'Being deputy Labour leader is a ghastly job'

""It's a lot of time, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of responsibility, and it's thankless.""

""What you've got to do is to make a constructive leadership team that can help and support getting the party in the right place, so that the government can be in the right place, so that the country can be in the right place,""

""Angela had, I think, some problems with it, but that's partly because of some of the people around her who tried to make her somebody who was kind of an alternative, or"

Dame Margaret Beckett was the first woman to hold the Labour deputy leadership from 1992 to 1994. She described the role as a terrible, ghastly, thankless job that demands a lot of time, work and responsibility and said she was pushed into running. John Smith redirected non-priority work to the deputy, and Roy Hattersley often faced the graveyard slot during difficult by-elections. The deputy role requires building a constructive leadership team to support party, government and country rather than engaging in childish games. Angela Rayner resigned as deputy leader, deputy prime minister and housing secretary after a tax issue on an £800,000 flat; some problems were attributed to people around her trying to present her as an alternative.

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