Two years ago, the Labour MP Dawn Butler got herself temporarily thrown out of parliament for calling Boris Johnson a liar. She knew that longstanding parliamentary rules forbid the use of personal insults in the chamber, but did it anyway because she felt the rules were archaic and needed to be broken. The whole thing could have been seen as grandstanding, given it achieved nothing much in practice (Johnson’s resignation was ultimately only triggered by the old-fashioned due process of a parliamentary inquiry into his conduct). But it wasn’t until I read her new memoir, A Purposeful Life, that I understood properly why she did it.
Dawn Butler was eight years old when she was first called a liar by her teacher in front of her whole class, for telling a (true) story about something she saw on a trip to visit relatives in Jamaica. When she became only the third black woman elected to parliament, and described being mistaken at Westminster for a cleaner, she was called a liar once again; it happened again when she complained publicly about a Met police stop on the car she was travelling in, though this time she had taken the precaution of recording it on her phone.
Butler has, in short, been repeatedly and systematically disbelieved, even as the Boris Johnsons of this world were endlessly being given the benefit of the doubt. The crucial background to her frustration boiling over was a sense that, as she writes: “These people could play the system and get away with it because they had always been allowed to do so.” Context matters, and this book offers insights into one that’s still too rarely understood in public life: that of a black woman who seemingly provokes hostility just by existing in a position of power, and thus representing the threatening possibility of change. The reaction she seemingly inspires in a certain kind of establishment figure, she argues, “comes from the feeling that they potentially have to relinquish control”.
Hers is an unusual kind of memoir, reading less like a record of the Westminster dramas she has lived through – formerly a junior minister under Gordon Brown, she served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet but was left on the backbenches under Keir Starmer – and almost more like a stump speech, using episodes from political and personal life to illustrate broader points. (Butler makes no secret of wanting to run for mayor of London when her friend Sadiq Khan steps down.) Her writing style is part millennial self-help manual – if you cringe at talk of finding the personal power within, it may not be for you – but part something much more interesting, thanks to a funny, lively authorial voice drawing on some rich material. The result may not win her many friends on her own benches, given the forthright allegations in it of what she sees as bias and so-called “white feminism” within Labour as well as the Conservatives. But for a self-styled disruptor and breaker of taboos, perhaps that was never the point.
Still, her book is an unexpectedly warm and uplifting read, despite incorporating some painful experiences ranging from sexual harassment in her early career as a computer programmer to her own and her sister’s experiences of being diagnosed with breast cancer. (Her sister was, she writes, repeatedly fobbed off by doctors after finding what turned out to be a malignant lump, yet another instance of being disbelieved; black women are, she points out, nearly twice as likely as white women to be diagnosed when their breast cancer is advanced, and so harder to treat). Butler also uses her unsuccessful 2020 bid for the deputy leadership of the Labour party to lift the lid on something too rarely discussed: the prohibitive hidden costs of running for higher office. She realised she was doomed, she writes, after discovering that rival campaigns were sending self-promoting texts to every member, a strategy she couldn’t afford to copy. (In the end, she finished last.)
Given the winning candidate, Angela Rayner, isn’t exactly known for her privileged background, there are some obvious questions here. Did Butler lose for lack of deep enough pockets, or was she unable to raise as much as others because she wasn’t judged the strongest candidate? But her broader point, that some people will always be more comfortable taking this kind of financial risk than others, remains a compelling one, and something similar is true of the book overall. Whatever you make of Butler’s personal record – and some readers will finish this book wondering what all this self-professed disruption has ultimately achieved, in terms of tangible change – there are truths here that indisputably needed telling, and an irrepressibly bouncy confidence that inspires. A purposeful life, indeed.
A Purposeful Life by Dawn Butler is published by Torva (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
