The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 50. Angela Rayner: From zero GCSEs to Britain’s most powerful woman?

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Could Labour still lose the next election? What really went wrong under Jeremy Corbyn? What do the left actually think of the right? Rory and Alastair are joined by Labour's Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner, to discuss all this and more on today's episode of Leading. TRIP Plus:  Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes.  Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispoletics.com. Welcome to the restis politics leading with me, Anastair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. Now, if Labour win the next general election, then we're probably sitting with the person who will become the most powerful woman in Britain, which will be a pretty incredible journey, given that she was. a carer for her sick mum, age six. She was a single mum at 16. She worked in the care sector and then

as a union convener and then became an MP. And in no time at all was on the labour front bench under Jeremy Corbyn and is now deputy leader and says that she sort of models herself on what John Prescott was to Tony Blair, she would like to be to Keir Stama. So, welcome to leading, Angela Raina. Thank you. That if did a lot of heavy lifting in that. I'm just saying. Well, if you're elected. If we're elected. Well, I think you've got to hold on to the if. Yeah, I think you do, but you have to make sure that you hold onto that if. Absolutely. Because it's, you know, a week's a long time, especially in these times in politics. So you certainly have to hold on to the if. Do you think it's possible that you could lose the next election? I think it is possible. And what sort of things in your nightmares might mean that a party that's been nearly 20 points ahead for more than a year could actually lose an election given all that the Tories are done for the last 13 years?

Well, Rory, you saw what happened with Theresa May and the poll lead she had ahead of the 2017 general election and then it just kind of tanked when we got into the short campaign. What did you learn from that? What did she do wrong in that? I think it was the complacency in which she felt that she had a right and that she was going to get elected. I think the Conservatives were complacent. They were jeering. They were jubilant almost in the run up to that. And they underestimated their opponent

and they underestimated where the British public were. And I think I take some great lessons from that. And I think you have to and you have to understand that people at the moment are angry with the Conservative government. They're angry at the last 13 years. But that anger doesn't necessarily mean that they're enthusiastic about another political party. and you've got to understand that, you know, a lot of trust has been taken away from politicians because of actions of some.

And therefore, it's really difficult for people to have that optimism that things will change, especially in really dire economic times. You were 17 when Tony Blair won his first election in 1997, which honestly makes me feel really, really old. But it's quite an interesting perspective for you to look at that time. And I wonder what lessons you learned from that, because there was a feeling in the country then that we don't want them and we do want that. Yeah. That feels to me as the missing piece. So how in the coming months do you get to that missing piece where people aren't just saying I don't want these bloody Tories anymore? I want that.

Yeah. And I think the strategy that me and Keir have had since we took over the leadership of the Labour Party was first to recognise the thumping defeat we had and that the Labour Party has. As some people who were close to me said, Angie, we didn't leave the Labour Party. The Labour Party left us. You know, my voters voted Labour for a very long time said, you didn't give us an option. And then they were very angry with us because they said, you're to blame for us having Boris Johnson. They still do not let me forget that. Just can I interrupt.

When they say you left us, what would be two or three things which made them feel that you'd left them? I think, first of all, they felt that we weren't listening to them. They felt that we didn't understand the frustrations, and they felt we weren't giving them a credible alternative. So they didn't feel like we were an opposition that was ready for government. They didn't even feel we were a credible opposition, let alone a government in waiting. And they felt they weren't being listened to. They felt they were being taken for granted that we, you know, in our Labour heartlands, they felt like, oh, well, we were just expecting them to vote, even though we weren't necessarily listening to some of their frustrations.

And our messages weren't getting across. We looked like, I mean, if you take the similarities to today, and this is where the conservatives are in real trouble, is we were in chaos. We were infighting. We wasn't looking outwards towards the country. We wasn't looking to the photos. We just looked like a rabble that was shouting at each row.

Whether you were Corby and I or not, it was damaging for the whole of our labour movement. And yet, something which the Tories are absolutely gunning for care over, and we'll probably do to some extent with you as well, is the fact that you all sat there and went out under the airwaves and said Jeremy Corbyn would be a fantastic prime minister because that's your job because you're in the shadow cabinet. Do you think that, I mean, and that was the big thing, wasn't it? It was Jeremy as much as anything else that people were rejecting. Yeah, there was the issue around Jeremy, but I still think that that Labor government would be better

than what we've got. If you look at the COVID inquiry, Boris Johnson is on the stand today. And, you know, it's appalling what happened. If you looked at our manifesto at that time, there was commitment to NATO. There were good people around that shadow cabinet that would, it's not a presidential election. We knew that Jeremy had weaknesses. I, you know, publicly I said that I didn't think Jeremy was a good leader because he couldn't make decisions. He was all over the place.

You know, I like someone who, I might not agree with you, but make a decision and stick with it and then stick with the principles of why you're making that decision. So, but we were a party that was dysfunctional because not everyone was trying to get us into government at that time. But for me, I've seen Labour governments and I've seen Labour leaders and I might not have agreeing with everything

that Tony Blair did as leader. Why not? Because I don't. Don't answer that, don't. Because I don't. But the thing is that it really made a big difference to people's lives, people that needed opportunity that needed that hope.

People like me in 97 who had a young baby who had government ministers at that time saying I got pregnant because I wanted a council house. I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing to say and feeling scared, feeling like, where's my life going? And then having a government that were saying, actually, I'm going to, if you work hard, if you do this, I'm going to give you an opportunity. You can go into education again. Yes, she failed your GCSEs because I was looking after my mum and I had other issues.

It wasn't because I was thick and I couldn't do it. Okay, we'll give you a second chance at going to college for free. We'll give you opportunity. So it was a government that was really listening to and understanding the challenges I face, but then putting solutions forward. So that's why I felt in those years that yeah, I needed to be in government and I still to this day, I'm eight years I've been on the front bench, eight years. And in all those eight years, there's only been one time that I've really felt and made a difference. And that was when I worked with Justin Greening on the sex and relationship education in schools. But other than that, I feel like not made much of a difference at all. Can I lean into that for a little bit? Because I often felt very frustrated.

Can you sort of explain to listeners why it can often feel very frustrating? Because from the point of view of the story that voters are told is here are these members of parliament, the shadowed cabinet, these are very powerful people that, but actually often members of parliament feel quite powerless. And you can, eight years can pass and you feel, just talk, talk that through a little bit. I mean, it's not particularly a political party point, but just the experience being an MPM and why it can be frustrating. Well, I've heard what you said about that. And there is part of that, you know, you've got the whip, you've got there, but I don't know what other solution there is to that, because I do believe you have to have some discipline. This is why I think

the Conservatives are in real trouble at the moment because there isn't any discipline at all. And they're actually the government, which makes it even more scary than the opposition being in that situation. But you've got to get people, and I suppose this is why I've been more successful in Parliament in the years, I've been there. Is chaos is something that I've got used to. That's my life. That's my childhood. So it was like, okay, this is wild, but that's what I'm used to. And then it's about building bridges and about crossing people's dividing lines and finding us a way of getting people.

And politics, a lot of people think it's about legislation and bills, but it's not. It's about people. It's about understanding an argument, and it's about trying to convince others of your argument and then working ways around how you can get there. Listen, you mentioned your childhood there. Let's just focus on that for a bit, because it is a, you know, people like to say, all MPs are all the same. They all come from the same sort of backgrounds, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And there were you. First of all, tell us about your dad and your mum. Well, my mum and dad, I mean, my mum had bipolar, and my mum I called it a learning deprivation because my mum never went to school she was one of 12 on Wivenshaw Council Estate,

the biggest councillor estate we had and she said, I followed the fare. That was my mum's assessment of her childhood. And her parents have been doing what? Her parents, they didn't work. So it was, you know, I remember going to the local social club

every Sunday with them and the lads would smoke in one room and the girls would play bingo in the other and we'd wait for the fish man to come with the prawns and we'd have some of them for 50p and that was every Sunday night but my mum never really never really had a belief in herself so my mum had this learning deprivation she couldn't read all right and because she'd

never been to school she'd never been to school not she never really went so she couldn't read all right she had this learning deprivation and all my mum wanted to do was just can I just interrupt quickly yeah sure how common is that today for people to actually manage to avoid going to school completely I think I think it still is common and I think at least when I was at school and I I lost my belief in education probably about the age 12, 13 because I started, I was quite feral. And the outside world was much more interesting to me than school ever was. Because I was already behind because my mum couldn't read a right. So I hadn't seen a book.

So when I went into school, no books at home. No books at home, no. So when I went into school, I was already behind my peers. And then as you step up into secondary school, it gets a lot harder. And I was already just about keeping up because I was behind everybody anyway. And homework wasn't a thing in our house. My one couldn't help me. My dad wasn't.

He was out. So, yeah, so when I got to secondary school, things outside of the classroom had more of an impact on me, whether it was things that I found more interesting or crises at home. So I was already behind. The one important thing about my childhood is my teachers and my school kept me in school as long as they could. They kept me safe.

I was on the books. Today, those kids, if you can't get your teenager into school, they're off-road. The school will come down on the moment. and say you either homeschool them or you're going to be fined or you're going to have this. So these kids are dropping out of the system now earlier than before. And just tell me about your mum's bipolar disorder. How did you perceive that as a child?

And what was her life like? What's her life like now? And what do you think the impact on you has been? I think when I was growing up, I was really angry because the house was dirty. I didn't get the support that my friends did. You know, my mum couldn't cook. I used to go around my friend's houses to ask for something. dinner. Like, can you ask your mum and daddy if I could stay for dinner? And they'd say you can't stay

today. You stayed yesterday. And you'd sit on the curb outside and wait for them to come back out and play out. I was really angry at my mum. Because I just thought, brothers and sisters. Yeah, I got two siblings. But I was the eldest daughter. So Q in my household, it fell on me to look after my mum and to be around and do as much as I could. But I was really angry with my mum because I felt like I saw other people's moms. And I thought, why is my mum not like that? Why doesn't she do these things? And I thought my mum was incredibly lazy and selfish. And I didn't really understand how mental health could really debilitate people. And now I look at my mum. And I think she's an absolute hero because I've never been in despair at that point. I've never been.

And I don't think it's something that you can rationally do. But I've always tried to have my own resilience to never get to that point because I've seen where people go when they get there. And it's not nice and it's awful for somebody to get there. But for my mum, mum to, with her challenges for my mum to dig herself out of that place time and time again, I think that's heroic now, but at the time I didn't see that as a child. And did she have the ups as well as the downs and were they both as bad for you? Yeah, I mean, my mum would have said it at the time and she still says it. She said, I could only love one person and that was your dad.

So if my dad was being nice, then my mum was happy. If my dad was out, then my mum was miserable. A whole life revolved around my dad. Tell us about your dad. He was just what I would describe as typical. I would say working class, but he didn't really work that much when we were growing up. But he'd be out, you know, he'd be out in his car.

He'd did the C-Bs. And remember in those days? Everyone had CB radios and all of that. So he'd be out doing that. Citizen Band Radio. The young producers say, what's the thing? None of them have an idea. I mean, luckily, your listeners probably.

We've got a lot of young listeners out of them. We've got a lot of young listeners. They might know what we're talking about. I'm sure in my age now as well. But yeah, my dad used to be on the CBs and he'd be out. It was just a thing. He'd be out. And we wouldn't really, it wasn't, it wasn't my dad's responsibility to look after us.

Tell us what you do on Citizen Band Radio. What's he doing? He's just calling other people. Yeah, so they'd go up to like a hill. Yeah. They'd have, in the car, they'd have like these aerials. He had home aerial kits as well, but they'd have these aerials. And then they'd channel 19 as anyone could speak to anyone.

and then you'd move it to another channel and they all had nicknames. But it's like an early form of social media. Yeah, it really is. Exactly what it was. Yeah, exactly, yeah. I can't believe you. Maybe you are.

But you're younger than his. You're younger than me, yeah. Yeah, it wasn't just a class thing. CB radio wasn't it? It was like a, it was a phase, wasn't it? It was a real, yeah, it was like a fashionable thing to do for a while for a number of years. So where are your mom and dad now? So my dad's in Bolton.

And my mum's in Stockport in Haysel Grove. She's in supported tenancy. So she's got her own little flat and she's got a communal area and they all look after her and she's very happy there. And how old is she now? My mum, she's about 65 now.

So she's younger than me? And in retrospect, should she have been supported much earlier? Oh, if she'd have got, if there'd have been support for her much earlier interventions, then I reckon my mum would have had a much different life. That's why I go on and on about Shulstar

and I'm not making a political point. Go on. But sure start, right, my mum couldn't hug us. My dad was my mum's world and universe because she was brought up to think, you're nothing without a man, okay? So everything in my mum's life revolved around this one individual, and that's all she wanted to achieve in life. We were byproducts of my mum's relationship with my dad.

She had no loving her life. She didn't get cuddles. She didn't know what healthy relationships was, and she didn't know how to be a parent. I grew up in that environment, looking for loving all the wrong places, not having any self-worth for myself and not making good choices.

It was the 90s, early 90s. This was a dangerous time for girls like me off council estates. I could have got myself into serious trouble. But however, when I had my son, it was sure start going there, realizing I didn't cuddle my child. I didn't spend any...

I changed his nappy. I put him to bed. But I didn't give that emotional support because I didn't realize I didn't have that. It was, it sounds silly to say it, but my ex-husband, when I see him with the children, they jump all over him. He's so loving and it's just so natural to him. I had to learn how to accept my kids jumping on me and giving me a cuddle because I'd recoil it, be like, it's too much. Even now, I saw my brother last Sunday and I gave his, I gave his partner a cuddle,

and we both looked at each of them, was like, nah, because we just don't do it. And was there ever any risk when you were growing up that you would have been taken away from your mother that people would have put you in care because of what she were describing. There could have been a risk of it if it wasn't for my nana. Right. So my nana worked three jobs and we used to go to Minan's on a Sunday and she'd make us taty ash, potato ash. It's great, great dish with dead fresh bread, which we'd never had at home because there's

no bread ever at home. So we used to just like... And your mother's mother? That's my dad's mum. She used to look after us and we go there. So we have our weekly bath. So we have our weekly bath, Ran Carter, Brother Thirst, me and my sister and then my mum in the same bath water and then my nann had out of a twin tub and she'd do our washing for us and

wash our uniforms and we'd have our food there and then we'd walk walk home the two miles from my nans and a Sunday evening freezing cold sometimes to get back would if your mom was listening to this conversation now how would she feel about what you've said I think my mom my mom recognizes like our childhood and she's quite angry now because she she's more understanding of how debilitating her obsession was with being a wife and being in love with my dad to the point where she wasn't resourceful to have her own resilience to make her own decisions. And I think she looks back on it with some regret. But she's also incredibly proud of all three of us because my brother and my sister and me, we're all, you know, doing well. We're all successful in our

own field and we're all incredibly good people. What's your brother and sister doing? So my brother served in Iraq and he used to be a die engineer before that on his old YT scheme and now he does like building maintenance security so he manages a big building and my sister she's part-time mum and

part-time working at a company parcel company and she used to work in banking and then she got had babies and then she took time out to have their children. Your story is unbelievable obviously

and often when you talk to people with these incredible stories, you hear them saying that they had very, very fierce ambitions or dreams in their early teams. But I'm not necessarily picking that up with you. It wasn't particularly that when you were... My only dream in my teens was to learn how to drive legally so that I could be of the freedom. Because I can fix cars as well. So I could do, I'm not a qualified mechanic, but I can fix cars. And when did you begin to develop the ambitions to be a politician? I never had an ambition to be a politician.

In fact, it was quite an adjustment for me because I went from my home help who had rose through the ranks of the union to look after collectively the home carers, which were all paid very poorly, but very well respected and loved to be paid very well to everybody thinking, I'm a crock and how dare you,

you're just doing it for yourself. I was like, wow, this is quite a change. It was a torture term gamekeeper, if there is ever one. Just sticking with your family life for a bit though So you were a mum at 16 Yeah And then you had another relationship Two boys

One of whom is quite severely disabled Yeah he was born at 23 weeks Yeah We're in less than a pound He was 465 grams So he's like one of the tiniest That has ever survived And he's blind

He's registered severely short-sighted blind, Jace He's a little tiny bit but not much Yeah And he has I can never say it the dyslexia for numbers. I can never discalculous, whatever it is. Yeah.

He has epilepsy as well. Right. So that's tough. Yeah, but he's such a ray of sunshine. I always say my child, he's a kid, everyone thinks he's going to get.

Really? Yeah, because he's so adorable, like nothing ever phases. I remember him coming out at nursery, and he's running to get to me. He was so tiny, and he looked so, you know, like the Milky Bar kick,

because he had these massive, huge glasses on from about the age of six months, and he looks, because Prem babies, always look a bit mangy like they need a dinner. So he's all like with his big glasses on and he's like waddling to me. And the pavement dips because you know I get the dips in the pavement. Obviously he can't see it and he goes flying and he literally scrapes his face along before. I'm in tears. I'm in floods. I'm like, oh my God, Charlie. And he's like,

Mommy, I'm okay. And he's stroking my face as he's got gravel and his glasses are all scraped. He's stroking my face. And that's Charlie. He's such an adorable. He's doing his GCSEs this year. he's absolutely worried sick about them and I'm like son I've set the bar low in the family I'm trying to reassure him anything better than zero is good I'm like I'm trying to reassure him but he's really you know and I think a lot of young people

today are like that they're on this treadmill off if you don't succeed there then you're not going to be successful and I can see the pressure that's on young people today and my child is one of them but he's like he's breathing he's achieving the doctor's told me four times they wanted to switch the machine off they said there's no hope for him and he's 15 walking down

talking, having the best time of his life. That's great. That's great. And listen, just about your, I suppose you said you didn't want to become a politician, expect to become a politician. So was it the trade union route that led you in that direction? And how did you get on that route? Yeah, well, the trade union route wasn't one that I knew about either. So I worked in the private sector as a home carer because he'd just about have anyone at the time. And I wanted to work nights because my nan said she'd look after Ryan when he was a baby after she finished work and that's the night shift and I wanted to work because I really did not want people to think

I was what they expected of me so I had this real sense of needing to get out and do the work they being the people that said you've got a pregnant to get a girl to that type people like that there was this you know people like me we were considered like right-offs and I really didn't want to be that I wanted to prove I could be a good mum and part of being a good mom for me was providing for my child. Talks about this sense of being right off. Was this something that you picked up from who? From social workers, from television.

It was through everything. From the moment I went into school, it was steeped in everything. Teachers were people that told you what to do. They weren't people like you. Police were people that kept you, either kept you out of trouble or, you know, were around to sort you out. You were not police. Social workers were not people like you.

It wasn't people that just said they're not people like you. It was the whole system put you in your place right from the. And they still do try to put me in my place. You watch my timeline and you'll see. There is people that will still say, yeah, Andrew's all right, but she's a bit thick. How can I be thick and be one of the most successful politicians in the UK? How can I survive? You've been in that environment, Rory.

You've been in that environment. How can I survive eight years as I have if I was stupid and, you know, couldn't understand. And do you think this is a class thing? Yes. And where have you felt that most? In the Labour Party, in the unions or in Parliament? I think I felt it throughout, and I only understand it more now.

Like, I didn't see myself as a feminist before. I used to hate all women shortlist because I thought, I'm as good as any man. But the truth is, there is unconscious bias in our society that does that. We do. I do. I do. If I saw a group of lads with a hoodie, on and I'm walking past them at 10pm at night, I'm probably going to feel slightly more apprehensive

than I would have saw a little old granny with a little wheelie chair going past me at 9, 10 o'clock at night. I'm sorry, it's just an unconscious bias. It's not fair, but, and I think we've still got those in society today. So I have to constantly feel like I have to prove myself in any environment, I've been in whether that it's a union movement or whether that's in Parliament. Take us back to the unions. So how did you first hear about the unions? And then there's an amazing Guardian profile of you.

as a union official. That's right. Yeah, 2012, maybe. Yeah, 2011 it was. Yeah, yeah. So tell us about the journey to that and then describe a little bit what the Guardian's describing if your daily work as a union official, what you were actually doing day and day out.

Well, it's kind of the same as what no one's ever sort of gifted me where I've got to. I've always been elected and I've always had to prove myself. No one's ever said, I'm going to appoint you to that job. I've always kind of, like I say, as I was saying, I became a home help because nobody wanted to do the night shift. the private sector, they'd take just about anyone on. So I was there for a while. And then some of the girls I was working with said,

oh, the council are employing people. And if you work for the council, you get a proper contract because I was casual, zero hour in them days. And then you get sick pay and you get your travel time paid for. So I, as my ex-boss who I'm still in touch with affectionately says, I was the last home up in Stockport Council. So I got in there. And that's how I got involved in the union,

because no sooner had I been employed to work in the council, they wanted to outsource the home care service. And I'm like, I've just come from the private sector. It's terrible. Why would you want to do that? So I started speaking up in this meeting. And some of the girls I always said, you need to be our union rep.

And I'm like, what's the trade union? And I literally became the union rep overnight. You honestly didn't know what the trade unions were. I honestly did not know what a trade union was. You weren't a Labour Party house that talked endlessly about the minor strike. I really didn't. No, no. I didn't know anything about it.

The most left wing we got in our houses, my dad used to religiously buy the Daily Mirror. Good on him. Right. That's the only thing, but that's as far as it went. It was straight to the back page. It was straight, yeah, probably to the back page, yeah, and cutting out the free ticket to Calais. And we'd go over there, and that was the family holiday.

But, yeah, so I went into the, I became a union rep, and then realized that the union isn't all it cracks up to be at times either, because I'm like, right, we're going to fight this. We need to do this. what help you're going to give us to the brand secretary? And they were a bit like, well, I'd you? We don't do it like. And that's a good impression of Jimmy at the time,

our brand secretary. So I became a bit of a nuisance, but it was really funny because I'd only been a union rep about six weeks, but I was a young member, right? So I was a young female member. And in unison at the time, for your full delegation to go to conference, you had to have two females out of the five

and one had to be a young member. Otherwise, the guys couldn't go. So I went into the office and Jim's like, right, yeah, kid, I've got a holiday for you. I'm like, an holiday. He's like, I'm going to take you to Barmouth and pay your 40 quid a day. And all you have to do is sit in this room for a couple of hours.

So I came out of it and I went to the branch chair at the time. I actually thought he was trying to like have sex with me or something. I was really worried that this guy was trying to take me on a free holiday so he could have his wicked way with me and pay me. I'm like, I'm not that sort of person. And the branch chair had to explain to me no, he's just at our quotas. in terms of like representation that he just needed you there for that reason. Trade Union Conference or Labour Party Conference?

For Trade Union Conference, yeah. And the Trade Union Conference to this day is, I mean, I know we've got some amazing women leaders of the unions now, but it's still a pretty masculine environment. It can be, yeah, it can be, yeah. We have got, we've got Christina McAiloh, and you've got Sharon, Graham in Unite. So the two big unions are now led by women, which is really fantastic.

But yeah, that first conference was a real eye-opener. But it only went because it's a free holiday, and he was like, he's like, you've got a crash for your kid. 40 quid a day, and so you don't have to pay any spending money. And what about Parliament? How have you found Parliament as an institution being a working class woman? Yeah, that's even more wild. So it goes in there and it can be quite seductive because there's, oh, mom, people open doors for you.

There's a status, you know, it's like, oh, this is a right, horrible, oh, hello. And then like, even on the front bench where you sit, there's a status in that. Even I've got a three-seater sofa. Like Rory knows, three-seater sofas in Parliament, it's real estate. It's real estate. You also became a shadow cabinet minister, the shadow secretary of state for education, a year after you got into Parliament. That's right. I did pensions before then.

I was in the WIPPS office and unfortunately two that I was whipping within a couple of months died. We had Gerald Kaufman and Michael Meacher. So the Wips decided that I'm probably not right for the WIP's office. They've had enough by-elections. But nobody's... ever been promoted at that speed. It's unbelievable, isn't it? No, but we were in a particularly chaotic. And the thing is for me, I wasn't a carbonite. For me, it was about service. It was about, you know, you're here to do a job and I've been given an opportunity. It was really scary for me

because I'm like, I've been here five minutes and I've got shadow pensions. And I got shadowed pensions when we had the Blake review, massive big 800 pages, a single-tier state pension, Tata Steel and one of the other BHS, I think it was pension schemes. went down and the whole argument around DB or DC pension funds. So I took it on when there was so much going on. Then there was moved to education and then we had the biggest reforms to education. And just to explain to listen, so you're coming and you've been in Parliament a year and suddenly you are a shadow cabinet minister. You're managing your own team of junior ministers. No correction. We didn't have any ministers either. We had no staff and no ministers.

The only one I had was Gordon Marsden, bless his little cotton socks. And there were no ministers because they were all refusing to serve under Corbyn. Yeah, and then everyone was throwing Westminster Hall debates and everything to make us cruel. I remember I had to do... So again and again and again, you were at the dispatch box in Parliament. And you were taking on the Tory Education Secretary and all the Tory junior ministers. Who's pensions for the Tories then? Oh, they had a couple different ones.

I can't even remember. They had quite a few different ones. Were you against Goval, Education? No, Gover. Gone by then. But I went through four or five education secretaries as well in my time because I was shadow education for four years. But I remember the first debate under Corbyn with the Tories and they obviously were jubilant because they could see the chaos that was gone. I had no barely any staff. Presumably you would have been under a lot of pressure from colleagues if they were all choosing to scotch their careers and refuse these shadow cabinet positions.

Yeah, it wasn't a pretty time. And they're refusing to be junior ministers and they must have been angry with you. They must have been like, we're all boycotting Corby. and some of them must have felt I mean the parliamentary Labor Party meeting on the Monday night was not a nice place. It was like a bear pit. And they would have been angry with you because they would have felt, many of them would have felt, I could have been shadow secretary of education. I refused to take it because I was trying to take down Corbyn.

And now we've been undermined by you. But I respected their position. But I also was quite frustrated myself because I'd just come in. And it's like, look, people have put their trust in us. You've got a conservative government which are trying to do terrible things. and you're meant to be the opposition. So I wasn't about, I don't care who the leader is. It was about people needed to see that we're fighting for them,

not fighting with each other, but fighting for them. But the reason this resonates with me is that that's the defense that my colleagues make. I refuse to serve in Boris Johnson's cabinet, and I was very, very angry when other people were prepared to serve. And of course, people like Ben Wallace would say, oh yeah, yeah, but, you know, somebody's got to be the defense secretary. And to be fair, Ben did a good job. I'm glad he did, because at least he was there. I think Boris Johnson, and you could see that through the COVID inquiries, you were also correct, he was not the right person to be Prime Minister.

But Ben got in there and stared us through some very difficult times and did it, I think, reasonably well. I remember I had a problem in my constituency. Ben came down. He's like, he's never going to get anywhere near my Ashland underlying seat at the time. It wasn't an election mode. He came down because he believed in getting rid of time. tackling the criminals who were making people's lives, hell in my constituency, and I dragged him down and he was there.

When he was the security minister. Yeah, yeah, under Theresa May. Yeah. And you've sort of given a sense of the dysfunction at that time, but what was shadow cabinet like with Jeremy as leader? It was, I mean, I might as well, I might as well have just added in this room with all the microphones on, or at least then you could have put your own spin on it, or at least have had it in your own sort of, your own language. Because the stuff that came out of it, some of it was spun. You'd be impressed with this spinney pot on some of it. Believe me, I wasn't. So I'm not just talking about Jeremy's team. I'd talk about everybody. It was, it was dysfunctional.

It was dysfunctional. I mean, I was in Theresa May's cabinet. And you might as well have the microphones on there too, because every single thing, suddenly Liz Truss and Gavin Williamson were being quoted in the newspapers. And you can't function like that. You can't. And that's the difference now is that we were in opposition. And it was bad enough in opposition. As people said to me, you gave us Boris Johnson because they couldn't see us as a government. The challenge we've got now is we've got this level of dysfunction at the heart of government and I've had that for a long time. So you support, in terms of care, seeming to want real discipline, you're up, you're totally on board for that. Yeah, I think we do have to have discipline,

yeah, we do. And do you, we had a question on our question time episode this year. But I was disciplined when Jeremy was leader. Yeah, yeah. And I believed in that as well. Yeah. We had a question last week on our question time program, which was, is Labor still Labor? Now, I said yes, but it was interesting that question was asked. Are you at all worried that in trying to win over the people that Labor needs to win over, that Keir's maybe trying to push you a bit too far towards the centre? I'll always have my arguments behind the scenes about what I believe in and what I want, but as I said before, I've never really got everything I want. I'm a trade unionist at my heart, you know, I try and get the best I can get and ring fence what I'm up to and

make the difference. But you have to be realistic about what you're able to do. And I think what Kier's trying to explain as well is, look, the situation, if we were lucky enough to win the next general election, the situation we're going to be in, we're not going to be able to do everything that makes us all warm and cuddly inside because we don't have it. A classic example of this was when, you know, everyone was up in arms and was like, everyone was desperate to speak to me when Kier says we're not going to do free school meals for our kids, because obviously I was a free school meal kid. And everyone's like, Angie, you must be opposed to this. And I was like, but we're bringing in breakfast clubs because that's what we could afford. And we also knew that would

make the biggest impact. So it's not as binary as that. People like to think that you choose one thing there and it indicates that you're right wing on that or you're this. It's not as binary as that. It's about realistically being able to make a difference and challenge the fact that in government, you can't do everything you want to do. And in the constraints, of what we're going to inherit, we're not going to be able to do everything we want to do, but that we can do things better and do different things. Alisa was saying when we were chatting yesterday that of the two big issues which have been talked about in the last couple of weeks, which is Gaza and Kier-Sommer's comments about

Margaret Thatcher, the more difficult thing is Gaza, that in the end, you know, he can make comments about Margaret Thatcher and Sunday Telegraph. That's not really going to have an impact, but Gaza is a real thing. Do you agree that Gaza is more important than Margaret Thatcher? And difficult for the party? Yeah, because Gaza, you can see, like, you can see what's happening there. And everybody, everybody can see the destruction. They saw what happened on the 7th of October.

They're seeing the humanitarian crisis that's unfolding. And everyone's desperate to stop. They can see it on their screen. Everyone's desperate to see that end. And that outpouring is it's an emotional connection to what's happening there and completely understand that as a mother and her grandmother. I completely get that. And you joined the Labour Friends of Palestine, didn't you?

So that was a cause that. Yeah, I used to. I was a regional convener for the next. northwest of unison and we used to put lots of money into the Palestinian cause. And I still support the Palestinian cause and I still want to see recognition for the Palestinian state. But in the context of where we are, what Keir is trying to do in his limited way as the leader of the opposition is to get to a situation where those hostages, that people understood what happened on the 7th, that people really understood what happened to Israel on the 7th of October,

that people were butchered, murdered, raped, slaughtered, over 200 hostages taken, rockets still being fired into Israel at the same time as seeing what's happening to the Palestinian people. And he wanted to get to a position internationally and working with our government, so we spoke with one voice, to get to a situation where we could stop the violence. We could deal with Hamas, because they cannot be allowed to continue to threaten Israel. people in Hamas have said they want to wipe Israel off the face of the map. That's never been Labour Party policy. We of course want to see a Palestinian state.

But Israel has to be recognised absolutely like Britain is, like Germany is. It's a state. It's there. And it has a right to be safe and secure. But the Palestinians do as well. So there has to be a long-term political solution to it. And Keir was trying to navigate his way through that to get the violence to stop, to the recognition of what the horrific situation.

that happened on the seventh, to get to a situation where the Palestinians are protected as part of that process, but also in his chatter-a-mouse speech, which I thought was incredibly important, was about the political steps to not pay lip service, because everyone says, well, we want a two-state solution, but actually challenge what's been happening on the West Bank, challenge the occupied territories, and also make sure that we challenge where Israel have been having rockets fired at it, and that's been happening time and time again, and also find that peaceful solution. where we recognise the Palestinian state. That's what people deserve in that region. I love the way you can be disciplined with Jeremy and now discipline with Keir, because I think you're right, you've got to be disciplined, particularly if you're in government.

But I just wondered, your relationship with Keir, which is important, it did seem to have a wobble around the time of the aftermath of the Hartlepool by-election was all the talk about the real shopper. That's when I found out

I've been moved by press. Exactly, yeah. And you weren't having that. Well, it was just disrespectful if nothing else. Move by press means Instead of calling you and telling you, you suddenly found out in a newspaper headline. Yeah, I think it was more that time ran away with care. And he didn't get chance to tell me before my team had a press inquiry about why I was moving.

So it wasn't the nicest moment of mine and kids. But we came out of it stronger. We both came out of it stronger, actually, because you know, you've worked with people before. You have your, hey, hang on, this is, here's our lines. You cross one. And then it's like, right, well, how do we work? can constructively make sure that we don't get in that position again. And since then, me and Kira have had a very healthy respect for each other.

And do you see the sort of Tony, John Prescott, parallels? I'm kind of John Prescottie and Barbara Castley and a bit of everything in between. I think even just kind of describing yourself as giants of our movement is pretty awesome to me. But I just try and do my best. I just try and do, like people have put a lot of trust in me to be a politician and to be a working class female politician from the north. I feel a real sense of obligation to not screw it up, to prove to people that girls from my background are intelligent and can achieve things. We can roll our sleeves up in any environment, including male dominated environments and we can get things done.

And that's what my focus has been and that's what I continue to focus on is like, no, I want, you know, if we're lucky enough to get into government and nobody thought me and Keir could turn things around. And I accept the Tories have helped us significantly in that. But nobody thought we could turn the party and change the party in the way that we have. We've got a real opportunity to make real change in the country. And if we get that opportunity, I want in five years time for people to say, yeah, look, she's proven she could do this. Okay, quick break. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, cancer research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung Vax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on Tracer X, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the disease's earliest warning signs. Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying 40 cells before cancer develops. So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year, focusing on

people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancercheuk dot org forward slash the rest is science. Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samark here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own.

So right now we're living through a moment. when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all.

So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm discussing. describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history. We'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about. We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. And we'll be talking about one of the the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand,

as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. Can I sort of get something which sort of feels a bit more personal to me, which is that, I mean, I think you're come across face to face as a very, very warm, sympathetic person. But in public, for someone like me, I really felt, you know, even as a voter, let alone as a member, I wouldn't really be welcome in your kind of Labour Party. So, I mean, why's that? Well, you know, you cannot get any worse than a bunch of scum, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, absolute pile of banana republic, etonian piece of scum, right? Yeah. Do you want me to, I'll explain that. That was, because they said I called Tories that I didn't.

I was fuming Boris Johnson, our prime minister, who had made the most appalling comments, racist, misogynistic, homophobic comments. And I'm like, hang on. If I did that as a home help on minimum wage, I'd never work in the care sector again. That's my prime minister. How can you look down on people like me who would never ever say anything like that, let alone think it?

If you said that, the stuff that Boris Johnson has said in my local boozer, you'd be thrown out. You wouldn't get to the bar. You won't get anywhere near it. So we've got a prime minister who thinks he's a posh boy who looks down on people like me who thinks he can get away with saying things like that. So I expressed it in the wrong term amongst comrades. But I was fuming because this guy was sanctioning people for benefits, telling people who were in food banks that they need to work a little bit hard.

like literally criminalising people who shoplift, they put like tags on baby food. They put tags on women's maternity bras because people can't afford them. You don't go robbing maternity bras. These are essential items that people needed. Yes, they shouldn't go shoplifting, but no realisation about the difficulties

that working class people face and the pride that they have. They don't want to ask for things when they've got to get a handout. People don't like that. It's humiliating. But he was going out, making those comments and I said, I said, I will apologise

and it was him I was calling out in his cabinet who was accepting it. I said, I will apologise and I did in the end because I didn't want people to abuse Tories because that was not my intention. I wanted to call out Boris Johnson in the hypocrisy. I said, I debate him and he can apologise and I'll apologise

for my comments and we could have a full-on debate about why he thinks it's acceptable to make the comments he made and then call me out for calling him scum for it. Would you welcome Rory and the destroy into the late-majorie. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I still have constructive conversations and relationships, friendships, friendships with Conservative MPs to this day. I just mentioned before, Justin Greeney, me and her work really hard on sex and relationship education bill. Joe Johnson,

he's Boris Johnson's brother. I get on extremely well with Joe Johnson. I still do to this day. We opened up an arts college together the other week. So it was not conservatives that I had a problem It was with those people who looked down on working class people who makes comments that, quite frankly, you'd be arrested for in the street making those comments. And he was our Prime Minister. It's like the hypocrisy just stunk to me. So Rory, that way you feel better? I'm not sure.

It does sound like. I mean, look, I detest Boris Johnson. He's a terrible human being and all that kind of stuff. But I wonder... Was it the scum word you didn't like? Because the rest of it seems to be perfectly fair. You know, we talk a lot about polarisation and populism and antagonism and populism. politics. And clearly Kiyazama seems to be trying to lead a movement, which is trying to be

welcoming of people who would have voted conservative in the past. And I wonder whether this kind of, I understand your anger. I understand your language. But it doesn't emotionally come across to me as great, this is a party I want to join. I'm going to feel at home. She's going to welcome me in. It feels like anger. Yeah. Well, maybe I need to work on that a little bit more because you would be welcome in the Labour Party. And, you know, I've always had people, these people in my family are not my family are not left wing. You know, I used to talk about it. You go to a family do and you have to convince the one, you know, that leans a little bit eukipy. You have to have that conversations with him. I used to say this at fundraisers because I recognise that

that people have different views. But where I mark the distinction was... Just sorry, I'm being really unfair. Yeah. But obviously from my point of view, leaning a bit eucopy is kind of offensive to me. Is it? Yeah, trying to win over a centrist voter like me. I don't want to be characterise to somebody who's leaning a bit of eucopy. I think that's the point. It doesn't come from a Labour tribe. Yeah. It's like those people who have very different views on issues that I have. What do you think my views are? Well, I'm not saying you're leaning a little bit UKIPI.

I'm saying that's what I used to say. The analogy was people in my family who have very different views politically than I do. But let me give you the opportunity. What do you think the views of a left-wing conservative are, a centrist conservative? What do you think we think about the world? Okay. I think you think that people should be able to get on. I think you think people should be able to go to university

and do the things they want to do. I think you care about the environment. I think they care about animal rights in particular. I think they want to see a public state that looks after people when they need it but isn't overly utilised and isn't overly burdensome. And they want to see, you know, people have lower taxes. And I say the biggest analogy, I would say,

the differences is that they believe that people can get on by themselves and should have the rewards of their own success and wealth, whereas I actually have a different view on that, because I think some people, I've been quite lucky. I've had help and assistance, but also I don't blame other people for their misfortune if they've not been as fortunate. So I would say that's the big distinction between me and a more moderate conservative is it's not people's own success to why they get to where they are necessarily. Yes, there is a bit of that. But actually, I also think that you also need to have a little bit of luck in there

and you also have a bit of society and you've got to pay that back. That's the difference, I would say. Strangely, on that second thing, I very much believe it's about luck. It's more the right wing of the Conservative Party who thinks, you know, get on your bike, Teb it. I mean, I'm very much come from a tradition that believes that a lot is to do with luck. I don't think that when people are well off, it's because they've just deserve it or they've worked harder. I think that's more the right of the Conservative Party.

So if Labour do, when you become Deputy Prime Minister, and God forbid, Keir fell under a bus, do you think you could step up to the top job? Absolutely. Yeah, I work closely with Keir now. Absolutely. Because I can make decisions and I can look at evidence. I don't think I know everything.

That's the big difference. And there's some people that go into those jobs, and I think Keir's very similar to me like that. He will always look at the evidence, frustratingly so for some people, because, you know, people think that I, look at it from a purely sort of emotional sense. It's not true. I feel the great sense. I understand where my emotions come from and why I'm hungry for it, but I feel a great sense of responsibility to do

my homework because of I didn't have a formal education because of my background. So I do my homework. Whenever I've come to a position and I've led the front bench and the opposition in those fields, it's because I've done my homework and I've made a decision based upon what I believe to be the facts and also what I believe to be the right thing to do. And I've worked in a consensual way to get there and I've not been arrogant to think I know better than everybody else in the room. And I think you've seen through the COVID inquiry

the dangers of where you get to regardless of people's academia of our background of arrogance when people think they know better than other people. One of the things you do very, very powerfully and which is very important, is speaking for a part of society that's often ignored people like your mother. But there are other bits of society

which politics ignores, in particular, for example, prisoners. And I feel the public don't think enough about prisons. It doesn't matter enough in votes. But our prisons are horribly overcrowded. Both parties seem to be in a competition for ever longer prison sentences, locking people up more. And frankly, we don't have the room. They're built for about 65,000 people. They've got about 85,000 in them.

If you continue down the route, the Conservatives of Labor going down, you end up with 120,000 prisoners and nowhere to put them. When are we going to hear Labour speak compassionately for conditions for prisoners? And above all, be practical about reducing sentence lengths so we don't end up with these overcatting. I recognise why the disproportionate amount of people from different backgrounds that end up in prison and why and how they end up there. And you've got to have a preventative approach because, you know, I talk about when I had my son at 16, you changed my life because they had someone to look after and they had someone to be responsible for because I had no self-worth. So I could have got myself into a lot of trouble when I was younger. I could have chose a different path.

I was already leading that way, as I alluded to. There was things outside the school that I find far more interested. So I was going nightclubs at 14 and getting mixed in with the wrong crowd. And it was quite dangerous. I could have been in a very different place. There, but for the grace of God, I ended up in a different place and took a different path. But the challenge we've got in the criminal justice system at the moment, far too often. There's people in the criminal justice system that have not been given an opportunity.

opportunity to get, whether they've got mental health problems or whether it's poverty or whether it's substance abuse. There is a lot of people in our prisons at the moment that, quite frankly, shouldn't be there. And the only thing that happens when they're going to prison is they become more acute at being a criminal. It doesn't actually solve the problem. I agree so strongly. And 35% of prisoners have been in care, 40% have been excluded from school. As you say, biggest use of mental health, biggest use with poverty. But all I'm hearing at the moment from the Labor Party, is being ferociously tough on crime, putting out staff saying, do you think that people who sex the assault children should go to prison?

Rishi Sunak doesn't under Labour, 1,600 more people would go to jail. I mean, that is the most serious of crimes, and this is, pardon the pun, our crime at the moment, that the government are going to release people early. Because our prisons are completely overcrowded. And they're overcrowded with the wrong, bear I say, the wrong type of prisoner. How are you going to sort that out? First of all, you've got to sort out the system at the moment, which are crumbling public services that are.

are locking, off-rolling the kids that are locking people out of the system from a very young age and therefore you're storing up the problems all the way along. You've got to have a good thriving public service. You've got to have jobs that people could go into an opportunity. That's a five, 10-year solution. But the problem you're going to face next year is prison's crowded the bursting. And if you go around endlessly asking for longer sentences, not letting people out, you're going to end up with far too many people in the system. Now, you may over 10, 20 years be able to address the root causes of crime and address it from early childhood, but that's not going to deal with your problem on a year. There's other ways to deal with some crime. There is other ways to work within the

system. Our probation service, for example, our youth justice system, our youth services, our social work, all of these avenues at the moment are totally crumbling. So part of our resource plan, part of our looking at the whole approach to how we support communities is about trying to do some of that work. These people in prison that quite frankly are in there that could have been prevented. Now, I accept you can't do that overnight, except there is a challenge in that. But there is also a problem now where people who should be in prison are not in prison because the whole criminal justice system is completely crumbled after 13 years of the Conservatives. You see, the first part of that discussion was kind of music to our ears because we're both obsessed about prisons

and the state that they're in. And what I was, maybe this is wishful thinking, but why kind of hear, and sometimes I think this about Keir. Tell me if you agree with this kind of broad analysis that there's a possibility he will be far more radical in government than he has been thus far in opposition. Because I can't believe for a minute that Keir actually really thinks

that the criminal justice system can carry on as it is, that the prisons can carry on as they are, that the probation service doesn't have need massive investment, etc. But until he gets into power, by being fiscular responsible, by being serious grown up in a way that Johnson's never been, is kind of playing very, very, very safe. Well, it's also realistic about what we can do.

Kyr's been really clear that our number one priority is to grow the economy. We're not going to be able to fix all of our crumbling public services unless we grow the economy. Otherwise, we have to raise taxes, and we're not going to be raising the taxes. With tax burden on working people is the highest it's ever been for a generation. So the challenge for us is to grow the size of the growth strategy that we want in the UK so that we can afford our public services and reform. our public service as well. And that's what we've said because in a lot of these areas,

there is a real challenge around reforming what's happening there. It's, you know, we haven't got enough probation. We haven't got enough early intervention. So we're putting loads of resources at the far end which costs more money. You know, my mum, if my mum has a crisis, but there's no outreach. You can't get appointment with a doctor. She'll ring me. What happens? My mum ends up in A&E. She ends up needing acute care, costs loads money. Just give her some help when she's needed it and then it would have cost the state a lot less to do that. So you've got to be able to reform the system to get the intervention where it's needed the most and you do get payback from that. It takes a bit of a leap of faith as well because, you know, I did this in home care when I was

the union official in Stockport. We turned it around from a deficit budget to a surplus budget that we gave to learning disabilities because we were able to work in partnership to keep people out of hospital who were reoccurring offenders of going back into hospital because they didn't the home care. So we worked with GP commissioning units who funded and it took a leap of faith from them to fund through because it's a different public body to give us the funding and let us manage it and we kept people out of hospital. It saved so much money that we were able to give money back to the local authority. I agree. So it works. I agree. And it helps people when they need it the most. What about my question about whether you think it would be more radical

in government? I think he will be. I think he will be radical. But he's, you know, great British energy, you know, the green prosperity plan and the stuff I'm doing around New Deal for Working People, these are big reforms that will make a huge difference, the planning, planning reforms we're making so that I can build council and social housing that we know we desperately need in this country, new towns that we've announced we're going to be doing. These are big, huge reforms that will make a big, huge difference for our country. So I don't think he's lacking being radical. I think the mess that we're in at the moment means that you also have to be realistic, that you're not going to fix everything overnight. And what have you got to

to offer for your friends, colleagues in the trade union movement, if they were thinking about voting Labor, what will the trade union movement benefit from a Labour government? Well, my new deal for working people is once in a generation opportunity for us to really rebalance. Tell us about it. Tell us about the content. The context of it is that, you know, banning zero-hour contracts, rights from day one, overhauling sick pay. I mean, some conservative colleagues agree with me on these things, because you see the imbalance that we have at the moment. You know, fair pay agreements to really tackle and setting social care, which is one of the most challenging areas to do it, but I know it can be done, and that's why I've said it, to tackle the scourge of low pay in those

areas and terms and conditions and reform for training. So there is a huge package within that new deal for working people that will empower workers in the workplace who, at the moment, there is an imbalance. Now, the best employers understand that my new deal for working people is brilliant and they're on it, because it's good for business as well. It's good for our economy. There is poor employers out there who have poor practises towards their staff, and it is damaging people's lives because you're not in secure work. You can't get on. You're in low pay.

You can't exercise. There's so many people at the moment that you've got rights at work, and they can't exercise their statutory rights at the moment. So those reforms will give people more empowerment in their workplace. Now, my final question, two parts to it really. First is, what role do you envisage for yourself during the election campaign? I'll be out there. I know that. I know that. I know that. But the focus is so much on the leaders in these campaigns now. So specifically, how are you going to be a big part of that campaign? And then secondly, I guess, are you ready for the nastiness that's going to come with it in terms of a pretty desperate Tory party and there are many media supporters? Well, they've been slow cooking me, haven't they, for a while. So it's not like I haven't had a few moments like that. Has that been helpful to be slow cooked? In the long run, probably.

But it's very painful when you're going through it. I think the lowest moments was, you know, Boris Johnson was it traitor bill? And I remember during that period, it wasn't long after we'd lost Joe. And we were in the chamber. Joe Cox. Yeah, and Paula Sheriff got up. She was an MP at the time. And she was in tears and she said, I'm getting death threats, you know.

Anyway, Barbornburg. I was there. Yeah. And some of the piling on that you get, it radicalises people. the way in which our social media networks work at the moment, it radicalises people to approve their views and then also go that one step further. So it becomes more of a challenge in this day and age to respectfully disagree. And there's people out there that take it to another level. And that could be quite scary. When we've had two members of Parliament in a very short period of

time murdered in their constituencies, it does make you think, you know, and certainly when I've had to take measures to look after my family, that bit of it. It has changed me as a person. I don't go out with my mates, as I would do before. And because I know if I went out for a drink with my mates, as I would have done, as most people do, every now and again, you only need one picture of you with your eyes slightly closed because you were blinking and that's it.

You look. There's this picture that goes around social media of Florence Welsh from Florence and the Machines, and they say, look at the state of Angela drunk, it's not me. But it just illustrates the world trend. Yeah, but you can't stop being yourself. No, I haven't stopped being myself. Yeah, I am me, but I also am aware that you carry a great sense of responsibility in the work that we do. And, you know, you just try and continue to do that.

Can I... As my last question, your story is unbelievable, right? You're an incredibly smart, successful person who left school at 16 with no... You're going to get trolled for calling me that now. You do realise that. He doesn't mind. He gets trolled for far worse. Look at the jumper he's wearing.

Look at a jumper. I mean, without being immodest, reflect a little bit. on what those qualities are, because it's not the thing that normally makes sense, right? I mean, you wouldn't normally, and you must have felt this when you was shadow sexual state for education. We're telling all our kids they need to do well, study well, get the GCSEs so that they can become Angel Rainer. And here you are as an example of somebody who didn't do any of those things. And you're able to talk fluently about labor history, about the economy, about this and the other. So tell us a little bit about two or three things about yourself, which you think made that possible.

So I think I had adversity growing up, but I also was nervous. by the state, other people that looked after me. And there was my nan looked after me in certain ways. And my teachers did and going to the youth club on a Friday. And being a home help, meeting people that are professors that needed me, the role reversal, people, professional people, that all of a sudden in their last months of their life needed my support. So I'm mixed with different people for the first time in my life,

having to be resourceful because I had to look after myself. So I learn a level of resilience. And I've got a master's in real life. I've got a vocational PhD in real life because I've had to live it and I've had to go through it. And as painful as it is when you go through those moments, I learnt from a very young age is you can survive it. I learnt from a mum's adversity that you can get through it. But I also learned how incredibly painful it is. And I also learned that you need to reach out and get help something.

times you can't do it on your own. Nobody can do it on their own. You have to do it with other people. And that's kind of what's got me through my life. I'm very resourceful. I collect people, especially people that are different for me. I'm one of these type of leaders that think, I know what my strengths are. If I've got a weakness, I bring people in that plug that weakness for me, so I understand that. So I've just been incredibly resourceful person because I've had to survive throughout my life for different challenges. But those challenges have not broke me. Dave strengthened me. I'm going to cheat and have one final, final question.

You mentioned Barbara Castle earlier. If there's one thing that you could be remembered for as a government minister, what would it be? Council houses. I'm going to build the next wave of social and council houses. Nice ones, green ones, ones you want to live in. Very good. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Thank you. Thank you. So, Rory, your next Deputy Prime Minister, possibly. Sorry, firstly, without being too sort of a secret, I was really impressed actually by how tough you were there. Because that's cheered me up. It makes me think that maybe when Labour gets into government, our podcast has an opportunity. I thought you were quite good at putting her on the spot about some quite difficult distance. Oh, I didn't at all.

I thought we're having a rather polite conversation with somebody I really hope wins the next election. That cheer me up. That cheer me up. I mean, I think she's very, very articulate, very impressive. She's also a very skilled politician. I mean, clearly her whole background puts her in a very uncomfortable position with what the position Kirstal was taken on in Israel Gaza. And yet her answer was absolutely practiced down the line.

But emotional. Emotional, full of examples, full of passion. We've had a lot of people saying that you and I both been trying to be doing this sort of well on the one hand on the other. Let's be reasonable about both sides, etc. and it's becoming quite difficult. Very interesting to see whether she gets any flack and pushback. I think some of my friends who are passionately angry and horrified by what's happening in Gaza will hear that

and feel that she wasn't talking enough about what's happening in Gaza. Very smart as well, referring to Keir's speech, which was almost saying, I hope people go away and read it. But I also think the way she's got a, so she came in, sat down, not a note, sort of no, none of that asking us what we're going to talk about. No. First question, straight in, very, very personal responses to every single question. Also, I mean, her life is absolutely mesmerizing. I mean, she calls herself a working class person, but actually she comes from a much, much poorer background, the most working class people. She's describing a mother who grew up in a family of 12, neither parent working, not sent to school. I mean, she really has touched something, which is a part of the part of Britain that I often feel that we don't talk enough about. In fact, it's something that always made me uncomfortable. to be as a politician that often when politicians talk about poverty, they're talking about, as it were, the bottom 40%, but she's speaking up for the bottom 5 or 10% in society, which are

in a completely different. You know, her description of her mother's house, the life she's living is very extreme. Well, I remember talking to him before when she was saying that when she first arrived in Parliament and there was some of the Tory MPs who would sort of essentially say, well, it's the one from Shameless, you know, the Shameless, the TV, which actually written by a guy from Burnley about kind of real, brutal working class poverty. And I think it would be amazing. I think it's amazing to be deputy leader of the Labour Party in opposition coming from the background she came from and the struggles she's been through. But to get into government on that would be transformative for so many people in terms of aspiration. And particularly if she can speak up for that community, because I noticed that even when Ed Meliband was Labour Party, he didn't really speak for that community. He was speaking all the time for the squeezed middle. That's the community where you really see real extreme poverty. And there's a report out today I saw, I think OECD, but we now are at the top of the league

of the increase in child poverty. Increasing child poverty, yeah. Over the last seven years. And also slightly horrifying statistics that both in the US and the UK, average height of six-year-olds is to climb by one centimeter. It's a Lancet article. So I think she's wonderful. And I do, I mean, obviously, I do worry a little bit about the swing voter.

I mean, she may not care particularly about swing voter. I think she does. I think she does. But I didn't think that she actually fully empathises or understands where somebody like me comes from. She's trying. She's trying, she's trying hard. She's like, you like animals. She's trying to think of things to say that are nice about Tories. Should I say how I would have answered that question? Yeah, Go on, what would you say? Well, I think you have a real patriotic feel for your country. Believe in fairness, believe in strong defence, and actually do think that there are traditions that are worth. preserving, but where there are people denied opportunity, there is a role for people like you and me and others to help them. That's lovely. And actually, Kirstama, I think, to be fair, does a pretty good job of pitching to people like me when he says, listen, I understand we need to be fiscally conservative. I understand the sums need to add up. We want to be compassion. We want to help people, but we're not going to bankrupt the country and we're not going to go down some crazy

kind of socialist dream. But of course, I wonder also for business people what happens when they hear the talk about workers' rights and all the stuff that she's trying to do there because she's trying to go beyond what you did in new labour. Those will be things that be perceived by some businesses and more restrictive on labour. The Resolution Foundation report that we talked about was pretty strong on greater role for trade unions, workers on boards and that kind of thing. I think what is interesting that, I guess, it's seeing things through the prism of your own life, but it is interesting to me the Tony Blair, John Prescott thing, because I can see, I mean, John was a formidable politician.

No doubt about that. And I can see Keir and Angela having a similar sort of dynamic, the words together. I think they should use her a lot in the campaign. But she's not quite like John Prescott, is she? She's different, isn't she? Very different. Yeah. Very different.

I mean, John would have given you some very different answers to you. If I doubt John would have done the interview with you in the studio. Can't we do it down the line? But, you know, Keir, look, Kier's from a working class. background, but he's Sir Kier, he's the lawyer, he's the kind of cerebral guy. You saw, I thought it was really interesting. One of two points. For example, when she thought you were taking offence of what she said, the UKIP thing, she got quite emotional. Very emotional about her kids and the disabled son in particular, but in a very, very positive way. And I think that emotion,

even though it can put some people off, you know, you do hear people who say, oh, well, I can buy Kyr-Stama, but not sure about the northern woman. You know, you do get the, your taxi driver sort of saying that. But I think that emotion's got a real place. I think she's a star, and she's a very, very natural politician. And I think she's probably one of the most impressive people on the Labour front bench by a very long way. I think they're absolutely right to use her. I still haven't quite got to the bottom of this extraordinary story, which is, as you say, she got not a single GCSE, and yet she is clearly unbelievably smart-competry. Well, there's one story she told in a previous interview about her mum who couldn't read, feeding them dog food,

because she couldn't read the labels. I mean, you know, to live, you and I, you and I've been in your house, you've seen mine, I can't imagine a house without books in it. Yeah. She grew up in a house without books because her mom couldn't read all right. And here she is on the verge of being deputy prime. This is the stuff of Hollywood. And actually, maybe you're right about the Prescott thing.

Maybe I just sort of finish on this. I guess John Prescott wasn't the guy who was out there trying to appeal to the floating voter. That was Tony Blair. He was tickling the party's erogenous zones. So Prescott was more playing her role, which is appealing more to the parties left. And it would have been weird for me to say to John Prescott. No, not just to the left, but also to working class people. Yeah.

But it would have been weird for me to say to John Prescott, what's your offer to me? How are you going to convince the soft Tory to come across? That makes more sense as a pitch to Tony Blair than Prescott. Yeah, but what John would have said? But what are you going to vote for this rabble again then are you? He would have gone straight for the attack. Whereas I think Angela was at least tried to formulate an argument. And hopefully if she listens to the debrief, I've given her the best way to persuade Roy Stewart to come over to Labour.

I'm still working on it, Angela, promise. Good. Well, thank you very much for getting it. All the best.