Angela Rayner and confessions of politician’s ‘vanity photographer’

If you thought Victoria Starmer’s recent, freebie frocks micro-scandal showed our first lady as a fashion-obsessed narcissist with the image-consciousness of a TikToking teenager, Angela Rayner is here to amp up the self-regard even further. It was reported yesterday that, like Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Barack Obama (and Kim Jong Il) before her, the deputy PM and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have engaged the services of a “vanity photographer”.

In his capacity as Rayner’s “official photographer”, snapper Simon Walker (formerly Sunak’s in-house smudger) is said to be getting an annual salary of £68k (of taxpayers’ money, mind) to follow the minister around and take pictures as she makes history and changes lives. Walker is posted at significant events and magical, socio-political, epochal instances like… well, Rayner kicking a football around with some kids on a council estate, her visit to London’s West End to discuss Oxford Street’s regeneration plans, and a myriad of hi-vis/hard-hat excursions to building sites and factory floors. And as with all second-tier, veep-ish adventures, this makes for some spectacularly underwhelming “content”.

Because this is grey-skied England, not sun-dappled America, and because Rayner is the deputy minister, not the actual prime minister, hers tend to be unimportant, insignificant, low-power, parochial moments, short on glamour, charm, impact and/or exposure. There is nothing to see here. Even less worth capturing on film and archiving for posterity. It’s of no interest to us and no use for the history books.

But just in case you were under the illusion this was just a vanity project for Rayner, No 10 is here to adjust the mood lighting, sorry, music for us. Walker is not Rayner’s “personal photographer”, Rachel Reeves snapped back yesterday – confirmation if it was ever needed that it is (show) business as usual.

“It’s not a personal photographer. It’s to promote the campaigning work of governments. All government departments, under all governments, have press officers and communications budgets,” the chancellor of the Exchequer told a radio interviewer, perhaps nodding to Johnson’s tenure as PM when Johnson actually had three vanity photographers on the go, at the same time.

Zooming in on the details, a ministry spokesperson added that Walker is employed to chronicle the work of the department, not just Rayner. “Many government departments employ official photographers to share the work of the department and ministers with the public,” they said, adding: “This is a civil service role” which is part of the department’s communications team.

Even if you think Rayner’s ego and forward-thinking potential as a future Strictly Come Dancing contestant (only a matter of time, surely) and social media influencer are a factor here, really, it is the poor photographer you have to feel for here. Can you imagine growing up with big dreams of becoming the next Don McCullin, Helmut Newton or Annie Leibovitz, travelling the world to capture images of war, fashion and fabulosity and then being reduced to taking dreary pictures of the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne (including Audenshaw, Droylsden and Dukinfield) as she goes about her mind-numbingly dull daily business?

Even Walker’s pictures of Sunak, at the peak of his powers when he was PM, have the whiff of the boarding school yearbook about them; shirt-sleeved Sunak looking pensively out of a No 10 window, Sunak hard at work behind a desk, Sunak checking his phone (to see what the opposition was up to on TikTok?). The intimacy feels stage-managed and bland, the flashbulb cruelly emasculating. At least Andrew Parsons’s pictures of David Cameron and then Johnson had buffoonish entertainment value, especially with Johnson hurtling around with barely a moment to ruffle his hair a little more for extra effect.

A cursory flick through this sad portfolio of ineffectual PMs tells its own story; the British just aren’t very good at this sort of thing. The Americans, on the other hand….

JFK was probably the first US president to appreciate the power of the visual amanuensis. Kennedy employed Jacques Lowe to capture his election campaign and then Cecil W Stoughton as the first ever official White House photographer in 1960. Stoughton’s pictures are wonderful; evocative, momentous, glamourous, aspirational and vote-winning. Marilyn Monroe at a Kennedy party, JFK and his daughter Caroline cuddling under a blanket aboard the yacht Honey Fitz. The White House as Camelot and not a hi-vis tabard in sight.

Ronald Reagan went one better, persuading ex-Chicago Tribune photographer Pete Souza to cover his presidential term. Key to the Reagans’ public appeal (and a second term), Souza’s candid, informal and unscripted images of Ronnie and Nancy captivated America… and a young Obama who asked Souza back to the White House when he got elected. During the Obamas’ eight-year stay, Souza took over 2 million images. Many of them are now world-famous. Some are bound into coffee table thumpers. Remember that super-cool money shot of the prez nonchalantly fist-bumping a cleaner in a White House corridor? That was Souza.

Back in the UK, we don’t have the light… or, some might say, the models.

In 2004, award-winning photographer Chris Floyd spent two intense and thrilling weeks on the road with senator John Kerry during the Democratic candidate’s doomed election campaign. Earlier this year, he spent a less than high-octane three days with Nigel Farage. The travelling Farage experience, Floyd says, was akin to following a cheap and failing circus – all bodyguards, crude self-promotion and increasingly grim locations.

“When you are on the inside of an operation like that, you get to see the relentless ego at play,” says Floyd. “It is tacky, tawdry and repetitive. All about personality. Not the people… or the policies.”

The modern vanity photographer, believes Floyd, is there as a social media tool, rather than a chronicler of times. Increasingly, we are seeing those worlds and media platforms colluding, as showcased by Kate Middleton’s recent short film which was made by one of the people behind the Instagram food page “Top Jaw”, Will Warr.

“I think it is very important that we have pictures of significant moments in politics,” says Floyd. “But in the UK, this kind of workaday reportage is mostly incredibly boring and relentlessly unglamorous. Photocall, then meet and greet, then a factory visit, followed by another photocall… nothing interesting happening at any stage.”

The people who want a photographer following them around 24/7 will usually have huge egos too, which leaves you wondering how many of Souza’s 2 million images made the cut.

“They pretend that the pictures are for official use and to record history being made. They are not,” says Floyd. “You take hundreds and hundreds of photos and they are really just… optics.”