With hindsight, perhaps my expectations were slightly too high. When Labour won the 2024 election I thought the whole country was going to live happily ever after, like the end of a fairytale in which good triumphs over evil.
Spoiler alert: that hasn’t quite happened.
In not unrelated news, last week a former Labour candidate, Matthew Syed, wrote a column in the Sunday Times entitled “I’ve joined the Conservatives”. Unexpectedly, it made me somewhat envious.
I’d never go over to the Tories like him, but disillusioned with Starmer’s party generally (and specifically, including but not limited to: winter-fuel-cuts-gate, Mandelson-gate, “golden-ticket”-gate, Angela Rayner-gate), this might be the moment to question my allegiance. If I could. That’s why I’m jealous of Syed – he has a choice, but I don’t.
My dad was a Labour MP, and later a working peer in the House of Lords, for more than 30 years. He took me to cast my first vote, age 18, walking me right up to the booth, placing a hand on my shoulder, and telling me solemnly to “Do the right thing”.
There was no doubt in my mind what that was. The running gag in my house was that my parents would help me, no matter what – if I got pregnant in my teens, or became addicted to drugs, they would be there. “But if you ever vote Tory, you’re on your own!” went the punchline. As Freud said, there are no jokes.
I rebelled in many different and increasingly imaginative ways during my teenage years and beyond, but not once did I consider not voting Labour, let alone actually going through with it. My dad died in 2012, I am a grown woman with full autonomy, but this is still very much the case. You might argue that he wouldn’t have known which box I put my cross into even when he was around, but I’m certain he would have instantly sensed my betrayal: psychically, telepathically, by echolocation.
Punchlines and guiding hands aside, it feels impossible to go against my dad because of how passionately he believed in what he was doing. How hard he worked. How regularly I had to bite my tongue while people ranted about all politicians being selfish, unscrupulous egomaniacs (nobody was going to accept that he was different via the highly impartial source of his daughter). It sounds almost twee to describe how important it was to him to do good. Even now, if I walk down the high street in either of his former constituencies, some stranger will come up and tell me that my dad helped them, in a manner they have never forgotten.
His job was also a complete pain on many occasions. I grew up and went to school in the first area he was an MP so many of my classmates’ parents knew who he was. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with Labour …” they would say when I came round to play, which is hard to care about when you’re seven and far more interested in dolls’ tea parties than political ones. My dad missed class plays and sports days, concerts and parents’ evenings because he was always at work. At secondary school, my staunch Conservative French teacher hated me on sight, and barely bothered to hide it, malheureusement. Often, I wished dad had a normal, boring career.
The last time my dad left home before he died was to vote on a bill in the Lords. He was so clearly on his last legs that it must have been obvious they wouldn’t see him again, and when he got up to leave both sides of the chamber gave him a standing ovation. He came outside and into the car where my mum was waiting for him without mentioning it. We only know because a colleague told us at his funeral. Short of extracting a dramatic promise from me on his deathbed, I can’t think of much that would be more persuasive to stay true to the party he dedicated his life to than that.
Like anybody who has lost someone they love, I’d give anything to spend even five minutes more with my dad. There’s lots I want to tell him, and I wouldn’t mind introducing him to his grandson, but also I’m desperate to know what he thinks of Labour in 2025. Oh, and if he remains of the opinion that going Green is sadly a wasted vote, or if it’s OK in the current circumstances. Somehow, I suspect the answer is still no.
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