Sally Ashby’s earliest idea of what it means to be a politician involves feeling crushingly patronised. She was a teenager in south Wales when the local Conservative MP visited her school to discuss Welsh devolution. The young Ashby mustered the courage to ask a question about Welsh language and was, she says, witheringly told to ask something “sensible”. “I’ve always remembered that,” she says. “It was my first impression of what a politician was.”
But the 40-year-old single mother of three may yet end up having the last laugh; in May she secured one of the first 18 grants from MotheRED, the Labour MP Stella Creasy’s project encouraging more mothers to stand for parliament. After months of scandal, sleaze and complaints that politics is remote from ordinary lives, the aim is to shake things up a little.
