Angela Rayner: I had my first child at 16 and I know first hand what it’s like to struggle Angela Rayner is the shadow secretary of state for education and the Labour candidate in Ashton-under-Lyme When I had to go […]

Angela Rayner is the shadow secretary of state for education and the Labour candidate in Ashton-under-Lyme

When I had to go to friends and family for help raising my first child, I felt like a failure.

I was embarrassed because I had pride. I wanted to work for a living and be able to provide for my family myself.

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And it wasn’t just me, it was the same for everyone I grew up with.

We weren’t failures. We grafted for our families, but everything was against us no matter how hard we fought.

Worst of all was the feeling that I was a failure, that I wouldn’t amount to anything.

I didn’t know how to be a good mum

When I had my first son at sixteen, I had left school with no GCSEs beyond a grade C. I had to buy clothes from charity shops.

I didn’t know how to be a good mum to my son. Then I went to a parenting course at my local Sure Start Centre.

I learned things that might sound simple, but weren’t to me at that time. How important hugging and loving your children was, and how important it is to read to them.

I was never hugged as a child. I didn’t realise that I was perpetuating that with the way I was bringing up my son.

And that’s not because my mum didn’t love me. My mum’s an amazing woman. She says to me now, ‘I didn’t know how to love you’, because she was never loved as a child by her own parents. It’s the kind of cycle that can go on and on unless it’s broken.

We have to reverse what the Tories have done

By going to the parenting course, I changed. I was able to break that cycle and be a better mum.

And I then had another second chance. I was able to go to college as an adult, where I trained to be a home carer.

As a carer, I started to question the bureaucracy where I worked. I trained to be a union rep and I started to learn about politics. I’d found my calling, but it had been a tough journey. What worries me now is that a woman on a council estate today is in a harder position than the one I was in twenty years ago.

This is why I am so passionate to reverse what the Tories have done in Government. In the last seven years, 1,200 Sure Start Centres have been lost. If we win on Thursday, we’ll invest £500 million every year to provide additional funding for early intervention programmes like Sure Start.

Politics changes lives

In education, Labour will make lifelong learning free at the point of use in the further education sector. This means that everyone, regardless of age, can return to education to retrain or up-skill whenever they need to.

We’ll also overhaul the existing childcare system so that parents, especially women, won’t have to make the choice between looking after their kids or learning new skills.

I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for Sure Start and adult education. With our policies, I know that we can help so many people who are tired of fighting the system to achieve their own potential. And I know that everyone ends up better off when all of us are contributing the most they can to the society we all share.

Ultimately, I know that politics changes lives. Not as a politician, but as someone whose own life was changed. There will be many other people today in the same situation I faced then. By voting Labour tomorrow, you can change their lives as well – and we will all win as a result.