised Biography of Angela Rayner, sparked a row in recent weeks about whether she should have been liable for capital gains after selling her home in Stockport in 2015, leading to accusations of providing false information about her living circumstances. The frontbencher has denied wrongdoing and insisted she “lived there, paid the bills there and was registered to vote there” until she sold the property.