As Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner is understandably conscious of her image. Which perhaps explains why she helped to burnish it with thousands of pounds’ worth of free clothes from wealthy donors.
Along with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves, she has been forced by the ‘Wardrobegate’ scandal besieging Labour to concede she will no longer accept any further donations for clothing.
As to whether she will take any more free holidays following her five-day stay in New York courtesy of Labour donor Lord Alli, we will have to wait and see.
Over Christmas and New Year, she luxuriated in the media tycoon’s magnificent 56th-floor Manhattan apartment – a break which might have seen her breach Parliament’s rules by failing to disclose she stayed there with Sam Tarry, who was also a Labour MP at the time.
Now I can disclose that Rayner has been enhancing her profile at public expense as well as private. She turns out to be the first Deputy PM to have her own chief photographer paid for from the public purse.
Angela Rayner chats with Simon Walker who has been given the title of Chief Photographer to the Deputy PM and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on August 27
Rayner visiting the Johnnie Walker Whisky Experience in Edinburgh last month. The photograph was taken by the new photographer
Angela Rayner pictured with Sam Tarry in June 2022. She has been involved in a row for taking a break with him in a luxury Manhattan apartment owned by millionaire donor Lord Alli
Sam Tarry (pictured in June 2022) flew out to join her for the festive stay in the 56th floor Manhattan apartment, with a gym, jacuzzi and pool
His role is to create ‘Brand Ange’. The photographer, Simon Walker, also works for the housing department where she is the Secretary of State.
Walker, who used to work for Rishi Sunak when he was Prime Minister, is paid around £68,000 by the taxpayer for doing the two jobs. His official title is Chief Photographer to the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
He has already released a series of photographs of Rayner. In some she’s hosting high-powered conferences, in others she’s on housing sites. But the snaps all have one aim: to show the Deputy PM and housing minister in the most positive light.
The Tories seized on the latest disclosures. One source said: ‘What a large sum of money to improve the image of our Deputy Prime Minister.’
They pointed out that Rayner was one of the most vociferous critics of Boris Johnson in No 10, after it emerged that a Conservative donor was paying for Downing Street wallpaper.
‘How Angela Rayner used to condemn us for squandering public money on vanity projects,’ the source said. ‘Is there any greater vanity project than a Deputy Prime Minister with her thousands of pounds of free clothes, a luxury free holiday, and now a publicly paid photographer?’
Rayner was given the free holiday in New York courtesy of Labour donor Lord Alli (pictured)
Rayner arrives for the Labour Party Conference 2024 in Liverpool on September 22
Keir Starmer congratulates the deputy PM after her speech at conference on Sunday
A supporter of Rayner countered: ‘You have to understand she’s the Deputy PM but she is always overshadowed by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who got the Dorneywood grace-and-favour country mansion she thought might be coming her way.
‘She also often feels marginalised by No 10. This is her way of making her mark on government.’
Walker was Sunak’s ‘digital content editor’ when he was Chancellor, hired as part of a team to help improve his social media output.
He became official photographer to the Prime Minister when Sunak was in No 10, before quietly switching to working for Rayner last month.
The tradition of senior ministers having an official photographer is comparatively new.
In 1997, Tony Blair requested that an official photographer be employed by the Civil Service after he moved into No 10.
But this was blocked by the then Cabinet Secretary Sir Richard Wilson who said it was an ‘unjustifiable use of taxpayers’ money’.
David Cameron had one when he became Prime Minister in 2010. But after his government introduced ‘austerity’ measures, he announced he was taking photographer Andrew Parsons off the public purse because he thought it sent out ‘the wrong signal’, and Parsons was employed instead by the Conservative Party at no cost to the taxpayer.
Following the decision, Ed Miliband, Labour leader at the time, pompously declared: ‘It was a wise judgment when the Prime Minister is telling everyone else to tighten their belts.’
Whether Miliband will upbraid the Deputy Prime Minister for using taxpayers’ money in this way during a cost of living crisis remains to be seen.
