A clip of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was posted on Instagram showing her jumping, dancing and cheering at Hï Ibiza club. Celeb DJ Denise van Outen, who shared the video, described it as a "surprise booth rave up with Angela Rayner".
The Housing Secretary who has been known to enjoy 12-hour raves, boogied beside renowned DJ FISHER who blasted out a dance remix of Gotye's hit song Somebody That I Used to Know. As the beat of the song dropped, the nightclub lit up with flashing lights as Ms Rayner jumped up and down in time with the music.
As reported in the Mirror, the politician kept one hand behind her back and threw up the other with her finger in the air as she commanded the crowd. FISHER, whose real name is Paul Fisher, put his headphones round the neck of the Labour minister as he laughed and hugged her.
The DJ was joined by the minister as part of his summer season on the Spanish island. His residency has seen him bring in a host of DJs across the summer to Hï Ibiza, a super-club with a capacity of 5,000 people.
Ms Rayner, who wore Labour's iconic red to the party, hinted at her love of raving in an interview with the Mirror last summer. The politician explained she was wearing Dr Marten boots as she'd just got back from a holiday in Spain where she danced one night from four in the afternoon until five in the morning to her favourite club anthems.
And at an interview at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last August she said she was "proud" of her 12-hour raves. The politician, who is 44, said: "The girls I was raving with are half my age, and I was like 'I'm a grandma'. I was proud of that. 4pm I started, and I got home at six o'clock in the morning when the sun was shining and I was like: 'Yes, I can do it.'"
I write to you with news of a grave political scandal. No, not the fact that accusations of sexual harassment remain rife in Westminster. Nor that a convicted felon is running to be President of the United States. The impropriety of which I speak is that one Angela Rayner has been filmed in the DJ booth of an Ibiza club. I know. It’s almost too much to take in.
In a clip shared online by Denise van Outen, the deputy prime minister can be seen having a good old dance while holding a bottle of water and wearing a Labour-red jumpsuit. At one point, she hugs Australian DJ Fisher, and he puts his headphones around her neck.
I know what you’re thinking: the audacity! A 44-year-old woman on holiday during the summer recess, doing something other than reading an Agatha Christie mystery in Bournemouth? A female politician who spent Wednesday discussing removing dangerous cladding from residential buildings, flying out to Ibiza for a long weekend ahead of Parliament restarting on Monday? How dare she enjoy herself? Or, as one charming man on Twitter put: “common slag”. Because, of course, things worked so much better when our MPs were going to private members’ clubs, where they could network with other jolly old boys over brandy and cigars.
If this sort of backwards backlash feels familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. In August 2022, to be precise, when a video showing then-Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin dancing with friends at a party was posted online. The 36-year-old was forced to take a drug test and accusations that she was “unprofessional” dogged the rest of her time in office. And again in January 2019, when a video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing in college was leaked in an attempt to embarrass and discredit her.
The same tactic is used to undermine women time and again. Young, female politicians are held to different moral codes and expected to behave within the narrowest of boundaries compared to their male counterparts – very demure, very mindful, very cutesy. And while we might ridicule male politicians for their dodgy dad dancing – think Michael Gove in that Aberdeen nightclub – with female politicians, the knee-jerk reaction is always that they’re jeopardising their job by letting their hair down (not so subtle subtext: this is a position of power you’re lucky to have in the first place, young lady). I truly can’t imagine the same being said of a man… unless, perhaps, his night of dancing took place at No 10 during a national lockdown.
In this context, no wonder Rayner can’t get it right. Two years ago, then-deputy PM Dominic Raab sneered at her for going to the opera. Now a DJ booth is deemed wrong. Could the truth be that those feeling so outraged just don’t like seeing a woman enjoy herself? Particularly a working-class woman who’s made it to Downing Street against all odds? Yes, she has one of the most influential positions in British life and deserves every bit of professional scrutiny that comes along with it. But God forbid we judge her on her professional record, when we can take one look at her having a bit of harmless fun on holiday and call her a “tart”.
It’s a slow drip-drip-drip of misogyny that normalises the belittling of women in politics and goes unchallenged time and again. Rayner was previously accused, by Boris Johnson’s supporters, of trying to distract him in the Commons by crossing and uncrossing her legs. She’s been targeted by a deep-fake porn site and has a panic button installed in the home she shares with her two teenage sons. Under those circumstances, wouldn’t you want to forget everything and dance the night away once in a while, too? Instead, we expect her to forgo any sort of work-life balance and simply be grateful that a woman “like her” has been elevated to any sort of prominent position at all.
Angela Rayner understands all this, of course. She’s used to being patronised and underestimated. The video of her dancing wasn’t leaked, and she’ll have known full well that it was likely to make its way into the public domain. She clearly doesn’t care. It’s an eff you to those who don’t believe that women like her have a place in the political arena – and we should all be grateful that they do.
