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Angela Rayner has much to ­celebrate. At 37, the Shadow Education Secretary is winning plaudits for her Commons ­performances and even being touted as a ­future Labour leader.

And she has just become a granny , prompting some snide remarks in the haughty corridors of Westminster.

But in the world Angela comes from – single mums, run-down estates, tough schools and giro cheques – being a gran so young is nothing out of the ordinary.

What is extraordinary is her journey from Stockport to Parliament. Nobody is more surprised than her at that journey, or more proud of where she has come from. With typical self-deprecation, she claims her success is down to “fluke, luck and accident”.

But Angela’s story has more to do with a determination to prove her doubters wrong. She says she is a natural rebel but a rebel with a cause – to show others they can make something of their lives.

(Image: PA)

Her childhood was poverty-stricken, lived in a home where neither parent worked. “We had a giro once a fortnight and that was it,” she says.

“Nana used to take us round charity shops to get our uniform and worked three jobs. We used to go to Nana’s on a Sunday and she lived in a high-rise with central heating and an immersion so we all had a bath at Nana’s.”

Angela’s mum has had mental health issues as long as she can remember. Dealing with three young children was too much for her. By 10, Angela was her main carer, a role she continues to do.

She says: “I have never had a mum-daughter relationship, I have always been the mum and my mum’s always been the one I’ve looked after, even now.

“Mum grew up in Wythenshawe, one of 12. My mum didn’t really go to school and didn’t see the need for education, she got bullied so she excluded herself.

“My mum can’t read or write and now she is bipolar. She had one pan, a big chip pan on the stove that stayed there. It was chips and chips, chips and egg, chips and hotdog and those McCain pancakes that had nowt in them.”

Giggling at the memory, she adds: “Everything went in and Mum had a tea towel and everything got dabbed on that tea towel.”

Her ability to laugh now does disguise how tough life was. She says: “There was never any breakfast in the morning.

“I was always behind (at school) because Mum couldn’t read or write, we didn’t do books. We ended up with dog meat once when she thought it was stewing steak because she just looked at the picture.”

But if life at home was tough, outside it was worse. “The thing about poverty is you don’t know you are in it, so I got on with life at home,” Angela says.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

But I felt different to other kids. Being poor on the estate was a reason to be bullied. And ginger hair gave me an extra reason to be bullied. If Dad asked us to go to the shop I’d be terrified someone was going to batter me. I’d lost my front teeth by 13.”

It is little wonder Angela was looking for a way out. She got pregnant and had son Ryan aged 16.

“From 13/14 I was always hanging about with older boys. Boys in school used to call me names. But outside older boys would pay me attention because I looked older for my age. I was going to clubs from 14. I wanted to be loved. I didn’t intend to get pregnant, it was literally the first time.”

Angela became a grandmother in November when Ryan, 20, had daughter Lilith Mae. In addition to Ryan, whose dad did not stick around, she has boys Jimmy, eight, and Charlie, nine, with husband Mark Rayner, a union official.

Speaking about her first Christmas as a gran, Angela says: “In two-and-a-half years I’ve gone from being a new MP and a mother and not expecting that to change for a while to being in the Shadow Cabinet and a grandmother.

“But I can’t wait. I don’t think I’ll be knitting by the fire, I’m probably more of a gangster granny than your typical grandma, but Christmas will still be extra-special with more of a family.”

She has come a long way from being that teenage mum – which, she says, was the “scariest time” in her life. The Tories were in power when Ryan arrived in February 1997 and Social Security Secretary Peter Lilley had attacked “young ladies who get pregnant to jump the housing queue”.

(Image: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1375218032493040&set=picfp.100000145686167.1279749748706536&)

She says: “I wanted to prove I wasn’t that person everyone wanted to stereotype me. You can slag me off, I talk about my upbringing now and try and do it in a way that inspires others, but I never felt good about it. I felt ashamed and responsible but also this sense of protection to Ryan.

“I felt he deserved everything every other parent could give. I was going to be the best parent I could because Mum couldn’t give me those things.”

At 18, Angela was living alone in a council flat. Two things changed her life – the first being parenting classes in Labour’s Sure Start scheme. She was taught how you should hug your children and say you love them. She says: “I never had any of that. It wasn’t because my parents were evil, they didn’t have those skills.”

The second turning point was her job as a carer. Angela finally met people who did not look down on her.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

She says: “One was a professor, he was really kind. He talked posh and lived in this massive house. But never made me feel inferior. It was the first time I didn’t think someone in authority looked down on me.”

Angela started working as a local authority carer in her early 20s and led the fight to stop the service being contracted out. Until then, she had never heard of a trade union. But within weeks she was acting as shop steward.

A few years later, she was Unison’s regional organiser. She says she only applied to be an MP to prove people like her are not selected. But she was, entering Parliament in 2015.

Despite her meteoric rise, Angela still fears someone is “going to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘Off you pop’.”

She adds: “One the reasons I talk about my story is I want other people who are in the circumstances I was in to understand they are just as good and as valuable as everyone else.”