Anne Perkins
Labouring the Point
Red Queen? The Unauthorised Biography of Angela Rayner
By Michael Ashcroft
Biteback 368pp £20
The first Red Queen was Lewis Carroll’s. She was irrational and unpredictable, characteristics widely attributed by men to women. When the broadcaster Michael Cockerell conferred the title on Barbara Castle in his brilliant BBC television profile of her in 1995, it was not meant entirely as a compliment. Castle, however, always saw it as one and it has since become something of an honour sought by each new generation of female Labour MPs.
Michael Ashcroft – aka Lord Ashcroft, though he gave up his seat in the House of Lords to resume his non-dom tax status in 2015 – suggests that Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, might be the next titleholder. She has both the political status and the appearance, being red-haired, to carry off the crown. This may not be quite what Ashcroft is getting at. Perhaps he merely wants to put the idea into your head that Keir Starmer is sheltering a radical lefty at the top of the Labour Party. The biography itself, however, faithfully reports Rayner’s pragmatism. The most interesting political argument it reveals is one between her and John McDonnell over education spending. He wanted to scrap tuition fees; she wanted money to go instead on early years education provision (he won).
Rayner and Castle were born seventy years apart. Castle didn’t become a cabinet minister until she was fifty-four and had been an MP for nearly twenty years. She sat in all of Harold Wilson’s cabinets in a series of increasingly senior jobs, brilliantly successful at least until 1969. She seemed
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Under its longest-serving editor, Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair was that rare thing – a New York society magazine that published serious journalism.
@PeterPeteryork looks at what Carter got right.
Peter York - Deluxe Editions
Peter York: Deluxe Editions - When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
literaryreview.co.uk
Henry James returned to America in 1904 with three objectives: to see his brother William, to deliver a series of lectures on Balzac, and to gather material for a pair of books about modern America.
Peter Rose follows James out west.
Peter Rose - The Restless Analyst
Peter Rose: The Restless Analyst - Henry James Comes Home: Rediscovering America in the Gilded Age by Peter Brooks...
literaryreview.co.uk
Vladimir Putin served his apprenticeship in the KGB toward the end of the Cold War, a period during which Western societies were infiltrated by so-called 'illegals'.
Piers Brendon examines how the culture of Soviet spycraft shaped his thinking.
Piers Brendon - Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll
Piers Brendon: Tinker, Tailor, Sleeper, Troll - The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker
literaryreview.co.uk