General election latest: Starmer pays tribute to ‘trailblazer’ Abbott – as dropped

As we’ve been reporting, Labour’s deputy leader was cleared of wrongdoing by police this week after a Tory party deputy chair alleged she wrongly declared her address on the electoral register.

The investigation has been ongoing since early April, and speaking to Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby, Angela Rayner revealed how she felt when police dropped the probe,

“There was a relief,” she said. “But it was more frustration because I was confident from the start that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

“And it was disbelief that it was going on and gathering this momentum, that it was gathering.”

She said the row “deliberately distracted” from issues she was raising “on behalf of the people in this country”, so the closure of the probe felt “bittersweet”.

‘Disaster happening’ in housing market

Ms Rayner said Sir Keir Starmer and her shadow cabinet colleagues were “incredibly supportive”, but added: “It was frustrating because every time I was out in the media, everybody wanted to talk about my housing.”

But she wanted to talk about “the disaster of what’s happening” in the housing market more broadly.

“When these stories about MPs [appear] constantly, then it looks like we’re all in it for ourselves, or we’re all doing bad things.

“And I knew I hadn’t done that, and I just felt that it gave the wrong message.

On the personal impact of the police investigation, Ms Rayner said that as a working class person, a policy investigation “taints you” and “people think, oh, she’s up to no good”.

“I’m not. That was difficult because I’ve always tried to do the right thing.”