A lot to admire about Angela Rayner but she should brush the chip off her shoulder if she wants to win over rural voters - Sarah Todd

It’s intriguing how she’s managed to sort her curls out and now looks so sleek and sophisticated; leaving the rest of us looking in need of a good curry comb.

Her backstory has the makings of a film and is truly inspirational. Girls the length and breadth of the country should be told about her rise from teenage mother to the top of the political stage as part of the national curriculum.

The fact she has real life experience, rather than following the well-trodden political path of private schooling and privilege, is beyond brilliant.

However, to sell her party to rural voters like this writer, she needs to brush off any chips on her shoulder.

It’s a bit of a hobby, when listening to Ms Rayner being interviewed, to time how long it takes her to mention growing up on a council estate. We get it; it’s one heck of a selling point.

But it always seems to be a bit of a personal dig at those of us who were lucky enough to have a better start in life. It might just be yours truly being over-sensitive, but Labour seems to be made up of either the metropolitan vegan elite or those who have had it hard who simply sneer at anybody who is lucky enough to have been dealt a bit of a better hand in life.

There is a misconception that all farmers are huntin’, shooting, Range Rover driving toffs. Many won’t be making the minimum wage from their land. Many are on tenanted farms; certainly not all landed gentry like Labour seems to make out.

We have some land - not a huge acreage - but it was bought after only taking six weeks’ maternity leave to have children. No part-time or year-long bonding with babies; straight back to it.

That was a choice. The Husband had also grown up on a farm and we worked hard to achieve a similar upbringing for our own family.

There were no holidays until the first child reached double digits and declared she was the only kid in her class never to have been abroad. No brand new cars, no weekly takeaways.

Just because rural life looks pretty from the outside it’s not always all it’s cracked up to be. It costs more to shear a sheep than the price paid for the wool. But the clippers have to come out because - this may come as a shock to the vocal majority who think all farmers are evil and don’t care about their animals - of welfare. If they’re not clipped in summer, sheep get covered in flesh-eating maggots.

We’ve all heard the stories of the dairy farmers being crucified by supermarkets using their milk as loss-leaders rather than selling it for a price that fairly reflects production costs. Almost all farmers are battling. It’s like killing their pig when every packet of bacon seems to be from Holland and chicken comes in from as far afield as Thailand. There are spuds from Israel, carrots from South Africa, lamb from New Zealand, eggs from Italy. The list goes on.

Farmers aren’t, on the whole, the artisan food producers adorning Instagram with millions of followers.

The majority don’t have lucrative deals to supply upmarket boutique-style farm shops or stalls on trendy food markets.

They are outside up to their non-designer welly-tops in muck; swearing that some walker has left a gate open or that favourite cow has had a dead calf.

They are looking out onto fields of corn laid flat by weird weather or scratching their heads wondering how on earth they are going to ever understand the latest farming policy paperwork.

Tune into these normal everyday people’s struggles and Labour must surely have a fighting chance. Keep going on about letting every Tom, Dick and Harry (and their dogs off leads) onto our land and not culling badgers in spite of the TB epidemic and our green and pleasant land will surely resist turning red with all its might. Having said that, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would be a fool to take the rural vote for granted.

Yes, given the choice between having a drink with Angela Rayner or the Conservative’s perennially disappointing Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Therese Coffey there is no contest. The girl from the council estate wins hands down.

Wonder if she’d share her hair secrets?