I loved it, obviously. A Labour cabinet minister telling the sentimental wing of her own party that it had to face up to some tough decisions if it wanted to deliver compassionate, social democratic policies for the people.
For those of us who think that, on balance, Tony Blair was a good prime minister, it was a thrilling moment in the House of Commons: Shabana Mahmood, on top of her brief, swatting aside critics on both sides. But above all, someone who was prepared to tell the naive elements of her own party that she wouldn’t take any holier-than-thou pieties from them, that she knew what her Labour values were and that she was prepared to do whatever it took to put them into practice.
It was, of course, most enjoyable to watch her put the sanctimonious Liberal Democrats and Greens in their places – not to mention the SNP and Plaid Cymru. While so many in her party go all soft at the knees at the thought of Ed Davey and Zack Polanski stealing Labour voters, and think that Labour should copy its rivals to the so-called left, she was having none of it.
