Why was Angela Rayner sacked as Labour party chairman and is she still deputy leader?

ANGELA Rayner has become Labour’s new deputy leader after the party’s leadership election last night.

The 39-year-old former Shadow Secretary of State for Education will serve alongside new Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Who is Angela Rayner?

Angela Rayner was born in Stockport, Greater Manchester on March 28 1980.

She is the youngest person to be the shadow education secretary, at the age of 36.

Mrs Rayner went to Avondale School, but left aged 16 when she became pregnant, without any qualifications.

She later studied part time at Stockport College, and qualified as a social care worker.

She then joined Unison because of the conditions she saw during the decade she worked for in that profession.

Mrs Rayner was once under fire for bullying a shopkeeper and misusing Commons notepaper, when she failed to get a special edition of Star Wars high heels.

When did she join the Labour Party?

Mrs Rayner joined the Labour Party in 2014, an MP for Ashton-under-Lyne.

Jeremy Corbyn appointed her to the position of the shadow secretary for education in 2016.

She was then elected deputy leader alongside new Labour leader Keir Starmer.

Rayner posted her acceptance speech on Twitter, where she thanked voters for their support.

Why has she been sacked?

Keir Starmer today sacked Rayner from her roles as Labour’s party chair and national campaign coordinator.

It comes after the party’s humiliating loss of the Hartlepool byelection.

Humiliated Keir yesterday took “full responsibility” for the “bitterly disappointing” results as he desperately scrambled to save his leadership and party from extinction.

However, he today pushed her into the firing line, with people believing he used her as a “scapegoat.

Gaya Sriskanthan, Momentum co-chair, said: “It is his failed strategy that has brought us to this point, and he said he would take responsibility. Yet again he has gone back on his word.”

Is she still deputy leader?

Rayner will remain as deputy Labour leader as it is a directly-elected post.

Is she married with children?

Mrs Rayner married her husband Mark, a Union official in 2010.

The pair now have three children.

She had her firstborn Ryan at the age of 16 and once said that she “felt she was worthless”.

Mrs Rayner responded to Boris Johnson’s ill-comments of single mothers, saying: “I think it’s absolutely disgusting. I remember people like that making those comments about me.

“I might be the shadow education secretary, but inside I’m that 16-year-old that didn’t think I was worth anything. And people like him make women who are already vulnerable feel that they’re the problem. They’re not the problem.”

Mrs Rayner became a grandma at the age of 37, and called herself “Grangela”.