Angela Rayner has lamented that her son is unable to buy a home for his family, months after buying herself an £800,000 holiday flat. The former deputy prime minister, 46, heavily linked with a run to replace Sir Keir Starmer, used an appearance on a politics podcast to bemoan the problems facing Ryan Batty, 29.
She told The Rest is Politics that she was having to act as a rent guarantor for her eldest, who is married and has a child. 'He’s got no opportunity at the moment to buy a property,' she said in an episode due to be released later this month as part of a series on problems facing 'Gen Z'. 'He works really long hours. He provides for his family. He’s on a very low income. It’s really difficult for him.'
She went on to describe having to help him pay for dental work, adding: 'That is not a system that Gen Z should have to accept, because I think that is the long drag on the economy. I think it’s a long drag on our wellbeing as a country, when we push and punch people down and they feel that, no matter how hard they work, the system is going to be rigged against them.'
But his problems, which are shared by thousands of young people up and down the country, may raise eyebrows when his mother has recently spent a lot of money on her own property empire. Last September she was forced to resign as Keir Starmer's deputy for underpaying stamp duty when buying a flat in Hove, 250 miles from her Greater Manchester constituency. That £70,000 tax bill for the apartment alone is more than three times the £23,000 required for a 10 per cent deposit on the average first-time buyer home in Greater Manchester, according to figures published earlier this year by Lloyds Bank.
Additionally, since leaving Government eight months ago, Ms Rayner has earned a total of £49,000 from speaking engagements, while handing another £10,000 fee to charity, on top of her £98,599 MP salary. In the latest update to MPs' financial declarations, the former deputy prime minister was shown to have earned £20,000 for a recent three-hour speaking engagement for Coex Partners, a City of London financial services firm.
The four-part The Rest is Politics series on Gen Z conducted new research suggesting young people are more misunderstood than ever by older generations. While most Gen Z people - born from 1997 to 2012 - described themselves in a recent survey as 'resilient', respondents aged 30 and over said this generation was 'entitled'. Other words Gen Zers most used to describe themselves were 'unlucky' and 'misunderstood'. But older people disagreed, describing the younger generation as 'anxious' and 'lost'.
More than 12,000 people took part in the survey for the podcast, with the first episode being released today exploring the challenges facing younger people. A majority of older people (74 per cent) also said they agreed that the struggles young people face today are as serious as they say, while 84 per cent said they are worried about young people's job prospects and future earning potential. Strikingly, 60.2 per cent also said they would support policies that might reduce their own wealth or assets, such as a wealth tax or changes to inheritance, if it meant young people had better prospects.
However, in better news for reaching across divides, a majority from each generation agreed with each other that social media was a destructive force. More than four in five 16 to 22-year-olds said it was bad for mental health, rising to more than nine in ten among 23 to 29-year-olds.
