White working class boys have been held back by a focusing on ethnic minorities and women’s agendas according to Greater Manchester MP Angela Rayner.
The MP for Ashton under Lyne and Failsworth in an interview with the weekly political magazine the Spectator said:
“They have not been able to adapt. Culturally, we are not telling them that they need to learn and they need to aspire. They are under the impression that they don’t need to push themselves, in the way that disadvantaged groups had to before. I think that is why there is a bit of a lag there. I think we need to do much more about the culture of white working class in this country.’
In a wide ranging interview with Fraser Nelson, she added:
“I’m from a white working class background, our culture – and I think that’s why white working class boys aren’t doing so well at the moment.”
The Interview dicussed her upbringing.She told the magazine that she:
“was in the Manchester nightclub scene at 13 and thought affection from men — the wrong type of affection — was the right thing,’ ‘I was going out with people a lot older than me, so was already on that slippery slope.’ Her friends, she says, slipped. ‘I lost about six friends before I was 18. They died through a drug overdose, or killed in a car, joy-riding. But once I got pregnant it wasn’t just my life I was messing around with. I had somebody to look after.’
She also praised the welfare state and the safety net that it provided for her:
“I would have been seen as a scrounger, a scally unlikely to make anything of my life. But without those interventions I wouldn’t have been able to have my son, who is having a great life and has done really well for himself. And I wouldn’t now be a taxpayer who pays their way in life, no longer on any benefits. I wouldn’t be supporting my other two wonderful children.” adding
“Sometimes you have to invest in people to get the best out of them. To me, that is socialism. That is why I’m a Labour member rather than a Conservative.”
