Enraged or Engaged? Angela Rayner on The Gen Z Story

The Rest Is Politics

Goalhanger

News, Politics, Government

4.5 • 11.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Former Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, joins Alastair Campbell and Vicky Spratt to discuss the Gen Z story as she sees it. Listen to hear her thoughts on the success of The Green Party, the allure of characters like Gary Stevenson and Zack Polanski, the hopelessness of young people, the danger of binary politics and short-term thinking, as well as her push for the government to reconnect with Gen Z and empower leaders of the future. She also listens and responds directly to some of your experiences sent to us via voice note. To hear episode one and two of the Gen Z Story, sign up at ⁠therestispolitics.com ⁠and if you're a student, sign up with your student email address to get a year of TRIP Plus for just £20. For analysis on this interview and more insights into the Gen Z Story series, sign up to our free newsletter. Instagram: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Twitter: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Email: ⁠therestispolitics@goalhanger.com⁠ __________ Hosted by: Vicky Spratt Producer: India Dunkley Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith, Lorcan Moullier Researcher: Olivia Taylor Hooper Exec Producer: Tom Whiter Editorial Director: Emily Kent Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for listening to The Rest is Politics.
0:02.1	To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to the rest is politics.com.
0:09.5	That's the rest is politics.com.
0:13.2	People feel like, no matter how hard you work, no matter how much you try, the system is rigged against you and it's not working in your favour.
0:20.8	If you're
0:21.0	working or you're going to university, you're trying to do everything right to get a good job, to raise a family one day, hopefully, to get your own home. They feel it's almost impossible and they're correct to feel that way. We know our birth rate is falling. It's hit the lowest level since the Second World War. That's going to be a big problem for our welfare state.
0:39.3	I was looking at it on a graph earlier.
0:41.3	What we spend is going like this, what we've got coming in, is going like that.
0:45.3	What then does the future look like?
0:47.3	I went to a pretty normal school and then went to Cambridge.
0:50.3	Never at any point during the time I was at Cambridge, was I even worrying about
0:55.4	what I was going to do in the future. The secret is, is they've got power. They've got power
0:59.9	in their communities, in their activism, in their demands, and we should be doing everything we
1:05.8	can to show them that we're on their side. Welcome back to the Gen Zy Story with me, Dickey Spratt, episode three this week, and it is a
1:15.6	must listen.
1:17.6	We have got none other than former deputy prime minister and housing secretary, Angela Rainer.
1:23.6	Now, this interview with Angela was done a couple of weeks ago at the Spotify studios in central
1:28.4	London. Alistair joined and we spoke to her before Labour's absolutely catastrophic local election
1:36.4	results. And in some ways, I think some of the things we discussed were almost like we were
1:41.3	looking into a bit of a crystal ball. Should Labor be worried about the Greens?
1:45.8	Were young people going to turn to the Greens?
1:47.8	What about the threat of reform?
	...

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