Friday 18th May 2012 | 00:01
Frustrated in Opposition and not tempted to play pretend politics, Alan Johnson is focusing on the future - both for himself, and the ...
WORDS: PAUL WAUGH AND SAM MACRORY
Alan Johnson is back where he started. Nearly two decades since he headed the postal workers union and its campaigns against the Major Government, he’s out on the streets again. In a poacher-turned-gamekeeper-turned-poacher vignette, the former Home Secretary was last week marching with the police against Home Office cuts. Days earlier, Johnson was protesting with workers from his constituency at a BAe shareholders’ meeting.
As he catches his breath in his Commons office overlooking Parliament Square, he claims that both protests underline the difference between this Government and the one in which he served continuously for nearly three full terms of office. The failure to secure BAe jobs at Brough reflected a neglect of manufacturing, while the police cuts underline the Coalition’s misguided priorities, he says.
Speaking under an original ‘The Who’ concert poster (signed by Roger Daltrey, no less), the 62-year-old MP for Hull West and Hessle is still as sharp as the finely-cut suits he made famous in Whitehall. But despite the rediscovered joys of street protest, it’s clear that on the deficit, as on Labour’s future, the former Mod is still very much a moderniser.
Having joked about marching with the cops - “I didn’t get any abuse..they love me!” – he’s serious about the need to make the right kind of cuts. When he ran the Home Office, he says, spending on overtime and procurement were tackled but overall spending was protected. And in a jibe that may chime with some Tory backbenchers, he says: “It’s very difficult to justify to the British people that you’ve made international development a priority, but not policing.”
Johnson points out that the police understand the need for savings, just like the voters. “The public are anti-incompetence, but they are not anti-austerity. They want a government that gets it right. They’ve cut them an awful lot of slack, they know these are difficult times, they understand that there’s going to be job losses, they understand that austerity is the theme. But the Government act as if they inherited recession and delivered growth. They inherited growth and delivered a recession. It’s not working,” he says.
Johnson believes that Labour can only prosper if it understands that public mood. Is the ‘deficit denier’ tag one that the party has to lose? “Yes, that’s why we will never reap the benefits from a kind of Bradford West like
George Galloway because he can go and say what he likes. What we mustn’t do is be dragged to the extreme. Our policy is that yes, the fiscal deficit does have to come down, it does have to be addressed. This is not the way to address it, because you won’t get the fiscal deficit down without growth.”
As for his party’s own relations with the unions, Johnson labels Ed Milband’s proposed £5000 cap on party funding a “game-changer”. Yet he doesn’t back an opt-in on a political levy for Union members. To make his case, the former Work and Pensions Secretary makes an intriguing comparison with the shift to an opt-out pensions system. “It’s not that people don’t want pensions, it’s the fact that because they have to opt in to their pensions scheme they leave the bit of paper behind the clock and never get round to doing it, which is why the government is changing to auto-enrolment and we’ve got consensus on that. They know full well that people who don’t opt in to the political levy won’t be because of any political reason or even a financial reason. You’ll opt out because they won’t get round to doing it. There’s no high principle.”
As for reforms to Labour’s conference votes, Johnson argues that “there is no earthly reason” why the Unions vote should remain at 50 per cent – he says 28 per cent, as on the National Policy Forum, “is about right”.
And on the party’s leadership election, he is equally adamant that the system has to be reformed. “It has to change. I bow to no one in my commitment to the unions being a crucial element and an advantage to us in the Labour Party but… as we saw in the last elections, this crazy situation where Conservatives and Trots can vote in our leadership elections, because that’s basically what they can do if they pay the political levy, no other political party would allow that. For that reason alone it needs reform. The current system… you can’t defend as democratic.”
Asked what for his own specific solution, he smiles: “You invite me to put my anorak on, if not my cagoule… There is a way that you can do this so that the union turnout reflects their proportion of the vote. That’s a very simple one. You could even keep the electoral college in that sense but you shouldn’t have, whatever it was, a 16 per cent turn out looking as it trumped a kind of 98 percent turnout for the PLP and a very big turnout for members. If it’s a low turnout then that’s reflected in the vote and there’s ways to do that.
“There is a way to move to simple one member one vote I wouldn’t be against that though I’d prefer to find a one member-one vote that reflected the three parts of the party: PLP, the members, and the trade unions but you know there’s a whole variety of ways you can do this.”
Johnson’s reforming instincts – he was a passionate campaigner for AV – wins him friends amongst Liberal Democrat MPs, and he remains a keen supporter of a future Lib-Lab pact. “I can see a coalition, yeah. Labour colleagues [are] screaming because they have tussles with the Lib Dems. But, you know, we’re going to have to get used to the situation in this country where we get the worst of both worlds: we’re not going to get electoral reform for a long time but we get a public that doesn’t want to give one party an absolute mandate.”
However, Johnson adds, there is a stumbling block to any future deal – Nick Clegg. “Nick’s been damaged and the Lib Dems have been damaged, by one thing. And they will try and hide it, and they will try and pretend it didn’t happen, but … what they did over student fees actually besmirched politics. That was a fundamental piece of cynicism that they wont be forgiven for and that might be the reason why, you know, we’ll find it very difficult to do a deal with Nick Clegg if he’s still around at the next election.”
And, he warns, the Lib Dem leader should know what happens to unpopular incumbents. “Curiously enough, Nick’s problem was he wouldn’t do a deal with us if Gordon [Brown] was still in power. That might come back to bite him….”
Off the back of the local election gains, Labour has a healthy poll lead. But Johnson sounds every inch the greybeard as he urges caution. “There is no triumphalism [about the local elections]. It was good, it wasn’t glorious. And it is a mid-term election and there’s lots of precedents of people doing well in those elections and doing badly in general elections. But coming on top of the Government’s double-dip recession, donors, the Budget was a disaster, he [Ed] needed that kind of response from the public.”
As for the recent ‘omnishambles’ that has helped give Labour that healthy lead, Johnson says the Budget was ‘shocking’. He and fellow East Yorkshire MPs – many of them Conservative – are lobbying hard against the ‘caravan tax’. His constituency is very much his current focus. Not just a former Home Secretary, but a former Education Secretary, Work and Pensions Secretary, Trade and Industry Secretary and Health Secretary, he has more experience of Government than most. And, while he says “never say never” on the idea of a Shadow Cabinet post, he has no yearning to rejoin the party frontbench in the Commons.
“I’ve found it more difficult, probably, to convert to Opposition because once you’ve been in Government it’s very difficult to sit on the outside and just pretend you’re in Government” admits Johnson, who was appointed to the government ranks within his first year as an MP.
“We had a great intake and there’s lots of people there that will feel really, really driven by getting a front bench role.
“And, you know, I might as well be honest about it: to me, being a backbencher and having more time to spend in my constituency, is what motivates me more than sitting opposite whatever minister is there and, you know, playing ‘pretend’. It’s as well to be honest about that, because you won’t give it your best if you say ‘I’d love to do this it would be a great honour and privilege to the party’, and then you’re not doing your best because you don’t really want to do it…”
If his own ambitions no longer lie in the Shadow Cabinet, what about Mayor of London? Johnson brushes aside Ken Livingstone’s claim that he lacked the ‘appetite’ for the candidacy back in 2010.
“I thought about it. But I think the party made a mistake in having that selection at the same time as the leadership election. For a start it was two years off. In the end, my decision was a commitment to Hull, where I’ve had 15 really good years and a city which I love, rather than the city I was born in.
“But for any MP from outside London to throw their hat into the ring for the Mayor two years before the election is going to take place, you are either going to pack up your job as a Member of Parliament which means you lose the profile and you lose all your income, or you don’t stand for it. It means the only people who can stand for it – as MPs – are ones like Boris, who was close to London, or Ken who was a London MP. Or Oona [King] who had been a London MP. So I think that was difficult.”
Did he come under pressure from those colleagues who said Labour could beat Boris with a decent candidate?“There were lots of colleagues who quite liked the idea of Johnson versus Johnson. I left the question open at the time. I don’t think Boris was sitting there petrified at the idea of Alan Johnson, but there were a lot of people thinking it shouldn’t be a re-run of the last one. Actually, I’m a great admirer of Ken and probably the Boris factor would have done for anyone. But it’s very rare that you just re-run the same challenge in any sphere, that you just run the same candidate who lost some years before. So maybe we do need a bit of fresh blood next time that’s for sure. I would not rule it out.”
In 2016, he would be in a strong position to run for Mayor, possibly after leaving Parliament and with Boris out of the way. But he would be 66, would that be a problem? “I don’t think [the problem] was age with Ken. If you look at some of the great mayors around the world, look at America, like New York, you have to be sort of 80 before you qualify,” he laughs.
If he does run for City Hall one day, Johnson’s backstory as an orphaned youngster in West London may resonate with the voters. Aptly enough, his childhood memoirs, ‘This Boy’, will be published in September, conveniently timed for a launch around the party conference season. “It’s up to the age of 18 so I can’t insult anyone. I don’t need any government records. It’s childhood…” he is quick to add.
Even when he focuses on his past, there’s a glint in his eye which suggests he’s not entirely given up on the future frontline. For Alan Johnson, marching is all well and good; but governing is the real deal.
Johnson on… being in opposition
“Some of my colleagues say it’s a good time to be out of government. There’s never a good time to be out of government. The only place to be in politics is in government”
Johnson on… Ed Miliband
“I think the impressive thing about Ed was his chin didn’t drop when things were bad and he doesn’t get carried away when things are good and that’s exactly the way you need to be as a party leader. And now the tide is turning.”
Johnson on… David Miliband
“David’s a huge talent…the appetite’s still there for front bench politics. At some
stage he’ll be back.”
Johnson on…regrets about not standing for Labour leader
“No I don’t at all. Je ne regrette rien. Johnno regrette rien…”
Johnson on… current union leaders
“They are moderate. Dave Prentis is moderate. Mark Serwotka is moderate. They might kind of play to the gallery occasionally because a bit of blood and thunder helps in some of the more militant sectors but basically they’re pragmatists.”
Johnson on…why Theresa May should resign
“The Home Secretary’s job is to help to ensure that dangerous people like Abu Qatada are actually deported. What she did by her actions was hinder that process. I don’t know how you can live with yourself for making an error like that.”
Thursday 17th May 2012 | 20:00
Behind the pomp and ancient dress, the Serjeant at Arms remains one of Parliament’s most important positions – as Lawrence Ward, the n...
WORDS: TONY GREW
On a shelf in the imposing Gothic office of the Serjeant at Arms there stands a miniature red pillar box. Amid the elaborate stonework and wood-panelled finery it is a reminder to visitors, and to the occupant, of how he first came to serve the House of Commons.
Lawrence Ward, who took up his duties as Serjeant at Arms on May 1, started out as a postman. He actually began working life as a “postal cadet”, a two-year Youth Training Scheme he signed up to at the age of 16. He was ambitious from the start and by the time he was appointed postmaster for the House of Commons in 1997 he was already a high-flyer in Royal Mail.
“I decided I did not like getting up at 3 o’clock in the morning, six days a week, in the rain, so as soon as I was 18 I got onto the management programme.
“I was promoted several times and got to senior management level when I was 28. I got to know the chief executive at the time, John Roberts, and he said ‘would you like to go to Parliament?’”
Ward found that what he thought would be a “cushy” two-year stint was anything but. “The Serjeant at Arms at the time had decided he wanted Royal Mail to work on a contract, and there were going to be big changes in personnel and to a very antiquated system.”
Ward recalls it was “scars on the back time for a few years getting the new system in place”. His career with the Royal Mail flourished. He was handed responsibility for the Royal Household, 10 Downing St and for the devolved assemblies, what Ward calls “the Crown Jewels of Royal Mail contracts”.
In the wake of the anthrax attacks on the US Congress and other government buildings in 2001 the House authorities asked Ward to work as a consultant. He left Royal Mail and developed a central government mail-screening facility which is now used by all Whitehall departments.
Ward’s background is a stark contrast to the sort of retired military officer that used to be associated with the men in tights. He was born in Peckham and raised with his brother and sister by their mother. “My father left when I was very young and my mum never remarried. We were in a tiny little two-bed council flat and until was nine. But we had a brilliant Catholic school down the road. I was surrounded by real poverty. I never felt impoverished in any way but I suppose we were. We got transferred to another council flat in Tring, Hertfordshire, and stayed there until was 16 and left school.”
Ward reveals that before he worked in Parliament he had on occasion queued outside to try to get access to the Commons gallery, but never managed to get in. He admits he was “absolutely terrified” the first time he was summoned into the office of the Serjeant, at that time Sir Peter Jennings CVO. “It was such an intimidating atmosphere to come into,” he recalls. “The office staff were very officious. To think that I would one day have got that job is unbelievable.” Ward wants to “open up” the Commons and make it more “user-friendly”.
He calls the rules about photography and filming “Dickensian” and other regulations “throwbacks to the old days when it was a bit of a gentleman’s club”.
“Parliament is principally for the people and I never forget that, some Members forget that sometimes, it is for the people and it should be accessible. I think we have got a brilliant story and we don’t always sell it in the right way.”
The post of Serjeant was hotly-contested, and he explains that in the long interview process he demonstrated an innovative approach in his time as deputy.
He says that he has intervened in the past to help MPs with disabilities. “It took a lot of effort and energy to get the House services aligned, but it has made a difference to their ability to work as an MP. “Then on a bigger level, there are things like managing the UK Youth Parliament and taking responsibility for leading that. The Obama visit when I was the guy on the ground making sure it all happened. I think that was the difference. There were the little personal touches, but also I think I gave some reassurance that on the big ticket things I can be relied upon as well.”
Ward says his network of colleagues will stop him from becoming too aloof. “They are the kind of people I can trust to tell me how it is, to keep my feet on the ground. One of the key things about having such an honour and position is to be accessible.”
Security is the most onerous of the Serjeant’s duties. Ward works with the new Parliamentary Security Director, a role created after the incident when foam pie and Rupert Murdoch was hit with a foam pie while giving evidence to the culture committee. It was former postman Ward, then Assistant Serjeant at Arms, who personally delivered the summons to appear to a lawyer representing News Corp at the offices of News International in Wapping.
He describes the new Security Director role as “strategic”, but he meets with the director at least once a day. “It is about information sharing,” he explains.
Operational security matters, such as the police contract, remain with the Serjeant and Black Rod. Ward says he will bring “a very open mind” to his security duties. “We will make sure everything we do is intelligence-based and intelligence-led and also that we are right up there in terms of our technologies and processes and do not leave anything to chance.” He says Parliament “has always been the centre of protest and more” and notes that suffragettes were invading the Commons chamber a century before hunt protesters.
“We get one and a quarter million visitors a year, not everybody that comes here will have the intent of having a good experience. Some of them will want to protest and stage a stunt; others will have more malicious intent. We could turn this place into a fortress tomorrow, and the police could shut it down. “We have got lots of senior military people here who would feel very comfortable with that. The challenge is getting the balance right and we work very hard on that with our search regimes.”
Ward says he likes to think of himself as a moderniser, but he has stopped short of following the Speaker’s lead and dispensing with the Serjeant’s traditional outfit, complete with sword.
“These things are all about timing. Some people are very wedded to the tradition of the Serjeant’s uniform, but that will not always be the case. It is expensive kit to wear. I think it is very important on state occasions. It is important actually for the Serjeant to stand out a bit. It is important to have someone you can point to who is a figure of authority, and you would not get that with a business suit. I am not brash enough to say let’s ditch 600 years of history. I am also a reformer, but give me some time. Let’s talk about it again in a year’s time.”
Thursday 17th May 2012 | 20:00
As Lords reform stutters, a shake-up of the Commons might well follow suit, writes Kevin Maguire
WORDS: KEVIN MAGUIRE
Whenever I wander over to the House of Lords from the Parliamentary press gallery, I keep an eye open for a couple of peers. These two are usually found together, each a general secretary of a trade union in the past, still brothers-in-arms on the red carpet. They’re good value for a political journalist, gossipy with sharp political antennae. Nice men too. But on nearly every encounter I endure an ear-bashing for writing in favour of – either directly or indirectly – an elected successor to their place of work.
Walk back to the House of Commons and, on the green carpet, during conversations with MPs the future of the House of Lords is, in my experience, raised far less often. When it crops up it is more likely to be raised by Conservatives (usually hostile to reform) than Labourites or, intriguingly when their party leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg is championing the change, Liberal Democrats.
Instead in the Commons, the change prompting increasingly unhappy grumbles, from members of all parties, is the plan, in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, to cut the number of elected lawmakers by 60 from 650 to 600 at the General Election inked in for May 2015 – if this Parliament stays the course, which I suspect it will.
I suppose that’s no great surprise. As a hack, I’d have an interest if national newspapers were to be merged and a few titles consigned to history. The recent twist, however, is even MPs with little enthusiasm for creating a new Lords are starting to question whether it would be right to ditch 50 politicians who had been picked by the people while retaining, should Clegg’s proposals run out of steam, close on 800 appointees who enjoy the last jobs for life outside the Royal Family.
Boundary Commissions for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are due to complete blueprints for the new, fewer constituencies by October of next year and the vote required will be no formality in the House of Commons. Westminster seats have gone up and down in total in the past without linking the switch to what happened, or didn’t happen, in the Lords. A link, however, is now forming in the minds of MPs.
The political impact of the new boundaries can’t be ignored. I’d have thought it unlikely, to say the least, that David Cameron would be as keen to banish 50 MPs if his party was less likely to secure an overall majority. Ed Miliband and Clegg view the upheaval from the opposite direction. UKPolling Report, applying 2010 voting patterns, estimated the Tories would lose seven seats against Labour’s 28 and the Lib Dems’ 11.
The proportional impact would be most severe on the junior coalition partner, with Clegg losing a fifth of his Parliamentary forces. The senior coalition partner on the other hand would be within touching distance, in a 600-seat institution, of restoring single party rule.
The argument that Britain has too many politicians resonates in the current anti-politics moods. Yet those who vote, the group who are most politically engaged in the country, don’t tend to relish being shunted from one constituency to another.
And I’d wager they’d respond positively to the argument that it’s unfair and undemocratic to cull 50 elected politicians while retaining 800 unelected lawmakers.
We may be poised to see renewed interest in Lords reform from MPs with a vested interest in it failing. That 2013 vote on boundary changes will be close.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) on the Daily Mirror
Thursday 17th May 2012 | 20:00
With no ambitions to be fulfilled on the domestic political stage, Lord Boateng is focusing his attention on Ghana, the country of his...
WORDS: SAM MACRORY
If you have ever wondered how Alastair Campbell’s equivalent in a remote rural African community might go about his work, then Paul Boateng has the answer.
Britain’s first black Cabinet minister spent a large part of his childhood in Ghana, and has recently been spending more and more time in the country as part of a push to introduce a vaccine to tackle pneumonia and diarrhoea and reduce the Ghanaian child mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015. On a recent trip into a village as part of a mission led by the GAVI Alliance, Boateng met mothers, doctors, the traditional elders – and then the spin doctors.
“The traditional elders used their traditional means of communication, which is sort of like a dawn broadcast” he explains. “The seriousness of the announcement is demonstrated by the fact that it comes with drumming and the activities of a linguist – the Alastair Campbell of the local chief. Not that Alastair Campbell was ever, to my knowledge, up at dawn literally banging a drum, but he may he have been up at dawn getting his message across. And the message was told, months in advance, that this [the vaccination] was going to happen, that this was sage, this was effective. Then it was followed up by a visit from the nurses, from the doctor, by a literature campaign. And Ghana has established an infrastructure to enable it to happen.”
Brought up in Ghana, Boateng left when he was 15 after his father, a government minister, was thrown into prison without trial following a coup d’etat. “When the soldiers came it was traumatic. They ransacked the place, and all our possessions were taken. They even ate a cake my mother had baked that day. I was stood up in front of my class at school and told that my father should be hung. It was awful”, Lord Boateng recalls.
With his mother and sister he settled in Hemel Hempstead, and though he wouldn’t return to Ghana for nearly a decade the family – Kwaku Boateng was released after four years – never forgot their Ghanaian roots. “I’ve got relatives there to this day. It has always been part of my life even though Britain was and is my home.”
After his promotion to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2002, he became a frequent visitor. “I was involved in establishing Britain’s support for GAVI and the International Financial Facility for Immunization, which was constructed within the Treasury. It’s part of the legacy of the Blair-Brown premiership and one which this government, I am pleased to see, has built on.” Broadly speaking, GAVI is a partnership between the public sector, the private sector, NGOs and civil society groups which engages with local communities. “If you want to succeed in public health projects and programmes you’ve got to engage with the local community”, Boateng stresses. “GAVI requires that buy-in, not just as partners in delivery but as partners in funding. The Ghanaian tax payer is a partner with the British tax payer in this particular venture – that’s part of its attraction.”
As is Ghana’s track record, with Boateng one of the first Ghanaian children vaccinated against polio – now eradicated in Ghana – in the 1950s. He praises Ghana’s establishment of a ‘cold chain’ to store the vaccine, and notes with pride that “Ghana is an ambitious country and it always his been – that’s why it was the first colonial possession in Sub-Saharan Africa to gain its independence.”
Boateng hopes that neighbouring countries will take note of Ghana’s success story, and argues that “effective developmental activity shouldn’t be imposed from overseas… it needs to be owned is a result of relationships between neighbours.” He is concerned that “one of the weaknesses of this current crop of Millennium Development Goals is essentially it is top down effort that came out of the secretary general’s office”, and calls for the next round of MGDs to be the result of “a process of consultation within the developing world.”
However, Boateng believes that the secretary of state Andrew Mitchell, along with David Cameron, “deserve to be saluted” for the commitment to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid. “It’s a tribute to Britain as a whole that we now have a cross party consensus in this area.”
But surely he was unimpressed that the Queen’s Speech did not propose placing the 0.7 per cent commitment on the statute book? “I was disappointed to learn that the reason for that, or at least one of the reasons that Andrew Mitchell was advancing, was that they had a number of other pressing parliamentary priorities, amongst which was reform of the House of Lords. I couldn’t help a wry smile at that” he replies.
Lord Boateng describes himself as “unequivocally opposed” to the government’s proposals, which he describes as a “doubly bad whammy” for Parliament.
“It’s a cobbled together thing to appease Nick Clegg, and I really don’t think that’s a good way to go about constitutional reform” he argues. “It will take away from this place all those people who have a huge amount to contribute but in a million years did not want to be politicians. You’d lose all of that expertise but at the same time create a grade two sort of politician who would be prepared to stand only once for 15 years, and would therefore be totally unaccountable, and in all probability would much rather be an MP but was not able to get selected. The minute they are here the first thing they would start doing would be to seek to gain more powers vis a vis the House of Commons. That would be a recipe for conflict. It’s a complete dogs’ breakfast.”
He then adds, a rare foray into domestic political advice: “Above all, it’s vital it’s put to the British people. It’s absolutely vital that it does – [but] I hope if anything does go to a referendum it will be a better proposal than this one”. It’s harder to force an opinion from him on the economy, with Lord Boateng determined to avoid “standing on the sidelines and opining.” He offers the odd hint, warning against the dangers of “kicking the financial services sector – they’re one of the most successful and dynamic parts of the British economy”, and stressing the “unanswerable case for a proper industrial policy but, for now, Lord Boateng prefers to keep a distance. “I’ve done my bit in front line politics. Been there, done that, got my T-shirt. I don’t hanker after office, no. It’s very important when you’ve done your bit to go on being useful, but you must recognise that it’s now for another generation.”
Instead, the focus remains on Ghana, and building on the GAVI model for development in areas such as food security. The presence of the African Alastair Campbells may remind him of his New Labour days, but Lord Boateng is not interested in spinning, only spreading good news.
Thursday 17th May 2012 | 20:00
Despite growing up in a highly political household, Lisa Nandy is a Parliamentary outsider determined to speak the language of the peo...
WORDS: Sam Macrory
Lisa Nandy is looking flustered. The MP for Wigan has just heard that a factory in her constituency looks set to shut, affecting more than a hundred jobs. A busy weekend awaits, and it’s clear that Nandy would prefer to be with her constituents than pacing the corridors of Westminster. “I’d like to spend more time with the people I represent. If we spent less time with each other and more with the people we represent, then we’d talk more about the issues that matter to those people. We’ve spent most of the last year talking about voting reform, Lords reform and splits within the coalition – I don’t think my constituents are particularly interested in that”, she complains of life as an MP.
Though no career politician, and an MP with a better grip on normality than many, politics was always likely to find Lisa Nandy. Her father is a Marxist, her grandfather is a Liberal, and her mother is a Labour supporter, and for Nandy herself, growing up in1980s Manchester under a Thatcher government was “an angry time”. She leafleted occasionally for Labour, but politics only became a full-time interest when she combined further study in London with work as a researcher for Labour MP Neil Gerrard “It was a big deal for me. Coming to work in this building was quite daunting. He [Neil Gerrard] was the dream employer to work for – which isn’t always the experience of researchers here.”
However, watching how a humble backbencher existed as part of a thumping Labour majority left Nandy uninspired.
“There was a limited amounted of influence that really talented people like him [Gerrard] could have. I found that quite frustrating and I thought, to be honest, that if you want to change the situation for the sort of people he represented, you’d be better off outside of Parliament.”
Nandy found work in the voluntary sector with the housing charity Centrepoint.
“I always wanted a job where I’d get to meet the people I was representing, but I equally wanted a job where I was helping individuals” she explains, but through working with children living temporarily in B&Bs she found herself drawn back to politics. “They had some really awful stories about some things that happened to them. We approached Hammersmith and Fulham Council… and asked whether they would be prepared to consider changing the model about how they supported young people – put them into supported accommodation for a time-limited period instead of putting them into B&Bs. They agreed, and managed to lift all young people out of B&B accommodation within a year. It was then that I thought, actually that’s where you can make a difference. You can get all the legislation in the world right but if you really want to have a dramatic effect on someone’s life it’s how you implement it. It made me really keen to get more involved.”
She was elected to the council in 2006, but when her day job with the Children’s Society took her to the 2009 Conservative conference, the discussions she took part in left Nandy “horrified” at what might follow. “I just thought, I don’t know what I’m going to be able to do for these children in the job that I’m in, in the voluntary sector in particular – it seemed pretty clear that staying in my current job was going to be a pretty frustrating experience.”
And when the seat in Wigan became vacant two weeks’ later, “there just wasn’t any obvious reason not to do it”.
Nandy stood as a candidate from an all-women’s shortlist, a process which she admits caused a “lot of frustration” in Wigan. “I think it was a lot to do with the local party feeling for some time that they had had an ever more marginalised voice in terms of the direction of the party – I really do understand that, but I also have to say that I certainly wouldn’t have got the job if it wasn’t for the all-women’s shortlist” Nandy explains. “I’m the first female MP for Wigan. My big hope is perhaps we’ve opened it up now.”
Nandy, whose father is Indian, also faced opposition to her ethnicity. “The BNP and associated supporters had whipped up an issue around Islamaphobia and there were a lot of questions about what my religion was. I’m an Atheist, but a lot of people were trying to argue that I’m a Muslim. You don’t want to get in to the idea of denying that you’re Muslim because there’s nothing wrong with being one – I just happen not to be one”.
Winning was a “particularly weird” experience. With Wigan a safe Labour seat, press interest was nil. “At the count there was only really me and my Tory opponent. We sort of made a speech to each other and then helped the cleaners tidy away the coffee cups and drove home.”
On arriving at Parliament she found herself sharing a temporary office with Labour high-flyer Chuka Umunna. “You’ve got someone to bounce off and he’s a really nice bloke – but at the same time he found his feet really fast” Nandy recalls. “While I was on my hands and knees looking for somewhere to plug my Blackberry in, two weeks after being elected, Chuka was sorting out entire countries..”
Nandy’s own promotion to the front bench took place a few hours after we met. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” she said, when asked about a frontbench role, no bad thing given her appointment as shadow children’s minister. It follows on nicely from her position on the Education Select Committee, which she says is “probably one of the most influential things you can do” in Opposition.
“We have very different views about what education is for”, says Nandy of Education Secretary Michael Gove. “His is a vision very much based around competition, and the system I want to see is one based around collaboration. I think he’s fragmented and fracturing it, leaving a lot of children behind.”
And yet, with his support for City Academies, Gove says he is building on the work of New Labour. “One of the cleverest things he has done is appropriated some of the language of the New Labour era – it’s a clever political trick” Nandy replies, arguing that Gove’s academies are not focused on children from poorer backgrounds.
Nandy is also a vocal opponent of free schools. Would she abolish them? “It’s very difficult, once they’ve been set up, to get rid of them – I’d like to see schools brought back within a kind of…. local authority family. I’d likes to see local coordination brought back”, she replies, an answer likely to see her accused by opponents of being anti-reform.
“If you talk to school teachers, they’d say they need more reform in the education system like a hole in the head. Not all reform is good reform. If you really want to bring forward all children then you would be looking at a much stronger package of support outside the classroom – you can’t put everything on schools.”
Another priority is her campaign for universal free childcare, with Nandy believing in the “moral case that women shouldn’t be barred from work and the strong economic case [that] if you enable more women to go back into the workforce that would pay for itself.” Labour’s next manifesto, she argues, should promise free childcare. Meanwhile she is working with Tory MP Edward Timpson on plans to improve the lives of looked after children to make sure that “the concern and anger at what’s happening to this group of children isn’t lost.” The cross party work clearly suits her, with Nandy convinced that MPs should “free ourselves up and have more of a debate and dialogue… you can find interesting alliances in here between MPs of different parties”.
For that approach, she adds, her party leader is a role model. “Ed Miliband is one of the least tribal people that I’ve ever met. I get the impression that his driving force is to change things. That’s very healthy.”
And while Nandy enjoys the “fantastic platform” that being an MP has given her, she admits that Opposition, and the internal focus of life at Westminster, have been “frustrating” experiences. However, she refuses to say what her future holds – “I guess I’d probably talk to my local party first” – beyond the immediate: getting back to Wigan and getting to grips with whatever is worrying her constituents.
She has the perfect way to find out. “There’s a pub called The Anvil in the centre of my constituency where I’m often to be found on a Friday night with a pint” she says. Lisa Nandy: not bitter at life inside the Westminster bubble, but determined all the same to burst it if she can.
- Friday 18th May 2012
18th May 2012
18th May 2012