Tameside MP Angela Rayner has described winning the Labour deputy leadership while still self-isolating with coronavirus as ‘like being in a movie and watching it from afar’.
In her first interview after winning the contest hands-down, the former care worker also told the M.E.N. that once she is able to leave the house - following an illness she called ‘debilitating’ - she would be returning to the frontline as part of the pandemic response.
Meanwhile in a message to Jeremy Corbyn supporters who may have hoped for a different result, she warned Labour must first and foremost be an ‘open and welcoming’ party focused on earning the trust of voters, rather than ‘turning inwards on each other’.