Girls Know Nothing - S1 Ep17: Britains Youngest MP Nadia Whittam, Scandal, Male Dominated - Behind the Scenes of the Government.

Episode Date: November 24, 2022

GKN is a female focused podcast hosted by@Sharon Gaffka Girls Know Nothing's seventeenth guest is Nadia Whittome - also known as the MP for Nottingham East and the youngest MP in Britain! Nadia talks all about what it's like being nicknamed the 'Baby of the House' by the press, but also what it's like as a young, queer, ethnic minority female working in one of the most white male dominated buildings in the UK. New episodes of Girls Know Nothing 🧡 will be released every Thursday, and will also be available on Spotify, Apple podcasts and wherever you get your podcast fixes! GKN Social Channels: Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  TikTok: @girlsknownothing

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Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase. W-A-T-E-R to 64,000. By texting 64,000, you agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available at pockethose.com slash terms. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,

so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Welcome back to another episode of Girls Know Nothing. Today I have Nadia in my studio. I feel like a lot of people who already follow me and follow the podcast will know who you are. For those of you that don't know who Nadia is, if you want to give yourself an introduction. Yeah, hey everyone, I'm Nadia Whittam. I'm the Labour Member of Parliament for Nottingham East

and I'm also the youngest MP in the UK I love that you've got a little nickname and it's like the baby of Westminster the baby of the house it's so patronising right so I was going to ask do you find it patronising or do you think it's like kind of cute

I don't like I don't get too hurt up about it but it is a little bit irritating especially when I was first elected and I wanted to talk about I had like especially when I was first elected and I wanted to talk about I had like quite a lot of media attention and I wanted to talk about all this political stuff like what the Tories have done to our generation why we need a green new deal and all of that kind of thing and instead everyone was just like so what's it like being a baby

kind of vibe but like old enough to drive old of vibe. But like old enough to drive, old enough to buy a car, old enough to have a mortgage, but still a baby. It was like, well, I'm 23, but yeah. And you wouldn't get that, I'd like to think you wouldn't get that in any other profession.

So like, why is yours any different? Yeah, and you probably wouldn't get it in quite the same way if you're a man either, I don't think. No, that's true. I feel like I was saying that you literally have like every like diversity tick box physically possible to be an MP right so you probably just stick out in the chamber like a sore thumb yeah why do they hate me is it because I'm a woman because I'm young because I'm brown because I'm

queer because I'm a socialist like why not all of the above? Do you find that the, can I name tabloids, like the DM really don't like you? Just really gunning for you all of the time. But I guess in a weird way, that the press attention must have been really good to like help promote your cause. Did you find that or just, it was just annoying? It was like, it was a massive kind of,

it was just a huge culture shock because I didn't have like I didn't come from you know like a comms background I wasn't sort of put into this with a lot of support I basically just stood me and other activists in Nottingham thought you know we need a candidate who's speaking up for migrants rights speaking up speaking up for workers' rights. Let's have a shot at it. Not expecting to win. And then we did. And then the next day,

the general election was called. And then very quickly got elected. Over the weekend, became an MP. On Thursday, I wasn't an MP. I was doing part-time work, looking for temp jobs. On Monday, I was in like part-time work, looking for temp jobs. On Monday, I was in Westminster. It was wild. So I didn't have any prep for kind of speaking to journalists and

that kind of thing. That's wild, actually, because I think I was reading that you did stand for, was it Nottingham City Council? I stood for the County Council. Okay, yeah. But you came second? Yeah, yeah, like quite a long way second. It was in a Tory safe seat. Okay. So I was thinking, I was like, that must have been like a massive jump to go for like a council and then all of a sudden,

like you are in Westminster. You've got quite a big majority as well, haven't you? Yeah, it's over 17,000. Yeah, so I was looking at it, I think it was like 49% and I was like, blimey, that's huge. Yeah. So what was the scariest thing for you going to Westminster for the first

time? I don't know, like, it was some, some quite big things that, you know, I knew that it would be, I knew that it would be a hostile place for somebody from my background. And I was expecting that. And then also like little things like, I haven't done a big office job before. I don't have any clothes to wear. So just like getting everything that was in Topshop at the time and now I look back and I'm like, I hate that outfit.

That was doing nothing for me, but it was all I could wear because I didn't have anything else. To be fair, I also feel like female politicians really get it in the neck for their outfits. Yeah, yeah. Way more than the men do.

Like, you get segments on TV about who's wearing what and stuff like that. No, 100%. It just doesn't make any sense at all. But like,

on a serious note, I think the most difficult thing that was really overwhelming was as soon as you're elected, you become the Member of Parliament for that area. You're responsible for casework, but you don't get any help with setting up an office.

So you start from day one and you're the MP, but you don't have a team or anything to help you. And it's just like being thrown in at the deep end. So like, what was that like for you getting a team in the first place if you've never had an office job or experience of doing that? A huge learning curve. So like, did you not have anyone that you could ask in like in parliament to like lean for for advice and

things like that there there is a bit but you kind of just stumble through um you do get given a person in parliament who is there to kind of show you around but I think that's a bit hit and miss as well so mine just like gave me her fax number what is a fax number I wouldn't even know how to fax somebody no oh no like actually I remember like coming into Westminster for the first time I was 18 when I joined the civil service wow and I I absolutely shat myself going into a government department. So I couldn't even imagine what it was like to go straight into your level of work.

But what kind of inspired your choice into going into politics in the first place? I don't know. It's not like there was a time that I thought, I'm going into politics. I'm in politics now. It was more like the kind of cumulative impact of what the government had done to us as young people,

like to communities like ours. And I was just so angry. Like, I was 13 when the Tories got in power in 2010 and we saw this big wave of cuts to our public services, to like mental health services. We knew so many people who were on the CAMHS waiting list. And of course, it's so much worse now. People who were having their benefits cut,

we had our benefits cut. And then the thing that was like the real tipping point for me was when the bedroom tax came in. This was the tax that basically meant if you live in a council home and you've got a spare room, you have to pay an extra tax on it. Meanwhile, they were giving tax breaks to bankers and billionaires. And I was just so livid about it that I joined my local group,

like super local, the Meadows group against the bedroom tax, which is the part of nottingham that i live in um and yeah from then joined a union joined the labour party because i thought at the time like my thinking was the labour party is not perfect it's not doing everything that i think it should be doing to oppose austerity and put forward a proper alternative but how can I complain about that without being part of the the only like movement in the country the labour movement that has the power to change anything so that's why I joined I guess it's like if someone's not doing something you want you might as well do it yourself kind of vibes right but um like previously to that you

were at university for a little bit studying law um so you know what kind of inspired your choice like assuming you wanted to be a lawyer of some kind I didn't actually so what I really wanted to do was I wanted to do French and German so I'm a French and German speaker and I had a bit of a chaotic time as a kid and didn't really go to school very much. But the one thing that I really focused on was languages. So I taught myself French and German to the point that I got fluent. But then when it came to uni, I was kind of, I was really worried about being able to get a job at the end of it. So I thought if I do something vocational, it can be like a good grounding but I just yeah I well I didn't really enjoy it I found uni a big culture shock as well even though I went to Nottingham University so it was like my home city I thought it would be

a really smooth transition but it wasn't and then the main thing was that it was just so expensive. So I had to resit my first year for personal reasons, which meant that I had another year of living costs and I just couldn't really afford it anymore. So I dropped out. Yeah, we were, I think, one of the first university year groups, or maybe a couple of years before us, that had the £9,000 a year fees. I was like a few years in, so I started uni in 2016.

Yeah, so it would have been like a couple of years after, like before you, the £9,000 thing. 2010, yeah. Yeah, so like, even like I studied part-time and even I was sat there thinking like, am I getting value for money? Obviously, you're proof now that you don't need a degree to be successful or have a corporate job or whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, although people still say to me all the time like, oh, she's really stupid. Like, she only used to be a care worker. And it's like, my colleagues who I worked with are probably the most impressive people I've ever worked with. They deliver such a vital service. They do it all in a really short period of time. They're overworked.

They're underpaid. How dare you? Yeah, I would love to see some of those people. Actually, I wouldn't because it wouldn't be fair to the patients. But I would love to see some of these people actually step into those kinds of environments. Because being educated on paper actually in reality doesn't mean very much

if you can't put the skills together. And I think that's really insulting when you hear people like that all the time, especially when they're Oxbridge educated. And they automatically assume that everybody that isn't isn't talented or clever. And that's only by their standards. But then the country wouldn't function if you had everyone with the same level of

education anyway. Exactly. Like these workers who they treat with such contempt, like, try and see what the country looks like without care workers, without cleaners, without shop workers, bus drivers, porters, nurses, teaching assistants, like the whole country would grind to a halt. So how dare Tory politicians call those workers low skilled? You went back to being a care worker during the pandemic, didn't you? Yeah, I did. Yeah. I mean, I think lots of people were going back to their old jobs if they were skilled in something so like teachers and nurses and stuff and I knew at the time that the the impact of the pandemic would be felt the hardest by social care and not by the private providers but by the workers who

actually deliver the care so yeah I thought I'll go back part-time to my old workplace and just like help out my colleagues because I knew how much we were already struggling before Covid and I just couldn't imagine how bad it would get. What was that like for your mental health doing that during like such a hard time? I've really enjoyed being back with my old colleagues um like they're still friends with with some of them and keep in touch with them um and it felt like a privilege to be able to to go back and to be able to care for a lot of the same people I used to care for before which was really, really nice. Yeah, I mean, it was tough work,

but I really wasn't experiencing the brunt of that. I didn't have the pressures on me that my colleagues had on them. Like, I wasn't doing it for the money. I mean, just as well, because the money's crap. Yeah, it's like one of the lowest paid jobs out there, isn't it, really? But like, what little I did earn, I donated to my local mutual aid fund. And I, you know, obviously don't have to think about raising a family on the minimum wage. I don't have to think

about like, how am I going to make my rent? So I didn't have the experience that most care workers were having. But we did have, there was a lot of fear around lack of PPE, which was not the fault of individual care homes, but the fault of the government. Yeah, I think it's weird because obviously now, we're not out of the pandemic, but we're kind of going a little bit back to normal know, you see people trying to defend their stance on PPE, but obviously if you were on the front line,

first-hand experiencing it, I feel like you have more, regardless of whether they think you're stupid or not, you have the most experience out of all of them to be able to say, actually, no, this is what actually happened because I was there and I lived that experience. I was so angry. I would go into Parliament at the time and I was saying

what care workers across the country were saying, that we do not have enough PPE. And various Tory MPs, including Nadine Dorries, James Cleverley, who's now the Foreign Secretary, were calling me a liar. They were saying that I was lying about it. Not a single one of them have apologised to me. Not that, I mean, the people they really owe an apology to are the people whose families have died needlessly because of decisions that they made.

But they haven't apologised to anyone. Not the workers working in the health service and the care service. Yeah, it's disgusting. I think it's one of those things as well with politicians, they like quite a lot of people don't feel like they're capable of saying sorry for mistakes they've made. Obviously, it's a catastrophic mistake, but like at least own up to it.

Obviously, now you've mentioned James Cleverley being Foreign Secretary and we have the World Cup starting very soon. As a person who identifies as a queer person, it's obviously a lot of hot topics around the World Cup about it being, obviously their stance on human rights is shocking and appalling. And the way they treat the LGBT community and obviously a nice Secretary of State's comments

about LGBTQ people out in Qatar. Do you feel conflicted about whether you should be supporting the national team or not? Oh my God, there's so much to say about this, isn't there? So obviously, I support the England team and I want England to do well. As you say, I'm queer, I'm bi, and I'm also a big football fan,

so I'm not even far as season ticket holder. And I just absolutely love football. But we, this is about a lot more than football. So FIFA has written this letter saying, now it's time to focus on the football. Actually, we should be doing exactly the opposite. We should be looking at the human rights record of Qatar. The fact that it's still a country that criminalizes homosexuality, that trans people are forced to undergo conversion therapy by state-sponsored clinics.

And it's not just LGBT people who are persecuted in Qatar. It's also migrants. So 6,500 migrant workers have died building the World Cup stadium. And then we've got James Cleverley, the foreign secretary, swanning off to Qatar, basically telling LGBT people to just act less gay. It's disgraceful. So as LGBT people, as football fans, as British people, we should be calling on our government to take a strong stance on this and to be backing calls for reparations to be paid to those migrant workers. But also it's not enough for us to just call out human rights abuses in Qatar or in Saudi Arabia or wherever they take place.

We've also got to get our own house in order. So we need to be banning conversion therapy in this country and implementing reform to the Gender Recognition Act, properly funding trans healthcare that could go on and on and on. No, I think it's weird because I feel like the football is very controversial because obviously we are in a country that is full of football fans and football lovers. And I got asked on my opinion about it as well.

And I have the very much the same stance as you. Like I love football. I played it growing up. I always get excited to watch England play. And I just feel like this year or like this tournament, I just can't feel excited. And I was hearing like players wearing like rainbow flag, armband stuff. And I was like, it's not really down to the players to like their job is to play football. Their job isn't to be politically involved. And they don't really get a say in

what country they play in. So I don't really understand the thought process like you know I respect people's religion and things like that regardless of what I actually think about it but don't host an international tournament of such big like nature if you're not going to be willing to accept the people that are going to come to watch it as they are yeah and we should not be allowing regimes like Qatar's to be sports washing their image by hosting the World Cup. And FIFA has a lot of responsibility to bear for that. And it's also when I think when people talk about respecting religion, that massively erases religious LGBT people

who also exist and are amongst the most marginalized. Yeah, I think there was, it was that comment you were saying about one of the Qatari representatives about what being gay was. Yeah, that it's like a disorder of the damage to the mind

or something like that. But I don't really understand how that works. Like, I feel like there's just, like, just because you're not openly gay does not mean there's not gay people in your country but like people I feel people that are really harshly persecuting the LGBT community have an issue because there's um they know people that are probably not as open about their sexuality as they want to be so they're kind of like trying to deflect their feelings yeah yeah and it's like i just don't i don't really understand that person's comment or why it was allowed to be spread like that yeah 100 and then um like we've seen about um what the comments are like on twitter about

the football and things like that coming up. I was saying to you what kind of comments I got after sharing my opinion on the football. Do you feel like you've got a backlash as well for being as openly outspoken about the same topics? So I make a conscious choice not to look at my Twitter comments. But my team has to look at them and sometimes they have to report things to the police

because the abuse is so serious, which makes me very cross because we've got a lot to be getting on with, with helping people with the cost of living crisis. In Nottingham East, they don't need to be looking at horrific things like that. I have noticed a general increase in abuse since the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk. And that, that concerns me. Not just for myself, but generally. I'm a big online safety bill activist anyway. Like I'm massively pushing for the government to get it through Parliament because of the Twitter takeover as well. I feel like it's needed. But do you feel like you get more abuse because you are an ethnic queer woman

as opposed to any other of your colleagues in the House? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's well documented, isn't it, that women of colour or MPs, female MPs of colour, get a lot of abuse. Diane Abbott, I think, got more than half of all abuse that all MPs received in one of the previous parliaments. And definitely when you've got kind of different forms of oppression that stack up against each other. Do you get support in Parliament for stuff like that?

Is there a system in place that supports MPs from the abuse they get? Do you mean like sort of wellbeing support? Yeah, I guess so. I think there is a sort of a wellbeing service. It's like an assistance service or something. But I, and there is that support available for staff as well. But I think certainly far more needs to be done. What would you say to somebody that writes,

like if you could say something to that person that writes CB Scots, they're hiding behind anonymity. What would you say to them if you could um i don't know i mean the the the main thing that i think is that this is just a especially if it's very serious abuse if it's like you know just, but isn't a sort of a threat or inciting hatred, then we don't look at it. But if it's something very serious, then that takes up the time of an office of a team who would otherwise be spending their time dealing with very serious

things like helping homeless people to get housed, helping people access their benefits, helping people hold their landlords to account for not having homes fit for human habitation. Yeah, I mean, I'm talking about office's time and MPs doing their job. It would be wrong of me not to ask you about Matt Hancock and his current appearance in I'm a Celebrity. So I actually haven't seen it yet, but I've seen lots of clips on TikTok. What do you think about those clips on TikTok? So I've got just like him singing Ed Sheeran in a loop in my head and it's doing my head in. What did you, like when you found out he was going into the jungle, like what was your initial reaction? How did you feel about that?

I think it's disgraceful. His constituents, like my constituents, are all experiencing a cost of living crisis, which is being made worse by his government. And rather than helping them with that, he's jetting off to Australia to try to clean up his image. He's the person who was responsible for decisions made during COVID, during the pandemic that resulted in a huge number of excess deaths. Instead of apologising to the country for that and doing the actual job that he was elected to do and is paid to do do he's off in Australia um trying to convince people that he's this sort of amiable charismatic man like no we're not taken in by it I have seen there are some people's opinions that have been swayed by what they've seen on I'm a Celebrity and I don't know

how I how I feel about it because obviously it's all down to editing power really with reality tv do you feel like do you feel like he's all down to editing power, really, with reality TV. Do you feel like, do you feel like he's actually going to clean up his image and people are going to now buy into his apology that he has given on the show? You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast?

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visibility at Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. I hope not. I hope that people don't allow that to happen. There needs to be accountability for decisions that were made during the pandemic. I'm talking about spending billions

on circa reprivatized test and trace system that didn't work, on not increasing statutory sick pay, which meant that people literally could not afford to self-isolate, on not getting PPE to the front line, on a decade of austerity before that that meant that we were just not prepared for an

emergency like this. And we were warned of that. So we knew that that might happen, that we wouldn't be prepared if some kind of emergency happened. There needs to be accountability and justice for families who were affected by that. Do you think with the cost of living crisis, it kind of puts salt into people's wounds if they're looking at him on TV earning £400,000 for a TV show appearance? Yeah, imagine what that money could do for people who are literally having to choose

between heating and eating, like people who are having to send their kids to school hungry and knowing that they'll only get one hot meal a day. I think it's disgusting hypocrisy. And I think that's particularly the case after today, now that the autumn statement has been announced and there are more public sector cuts, more cuts to our services. Meanwhile, they've lifted the cap on bankers bonuses. And they're only introducing these really

meagre tax rises for the super rich. There was a conversation, obviously I haven't seen it if you haven't watched I'm a Celebrity, but one of the contestants had a family member unfortunately pass away because of COVID and the restrictions in place. And she was actually grilling Matt Hancock and like, you know, how come you broke your own rules? And he was like, well, technically it's not the law. So, you know, it was immoral, but it wasn't wrong.

It was basically the way that he'd worded it. So many Tory MPs do this. They treat politics like it's some kind of game, like it's like the Oxford Union, some kind of debating society, where if they just rephrase things, like if they redefine poverty, then they can say that they've reduced child poverty.

If they rename the minimum wage the national living wage, they can say that they've reduced child poverty. If they rename the minimum wage the national living wage, they can say that they're giving people a living wage. Jeremy Hunt was doing it today, saying we're not introducing cuts to public services. We will grow public services, but more slowly than the economy grows. Yeah, that's a cut. Yeah, it's like just more words that mean nothing.

Yeah, yeah. And I think back the the point that you were making people made huge sacrifices during the pandemic people didn't hold their loved ones hands as they were dying because they were respecting the rules and the law and the very least that people expected of people making those laws was that they'd follow them themselves. And it's not good enough to say, oh, well, actually, it wasn't the law, it was just guidance. So like a little loophole,

but it's like no one cares about the loophole. Like you tell that to people who's, you should tell that to the woman who had to lose a family member. Yeah. To her face, it was like, well, technically it was a loophole. So, you know, I did wrong, but not actually that.

It wasn't that wrong. Yeah. And I think, you know, it does, I have, I think that's why I've struggled to watch it, this series, because for me, I just, like, you know, I have family that work in the public sector that had to deal with working on the front line. And I was like, it feels, it's ruined a tv show for me basically that one I would I did enjoy um so I did

ask people on Instagram for some questions um there are some weird questions but I won't ask you them because they're very personal um obviously people on the internet don't really understand boundaries um but um a lot of the people have, a lot of the main questions were about what would be your advice in getting young people more engaged with politics? Obviously now that, you know, you yourself and your colleagues like Zara,

you have a very active on social media, which is obviously where young people are, but what more can be done to engage younger people in politics? I think for our generation, we are inherently political and lots of sort of older Tory politicians like to make out that we're not, that we don't care about the world around us. But I think you've only got to look at things

like the school climate strikes, like the numbers of young workers who are now voting to go on strike, that that's just not the case. And it's not surprising, really, because our generation has grown up kind of defined by this insecurity, haven't we? Whether it's insecure housing, insecure work, cost of tuition fees, the prospect of actually being able to like leave our family home um so young people are political but we need to make our voices heard whether that's by joining a political party I understand that that's not something that everyone wants to do or is able to do um but the biggest

thing and what I would say to people listening is if you haven't joined a trade union please please join one now there could not be a more important time we haven't seen pay grow in real terms since 2008 like what and when you think of like 2008 in our lives I was 11 in 2008 um what was I doing in 2008 I was probably playing football in like a school playground. Right, exactly. And wages haven't gone up in real terms since then. We've got attacks on workers' rights

by the government trying to restrict trade union laws and worsening terms and conditions. So people really, really need to join a union. So, I mean, you can always give up Netflix and avocados and coffee, right? If that one doesn't work for you. people really, really need to join a union. So, I mean, you can always give up Netflix and avocados and coffee, right?

If that one doesn't work for you. Yeah, yeah. The best advice. Yeah, if you want to get on the housing ladder or if you want to pay your rent that is like tens of thousands of pounds a year, then just give up your £5.99 Netflix subscription. I've already bought myself.

The mask definitely does work for me. I've got my second property now because I gave up Netflix. I wish that was true. Unfortunately, it's not. There are a lot of people saying that they would love to see you as Prime Minister. Would you ever consider doing it?

No, I wouldn't. No. I feel like I've... Yeah, my responsibility is to my constituents, the people of Nottingham East. And I really love being their MP. And I just want to put all my effort and all my energy into doing that and representing them as best as I can, amplifying their voices and their demands, because our community doesn't get a hearing anywhere near enough. And there are so many people in my community doing amazing work like UK Mutual Aid,

which is like a black-led mutual aid group. There are refugee organizations, students who have been going on rent strike. So much amazing stuff that, yeah, I feel very privileged to be able to amplify. It's really nice to hear because you always automatically assume that people that are MPs, their only goal is to become Prime Minister. I mean, that must be for some people. That's what it feels like at the moment anyway.

But it's really nice to hear that you're so attached and love who you're representing and things like that I feel like if we hear more politicians be very like close to the causes that are in their constituency it would feel more organic and legitimate I feel so lucky to be able to because like how many people get to represent their home city like the place where they were born and bred in parliament and to get to raise all of this anger and these demands of their community to people who have the power to change it.

And hopefully soon we'll have a Labour government and that Labour government will be a million times better than a Tory government. But I'll also be holding that to account and making sure that it implements the kind of bold change that we need. No, I feel like the next general election is so far away, but it will come very quickly. At least I hope it does anyway. But we did have somebody ask what top three political figures inspire you the most.

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Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13. Just go to Indeed.com slash P-O-D-K-A-T-Z 13 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. Oh, so my number one is Jayabandha Sai. She's the woman who led the Grunwick strike. And she's the woman who famously said, we are the lions, Mr. Manager. And she's always been one of my political heroes because I think she, so she led one of the most famous strikes in British history that was ultimately successful, but at the time didn't have the backing of a lot of the trade union movement actually, because it was led by South Asian working class women. And she showed

that we can win industrial struggles. Migrants and people of colour have been leading workplace struggles for a long time now and successfully. But also that Asian women aren't, like we're not submissive and docile. We can get the goods. I feel like that's like a stereotype that I've heard so much in my life.

It's a very different topic if you go down the whole perception during pornography route as to why people think that. But no, I mean, there's a lot of comments like, why are you such a legend? Oh my God, that's so nice. Why are you such a legend? But yeah, one question that I did say to you earlier

is about do you act like somebody in their 20s? Obviously, we were saying that the Finnish prime minister did get a lot of stick in our national press because she had a social life, God forbid. So do you find it really like, do you act like you're in your 20s? And do you find it hard to balance being a serious MP and then being 20-something?

I was always really adamant when I was first elected because I was elected when I was 23 that I wasn't going to let my 20s be taken away by being an MP. I'm still going to enjoy myself. I'm going to behave like other people of my age. Just like, you know, like Tory old men have their their hobbies they play golf and that's not judged that's fine like I'm gonna enjoy going on nights out I'm gonna enjoy going to the football I'm gonna live my life as I was going to anyway I'm gonna date people and also be a really strong

voice for my constituents like can, I can do both. Do you ever get worried, like, when you're out on a night out and, you know, you have that thought in the back of your mind that, like, someone, like, basically, do I have to be more responsible, act a certain way because you're out? Or do you just literally just don't care and just carry on as normal? I just carry on because I think if I had that mindset, I wouldn't do anything that I enjoyed. And actually, like, yeah, I think it's important to be able to enjoy yourself. Like,

that's the kind of world that we're fighting for, right? Yeah. It's a world where everyone has a right to joy. I think it's also, you know, no matter what you do, you're going to get criticised for something, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. If it's not that you didn't brush your hair right one morning, it's going to be that you went out and had too many glasses of wine. So, you know, you might as well make yourself happy while you're at it. I think one of the other questions is basically

what would be your biggest piece of advice to other young queer girls? Oh, I think it can be, it can be really tough being, like growing up queer, especially if you're from like an ethnic minority background as well, especially if you're a woman or a girl. And I think what I'd say to people is that we really stand on the shoulders of giants, of people who blazed a path for our rights. And we have a right to occupy space. It's our job to be taking those rights further. And we need to be working towards queer liberation.

And I genuinely do have hope that that will happen. No, that's amazing. And again, I think it's one of the other questions that we'd spoken about previously is about, do you think the government really valued the opinions of young people? And if not, why not? I think it's very clear that they don't. And I think that's because they don't think it's electorally necessary

for them to have our votes. They know that young people overwhelmingly don't vote Tory and mostly vote Labour, which isn't surprising because we've been so screwed over by Tory governments. But to young people, I'd say it's really important that we make our voices heard. So like join a trade union, join a community union, like if you're renting, make sure you're a member of ACORN or the London Renters Union if you're in London. These latest laws actually are something important to talk about because the Tories have

introduced voter ID for future elections we're putting a lot of pressure on them to make sure that they're not used for the May local elections but this is clearly just an attempt at voter suppression because the people who are less likely to have photo ID are people who are less likely to vote conservative. So people of colour, women, young people, trans people. And it's important that we are also mobilising people to register to vote so that we can make sure our voices are heard at the ballot box as well as in the streets. It's one of those things as well that I think that they just don't take a lot of things that young people have to go through very seriously. One of the things, obviously because I know it's a very hard subject for people to talk about,

and one of the things I did read about you, it was a question that was asked as well about, do you find it hard to speak out about mental health that you have suffered with? So I know you've been very open about having PTSD and things like that. And obviously the comments you've received off the back of it from peers in the house were less than pleasant. Yeah, it was hard to speak about because I think it's it's such a private personal thing that you your instinct is not to share that with the world but basically when it became clear that my PTSD was getting worse rather than better and I was advised by doctors to take time off I thought I can either

kind of try to cover this up and say that like I'm ill but not say what the problem is or I can just be honest and say that this is why I'm taking time off and I think it's important for everyone to be able to to do this if they need to which many people aren't because working low-paid jobs statutory sick sick pay, nowhere near covers the bills. But I thought that was an important thing to do, to be a small part of making that cultural change. But yeah, some of the comments that I got on the back of it were really nasty, like, oh, you couldn't have PTSD because you haven't been in a war,

or you must have just got this because you were reading mean things about yourself online. And anyone who knows anything about PTSD knows that you get it from situations where you're fearing for your life, and it's very serious. But I didn't really feel upset for myself because I didn't read the comments. I knew that there would be comments like that and I completely stayed off social media. But when I saw them afterwards, I just felt really, really angry and really concerned about what other people who have mental health were thinking when they saw that, whether it made them think,

I don't know, like, I need to think twice about speaking to my friends about this or speaking to my boss about this. And I think that's really irresponsible of certain parts of the media. No, I agree. I think actually, I found it, regardless of the headline that I was reading,

I found it really empowering because when you are a leader of some kind, that you should lead by example. And, you know, if you want your team and people around you to look after themselves, and like, how are you better, how are you going to look after your constituents if you're not in a position where you can't look after yourself? And I think in a position where you are under such media scrutiny,

I think it's really empowering to see somebody actually say you know I do need this time off so you know regardless of what anyone else's comments but I found it really inspiring thank you um and I've always said to people that you know like anyone in my team that ever worked with me that if they needed the time off then like that's for them and they shouldn't be too scared to ask for it because I I'm not too scared to ask for it and I think that's really important. Yeah, and I think that's why it's really important to talk about in this setting where you don't have someone else controlling the headline for you

where you can say your piece. I should say, actually, that even though there were a small number of comments like that, the vast majority, we got thousands of messages from people saying that this has helped me, that I now feel able to take a period of absence from work, or I have done this before and seeing you speak out about it has made me feel a lot more comfortable about that and a lot more seen. And the first thing that I did when I got back to work was ask Boris Johnson in PMQs whether he would raise statutory sick pay to at least a

real living wage for everyone. Because I was in a fortunate position to be able to take that time off. But it shouldn't be a privilege. It should be a right for everyone. But at the moment, it's not. Do you find that when you get nice comments and that you feel like your job's worthwhile yeah I find it really touching um like just that people take the time and the trouble to send things like that I think it's the nice side of the internet right there is a nice side and that's one of them yeah Yeah, and sometimes, you know, we get like flowers from constituents and people who love my team because I've got the most brilliant team.

Like as an MP, I'm only as good as the team around me and they're just all fantastic. Like they've stopped people getting deported. They've got people housed. They're just incredible. And people build not just a close relationship with me but also with them no that's really nice to hear and it's like it's nice to hear some nice stuff in politics really but um one this is a question that i've got i know some people that have followed you and followed me that will probably want to know about as well it's well known that you with the MPs expensive scandal that you donate majority of your salary um which is like

crazy because MPs do earn very good salary yeah um so what kind of like I don't actually know where you donate it but like where do you donate it like what kind of inspired you to make that decision so like before I was elected I decided that I was going to take a worker's wage. So take home 35k and donate the rest, which is still like a really good wage. And it's more than I was brought up on. It's plenty to live on. And I would donate the rest to local causes

like food banks, like refugee projects, but also strike funds in my constituency. And that's because as a Labour MP, I was elected as a workers' representative, and I don't want to be on a salary that massively separates me from the people I represent. But I also want to be able to do something practical to redistribute that salary in my community um so so far I've donated to various projects like St Anne's Advice Centre which is a welfare advice centre in my constituency, PAL which is a sex workers advocacy organisation advocacy organization, various strike funds, like my local RMT strike fund, taxi drivers and couriers union strike fund. There are so many, I've definitely missed quite a few off. That's like, I wasn't sure if it was going to be like a single cause, but it sounds like

your constituents are definitely getting their money's, like their taxpayers money's worth out of you. But I know it's really, it's like really nice to hear like good new stuff coming out of like politics and politicians, even though there's very challenging times. But I do have one final question. And I did give you a little bit of a heads up

as the final question because I know it can be really hard when it's on the spot. But what would you say to people that were in your past and people that are in the future that would doubt your success based off the fact that you are brown, queer and a woman? Yeah, you did give me a heads up about this.

And even though you did, I still don't know what to say. So I think I'd probably say, like maybe interrogate why you underestimate people like me and make sure that you don't do that in future because there like there's there's nothing particularly kind of special or talented about me I'm just like a lot of other people but all of us have so much potential and you can see see that in victories that people are making in the workplace, against their landlords, school climate strikers. So just make sure you don't underestimate those people. And more than that, do what you can within your own institution

to be amplifying their voices and to be making your institution a place that they can not just get by in but thrive in amazing no that's that's really profound and that's actually it's true like i think they only fear the power that you have and they're trying to stifle it but it's amazing that you are a massive role model to other people like you and people that share the communities that you have. But I just want to say thank you so much for coming on my podcast. I've waited two months to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. My friends last night were like, oh my God, are you doing a podcast with Sharon from Love Island? They're so excited. We were all very much rooting for you. For you and for Brett. Honestly, I really appreciate you taking the time out

and I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks so much for having me. It's been fun. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy, just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen

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