We’re on the train to Ramsgate in Kent and Emily Thornberry is giddy at the prospect of a Saturday morning spent canvassing. “I love it. I know it seems weird, but it’s the bit of the job that I genuinely like the best,” says the MP for Islington South and Finsbury. “I like knocking on the door, not knowing who’s going to answer, what their attitude is going to be, what smells will come out of the door and, in Islington, whether they will be wearing any clothes.”
Pardon? “In Islington, people constantly come to the door not wearing any clothes. God knows what’s going on there!” How does she react? “Just keep your eyes up at all times.” Thornberry hoots with laughter. She has a great laugh – her face crumbles, her eyes narrow to slits and she shakes with joy.
After numerous Tory scandals, things are finally looking up for Labour. The party may not have won a general election since 2005, when Thornberry became an MP, but it ended 2022 with a 26-point lead over the Conservative party. She is feeling optimistic. Then again, she is one of life’s optimists.
Thornberry, 62, was born into the Labour party. Her mother, Sallie, was the local ward secretary of the party and later a councillor; her father, Cedric, stood for parliament in 1966. By nature, she is a loyalist, but she is also outspoken – and has had more than her share of scraps with party leaders. In a way, she personifies the party. Her constituency is representative of the two very different audiences to which Labour hopes to appeal – Islington is home to poor working-class people and the liberal elite.
Cut Thornberry down the middle and you will find a similar split. She had a fascinating childhood. We’re used to hearing about her life on a council estate, being brought up with two brothers by a mother so impoverished that she put the cats down because she couldn’t afford to feed them. But that is only half the story. Her father, who walked out on the family when she was seven, mingled and married at the highest levels, was a global jetsetter and became an assistant secretary general of the UN.
Her early life in Guildford, Surrey, was comfortable. It all changed when Cedric disappeared to Norway with his girlfriend, who later became the second of his four wives. “He didn’t pay any bills and we got thrown out of our home,” she says. When Cedric returned to Britain, he bought the house again and moved his new family in. “He was a great man, but a terrible father.”
In what way great? “He was very brave and worked really hard. He was taken hostage in Mostar [in Bosnia and Herzegovina], and got shot at, according to the papers. He was in the middle of so many wars in Africa. There are photos with colonels and generals and Fidel Castro and my dad. Extraordinary!” She seems to have despised and revered him in equal measure.
When she was 15, Thornberry fell out with Sallie and moved in with Cedric, now living in London with wife No 3. After two years, Cedric headed to New York for the weekend and never returned. He had been given his UN job, while his wife was working for the UN’s refugee agency in Geneva. Emily was left on her tod.
Did her father realise he was a shit? “Yes, he used to feel terribly guilty about his children. But he just couldn’t stop himself moving on.” She was devastated when he walked away again, but there was an upside. “He paid the bills for the house, he paid for my car, so in many ways it was fantastic. My parties went on all night long. People once arrived at 9am. I hate to think what my neighbours thought.”
***
Thornberry heads to the loo to put her lippy on. We’re in Ramsgate to support her friend Polly Billington, who is hoping to be selected as Labour’s candidate for South Thanet in the next general election. This is, or was, Ukip country. In the 2015 general election, Nigel Farage narrowly finished runner-up to the Conservative candidate. There are local elections in May; Labour is convinced it can take Thanet, the only council ever to be controlled by Ukip (twice between 2015 and 2017).
At Labour’s local HQ, a tiny building in a sidestreet, about 20 people squeeze in to welcome Thornberry. She stands on a chair and delivers a motivational speech. “If we can plant in people’s minds the idea that they can make a difference by voting, and a difference for the better, we will always win. Where there’s hope, people vote progressive. That’s all we’ve got to give them – hope. We’ve got to let them know there is a change that can come and we just need their help.”
Rosettes, clipboards, hi-vis jackets and pamphlets are handed out and we head off. Thornberry races ahead, her bright-red coat glistening in the winter sun like a beacon. We meet all sorts – a couple of Labour families new to the area, Greens, people who despise politics – but mainly disenchanted Tories. When one elderly woman says how upset she is with the government, Thornberry suggests she give Labour a chance. The woman throws Thornberry a look. “Never. They lack backbone,” she says.
We walk up the drive of a pretty house. A woman answers the door and talks politely to Thornberry. Then her husband joins her. “Foreigners have destroyed this place,” he says. “And if you see your Paki prime minister you can tell him that.” It’s shocking to meet with such overt racism. We finish off with fish and chips on the beach front. I’m still thinking of the racist. Thornberry sees a more positive side: there was only one obvious racist; a few people said they would vote Labour.
On the way home, she talks in depth about her family – three adult children (a journalist, a civil servant and an aspiring archivist) and her husband, Christopher Nugee, whom she married 32 years ago. Nugee, a judge in the court of appeal, is a knight and a lord. When the Conservatives want to rile Thornberry, they call her “Lady Nugee”, a title she has never used. She says Nugee is much calmer than she is. Thornberry suspects she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but she has never been diagnosed; she is able to use her extraordinary energy to her advantage.
For more than 20 years, Thornberry was a hard-nosed defence barrister. She was good at her job, she says, but lacked sensitivity. “Having kids really changed me. I got much better. My mum had amazing empathy.” What was she like before having children? She pauses. “I was very tough, pushy, insensitive, ambitious and chippy. I failed my 11-plus and was always needing to prove myself because of the assumptions people had made about me as a child.”
***
Three days later, we meet up at parliament. Outside the Commons, a group of people are protesting against government corruption and singing Things Can Only Get Better, the D:Ream song adopted by Labour in their victorious campaign in 1997, after 18 years in opposition.
Thornberry’s huge office overlooks parliament and the clock tower housing Big Ben. By the window is a blue UN helmet that belonged to her father. Eventually, in 2010, Cedric returned home from his adventures. By then, he had dementia. Thornberry looked after him till he died, in 2014.
On the wall is a poster of one of her heroes, the suffragette Emily Davison, and a picture of her standing on Thornberry Way in Guildford, named after her mother for her work as a councillor. “It goes between the sewage works and the dump, but hey – she’s still got a street named after her,” she says in that fabulously smoky voice. Thornberry would make a great late-night DJ.
When she was elected in 2005, she was wrongly considered a Brownite. If anything, she says, she was a “Cookie”. She adored Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary who resigned over the Iraq war. She soon established herself as a confident performer in parliament, with a fine line in putdowns. Last July, she faced Suella Braverman just after Braverman had announced she was standing for the Tory leadership. With an admirably straight face, she said: “Can I say what an honour it is to be at this dispatch box facing the next prime minister as she awaits her call from the palace.” The guffaws were loud even for the Commons. Thornberry can appear a little too pleased with her rhetorical skills.
By 2006, she had fallen out with Blair, after campaigning against and successfully voting down the plan to increase the maximum time terrorism suspects could be held without charge from 14 to 90 days. “They have this way of putting you on the naughty step, so people don’t want to be seen talking to you and you’re kept in the cupboard. You’re not allowed to get a bigger room, you’re never allowed to be off the whip, all these things.” How long was she on the naughty step? “About two years. It was bad enough rebelling, but rebelling and winning? That’s what the problem was.”
She tells me a story about the intimidation she faced over her rebellion. “A whip threw me against a wall in the division lobby in a vote just before the 90-day vote,” she says. “My back hit the wall and he grabbed me by the shoulders and shouted in my face. His face was so close to mine I got spit in my face.” Did you make a complaint? “No, I just voted against them anyway.”
Were you shocked? “Yes, of course.” Do you know of any one else who has been thrown against the wall by a whip? “No, just me.” She smiles. “It’s not good parliamentary behaviour and I don’t think it happens any more. People don’t put up with it.” She won’t name the whip, but makes clear it was not Tom Watson, who is known to have shouted: “Traitor!” at her as she entered the lobby to vote.
She also rebelled when Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, tried to introduce a 42-day detention period. “I said to Gordon: ‘On 99% of things I agree with you, but I think you get the impression that I rebel all the time because it’s the only time I see you.’”
Thornberry then helped Ed Miliband get elected as party leader, but was made to resign from his shadow cabinet after posting a photo on Twitter of a house in Rochester, Kent, draped in St George flags with a white van in the drive. The photo went viral, with people accusing her of snobbery. The sacking still hurts today.
“I’d been canvassing. You’ve seen what it’s like when you’re out – there are all these things going on. I saw this house covered in flags and took a photo of it. I put it on Twitter along with a whole load of other photos showing what was going on, like a dog with a union jack on and the Monster Raving Loony party. I said to Ed: ‘This is a complete misunderstanding. These are people making mischief.’ He said: ‘No, this is going to get in the way of us winning.’ And the last thing I ever want to do is get in the way of the Labour party winning the election.”
What upset her most was the accusation of snobbery. “The house looked pretty much like the council house I’d been brought up in and I hadn’t even noticed the frigging van. My brother was a builder and had a van, my other brother has just been working for Sainsbury’s, delivering in a van, so the idea that I was sneering at anybody really upset me, because that is so not me.” She wheezes with frustration. “It’s not fair, but there we are.”
***
Thornberry’s most prominent role, as shadow foreign secretary, came under the leadership of her fellow Islington MP, Jeremy Corbyn. Although they may be best remembered for a failed high-five following the honourable election defeat of 2017 (Corbyn ended up high-fiving her chest), they had a good rapport in the early days. After Labour’s election trouncing in 2019 and Corbyn’s subsequent resignation, Thornberry stood for the Labour leadership and was herself trounced. Did that hurt? “It upset me, of course. But I have got over it!” Would she stand again? “It’s not going to happen, because Keir is going to be the next prime minister and will be the leader for at least a decade and I will be in my dotage.”
I tell her I don’t know what the Labour party now stands for, not least because Keir Starmer has ditched the 10 pledges he made in his election campaign (including increasing tax for the top 5% of earners and introducing common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water). Thornberry echoes the party line that times have changed since the pandemic and says, amid a cost of living crisis, it would be unrealistic to stick to the pledges.
It seems that the major difference is that Labour promises to be more efficient than the Conservative party in government, I say, and all too often the party panders to the “red wall”. Why was Labour so slow to condemn the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda? “I don’t think that’s fair. I was doing media that day and it was clear what our lines were. There might have been one person from the leader’s office who might not have been as forthright as they should have been.” Starmer only criticised the proposal a week after the archbishop of Canterbury said it did not “stand the judgment of God”. “Well, all right. Keir can’t be quick on everything at all times.”
Where is the idealism, the passion, the soul, the vision? Where is the oomph? I mention the early days of Corbyn’s leadership, when so many young people were fired up by politics. She, in turn, talks about singing and dancing her way through the night of 1 May 1997, when Labour finally won a general election, and walking home in the early hours with a couple of red roses in her hand. “Yes, that kind of excitement!” she says nostalgically. “Well, let’s see.”
But what about Corbyn himself? Her neighbour was suspended and had the whip withdrawn in 2020 because of his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s investigation into antisemitism. Now there is the unseemly prospect of the party challenging its former leader for his Islington North seat because it won’t let him stand for Labour.
Does Thornberry think there is a way back for him? “I fear that, unless there is a fundamental change in him, he is not coming back.” Won’t it make canvassing in Islington difficult when she has to explain why he is not allowed to stand for Labour in the seat he has held for 40 years? “In the end, all I care about is getting a Labour government. That’s more important than any individual.” Exactly, I say – it will almost certainly cost you a seat and it could cost you the election if you find people talking about Corbyn rather than a Labour government. “I think the people of Islington understand the subtlety of politics and they’ll understand more than anything else we need a Labour government.”
What excites her most about Starmer’s Labour? “Like me, they are completely driven by the desire to get into power and change Britain for the better. No messing around. Nothing else matters.”
She is thinking about the lack of oomph. Her tone has softened. “We can’t promise all the things we want to do, so we’re not going to engage the same kind of enthusiasm. I understand that. But to get rid of this lot and have some decent people on board who know where they’re going and why they’re going there is all right. It’s all right! They might not write songs about it, but it will be OK.”
