Ashton-under-Lyne MP Angela Rayner has confirmed her long-anticipated bid to become deputy leader, warning members that Labour faces a choice: “Win or die.”

In a speech in her home town of Stockport, the former trade unionist launched a searing critique of the party’s performance at the general election, warning it had talked down to voters and sold them a ‘glib’ series of promises they didn’t trust.

Conceding that as a senior member of Jeremy Corbyn’s team she must bear some responsibility for that, she said even members of her own family had felt patronised by the way Labour had pitched its message to them.

But in a speech that often sounded more like a pitch for the leadership than to become party deputy, she also declared: “I fight to win.”

The shadow education secretary launched her bid at the community centre in Bridgehall, the Stockport estate on which she grew up.

(Image: PA)

She told an audience of members, councillors, trade unions and MPs - including several from Greater Manchester, including Lucy Powell and Jonathan Reynolds - that when she first became shadow education secretary in 2016, she faced immediate sneering because of her roots.

“I talk about my background because for too long I felt I wasn't good enough; I felt ashamed of who I was,” she said.

“It took me time for that shame to turn into pride.

“I want children growing up here now to know they are worth as much as anyone else. And I want the world of Westminster politics to hear that too.

“Because I remember when I first spoke from the front bench in the House of Commons, a parliamentary sketch writer said I must have got lost from the set of Little Britain.

"It was another way of saying I didn’t know my place.”

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Speculation has swirled over whether she would run for the deputy leadership and endorse her friend and flatmate Rebecca Long-Bailey, MP for Salford and Eccles, for leader.

Ms Long-Bailey has not yet formally announced whether she will stand, but Ms Rayner confirmed she would be supporting her if she does.

Nonetheless, her speech itself at times sounded like a tilt at the top job, repeatedly underscoring her ability to win.

The former Unison branch secretary said the trade unions had given her ‘a political education, skills and a vocation’, but that she ‘learned how to survive and win when I was much younger’.

As a young, single mum living in a council flat, life was difficult, she said.

"I was a troublemaker, but a troublemaker with a cause," Ms Rayner added.

"And I learned how to organise.

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“So when I became a union organiser I knew how to get justice for my members. I knew how to win. We must learn to do the same.”

Her bid contained strident criticisms of Labour’s election campaign, which ultimately ended with an 80-seat Tory majority on December 13.

That included the targeting of seats during the campaign, which she said had been ‘wide of the mark’.

“Seats where we suffered catastrophic defeats were seen as secure, while we tried to fight ‘target’ seats we had effectively already lost,” she said, echoing criticisms expressed privately by many candidates during the campaign itself. “It cannot happen again.”

Of the party’s offer to the electorate, she added: “Too often our policies, though right in principle, were seen as glib promises of free things, ‘retail offers’, and distrusted as much as any other sales pitch.

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“The electorate did not take up our offer.

“Where I come from, people want to feel they belong to a community, and that they can contribute toward it and earn a better shared life.

“They looked toward Westminster, and yes they looked at us, and they felt patronised.”

During a question and answer session afterwards, she was asked by the M.E.N. whether, as a member of the party’s shadow cabinet and one of its most senior figures, she bore any responsibility for that.

“I have to accept some responsibility, I think all of us have to accept some responsibility in the Labour Party, because we were divided as a party and divided parties do not win general elections,” she said.

(Image: Greg Martin / Cornwall Live)

“Time and time again we had people on the doorstep saying they felt patronised, members of my own family very angry with me. I couldn’t go to the pub or go to the school gates without someone wanting to tell me about what they thought we were doing.

“But the culture was divided as well. I think we have to draw a line under that.”

Pushed on why she was running for deputy rather than for leader, she said it was ‘not about the position you hold in the party, it’s about bringing the party together’, arguing her trade union background meant she had the organisational skills to do that.

“I can deal with the tough questions and I can face down people who think it’s ok to bully and abuse anyone,” she said.

“And I think I can do that as the deputy leader."

Asked why she was endorsing her friend as leader rather than running for leader herself, she said: "It is no secret that for years me and Rebecca have been close friends. And I wasn’t going to stand for leader and have everyone in the media and everyone outside saying ‘who’s the better woman’? Because actually me and Becky are two fantastic women.”

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Her speech signalled a distancing from the incumbent leadership, including on anti-semitism, where she appeared to issue a thinly-veiled attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

After urging unity and cooperation, she added: “There are also lines beyond which there is no dialogue and no compromise possible.

“And the first line in the sand is anti-Semitism. Cross that line and you’re out.

“Apologies are worthless without action. We need to make clear now that we will take that action.”

However she echoed Labour’s pre-existing message of radical economic change, calling for the state to be in charge of strategy but for power and resources to be passed down to local government level, as well as through regional banks.

At the end of a speech that had begun with a warning that Labour’s ‘coalition, the foundation of the party is broken’, she ended with another promise to members that she would - unlike the previous leadership - take the party to victory.

“As a party we face a choice: win or die,” she concluded. “And I fight to win.”