From Lord Ashcroft's forthcoming biography about Angela Rayner.
"If there is one thing Labour's deputy leader can be relied on to talk about, it's her deprived working-class childhood, which culminated in her becoming a mother at 16 and a low-paid home help. Again and again, Angela Rayner has returned to the topic ā at Labour Party conferences, in media interviews, even in the Commons debating chamber. Along with her blazing red hair and her penchant for making inflammatory remarks, it's helped make her a semi-celebrity amid a sea of middle-class MPs.
Her advisers have tried to persuade her to 'change the record', says a former colleague, and find new things to talk about, but she refused. An ex-colleague said: 'We did say to her, 'Angela, we've got to move on from this stuff and focus on the future. You need to give them some idea of where you want to take people. But she would always hark back to her hard-luck history because it was the fail-safe method she used to disarm journalists or critics and for building up her reputation within the Labour Party. When she told her back story at Labour meetings they would always lap it up, and she would say, 'It's catnip to them.' Those were her words.
'She was privately very dismissive of their response, but publicly she'd accept all the hugs and embraces people would give her as a self-proclaimed working-class heroine. She knew it played so well in the Labour Party."