Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Angela Rayner - Page 2

I cannot be clearer about this. I am not in politics, let alone Labour's shadow cabinet, to keep things as they are.

Labour is the party for the many.

My school, we affectionately nicknamed it Avonjail, but it was called Avondale, Avondale high school in Stockport. I left with no GCSEs above a D.

I remember going round to my friends' houses and asking them to ask their mum and dad if I could stay for dinner because I wasn't going to get fed.

Growing up without love, without being cared for, might be the worst type of poverty.

We had poverty in our house. Even on the council estate I knew I was one of the poorer kids. I used to go round my friends houses on a Sunday to get their Sunday dinner because my mum couldn't cook either so I used to love going round my mates and say: 'Can you ask your Mum if I can come in for Sunday dinner?'

I do my best to be true to who I am.

Inherently I think the goodness in most people, we get a warm sense of satisfaction if we help someone, it makes you feel better.

As a young single mum struggling to get by, I didn't get to go to university, but that level of debt would have been unimaginable.

Politics changes lives. You would expect me, as a politician, to say that. But I don't say it as a politician: I say it as someone whose own life was changed.

It took 15 years and a Labour government to finally see Section 28 taken off the statute books. But this victory belongs to the LGBT+ activists who campaigned for so many years, fighting for change from the ground up.

Only Labour will provide the radical changes needed to create a free, fair and funded education system, which protects education as a right for the many, not a privilege for the few.

Child poverty is more than an abstract problem to me. It's something I know all too much about.

If the Tories are serious about ensuring everyone has the opportunity to learn, regardless of their background, then the only thing they need to review is Labour's manifesto.

You'd be surprised how many politicians have a working class background but they get it beaten out of them.

Our admissions system should be a vehicle for justice, but it is failing working-class students, especially those who are the first in their family to go to university.

Anyone can achieve it if they're given the opportunity to.

I am not OK with the system that allows certain people to fail or be chucked out. I don't accept that.

Many parents know that hugging your children - telling them how amazing they are - is so important. Some parents, through no fault of their own, don't realise this. My mum was one of those who didn't realise, and I almost was too.

School, for me, was not a place where you went to be educated, but a place where you got away from your parents for a couple of hours while they got some respite from you, and where you were able to see your mates.

I first learned the power of a Labour government to transform lives growing up in my hometown of Stockport.

At 16, out of school and pregnant, my own life could have been written off. It was the help I had from some of the then Labour government's policies such as Sure Start that turned it around.

Ideology never put food on my table.

I think class is still an issue in this country.

I don't pronounce all my words exactly how they do on the BBC. I am who I am.

My mother suffers mental health problems and has a learning deprivation.

Every one called me scruffy, a scratter, that's what they used to call me. I was known as that. Scratter was the nickname.

I've always been the girl who can't sit on her hands. If there's a pink elephant in the room, I'll identify it and say it.

My kids live in a different environment than I did as a child. They've got privileges I didn't have as a child, but they have disadvantages. They don't see their mum as much. They see the threats that one gets. They live in a house where they've got panic buttons, and I've had to teach them about safety.

I remember I had to have steel toecaps because my nana said, 'They'll last,' and I remember being bullied because my shoes weren't like anyone else's. Everyone had Kickers.

People are still programmed to think that if your child doesn't get straight As, get A-levels and go to a Russell Group university, that somehow they are not going to achieve in life. I think that's sad.

Regardless of what tribe people think they're in, we don't work in isolation as human beings, we want to do what's right.

If I hadn't had access to the vital support of my local Sure Start centre, I would never have had the help I - and my son - needed.

We can't have children growing up feeling unloved - the price is too high for that.

My mum didn't understand that education was an important thing. She couldn't do my homework with me. I was helping her read stuff. She once brought shaving soap thinking it was whipped cream.

I mean getting into parliament was quite an achievement in itself and then I have to pinch myself at the thought of actually running a department.

I'm the only member of the house, who at age 16, and pregnant, was told in no uncertain terms, I'd never amount to anything.

If you want to underestimate me because I speak like a Mancunian, like the people I grew up with, then so be it at your peril.

I wanted to be the best mum I could be. I just wanted the means to be able to help myself. And, luckily for me, I had a Sure Start centre and I had adult education I could go back into.

I never got hugged as child.