Angela Rayner waves across the chamber at Tory front bench

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The deputy Labour leader has previously revealed it would be an “absolute honour” to take the top job as a former single mum from a council house. And now Labour colleagues are comparing Ms Rayner, 41, to her arch rival Prime Minister Boris Johnson, saying she trades on her “big personality”.

One Labour staffer told the Daily Telegraph: “It’s not that ridiculous a comparison. The thing about Angela is she’s actually good fun. I expected her to be a bit of a diva with staff, but she’s not at all.

“Like Boris, she just says whatever comes into her head. What she doesn’t like is being sneered at for who she is, and where she’s come from. That’s also a bit like the Prime Minister.

“I thought people went too far when they said they were flirting at the Dispatch Box, but there’s no doubt Angela enjoyed it.

“She wasn’t nervous. She’s the kind of woman who says: ‘Bring it on.’”

Daily Telegraph associate editor Camilla Tominey said the Labour leadership hopeful was “becoming positively Boris-like”.

She said: “The power-dressing, fake-fur-loving Labour leadership hopeful is becoming positively Boris-like in her habit of hogging the headlines – and not always for the right reasons.

“The 41-year-old mother-of-three might bristle at comparisons with her Dispatch Box nemesis, but the similarities are increasingly plain to see in their colourful private lives, their penchant for speaking without thinking and their star status as politicians with a populist touch.

“It is no secret that straight-talking, plain-speaking Rayner has brought some much needed fizz to the Labour frontbench, providing the yin to Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘boring’ yang, in the same way Johnson proved a relief after Theresa ‘Maybot’.”

The mother-of-three who had her first baby at 16, has a unique journey into Westminster after growing up on a council estate in Stockport, Greater Manchester.

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A carer to her bipolar mum Charlotte Wahl aged just 10, Ms Rayner became pregnant at 16 and left school with no qualifications.

She has told how her late mother brought home dog food for dinner because her mother couldn’t read the labels on tins and thought it was stewing steak.

Another Labour colleague added: “You could say Angela is a bit like Boris in the way she trades on her big personality.

“Like him, she is also quite a complex character, with a complicated back story, and a USP that appeals to the party membership.”

Despite their different backgrounds, Ms Rayner’s descriptions of her parents “explosive” relationship and father’s affairs can be compared to Mr Johnson.

While the colour private lives of both have also made the headlines.

Ms Rayner’s 10-year marriage to Unison chief Mark Rayner ended when she launched her leadership bid following the 2019 general election.

At around the same time, father-of-seven Mr Johnson was reaching a final settlement with his wife of 25 years Marina Wheeler after he was linked to his now wife Carrie Symonds.

Ms Rayner has now been linked to momentum backed and married MP Sam Tarry, whom she was spotted living her Westminster flat with over the weekend.

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