When I was elected to parliament, I had been inside the building maybe two or three times before. My husband had only been to London once before. My politics comes from exposure to the worst of people’s lives. Communities ravaged by arson attacks, so scared of their neighbours that they turn on each other. Children growing up in care who are left at the mercy of organised crime. Women brutally abused so many times that you have to arrange for a third time for children’s services to remove the new baby. I once had to hold the neck of a woman who had slashed it in front of me while I was sitting at my desk, desperately trying to stem the flow. I have held the hands of children as they waved off their sibling who had been adopted while they had not. I have seen things, heard stories and intervened in the kind of dangerous environments that would make the toughest men cry.
In fact, since becoming an MP, I have been the only person in a group otherwise consisting of men to take charge when someone was suffering an angry psychotic episode. When I was asked to take part in a TV fly-on-the-wall programme inside a prison, I concluded that I would not make good telly as I have worked in prisons and would be largely unflappable, and would most likely within minutes be able to get the inmates on my side.
