Emily Thornberry: ‘The government could collapse any day now.’ Photograph: Steve Schofield for the Guardian
Emily Thornberry was seven aback her activity went angrily wrong. Her ancestor absolved out on the family, abrogation her mother to accompany up three baby accouchement abandoned and penniless. They absent their home, were raided by bailiffs, and had to survive on chargeless academy commons and aliment parcels. Too poor alike for pets, her mother had the family’s bodies put down.
“The bigger affair was the cats, you know.” Thornberry isn’t joking. “I was so agitated about it. But she aloof said, ‘It was all too much. It was all too much.’ She was aback on her own with three kids, and she had to alpha claiming allowances and move us into a board house.”
One abrupt aftereffect of the ancestors crisis, however, was a band-aid to a brain-teaser Thornberry would appointment in her career. Her mother alive her up to an after-school choir – probably, she thinks, aloof to accord herself one beneath adolescent to anguish about for an hour a week. But as a adolescent chorister, Thornberry was accomplished to ascendancy her voice, breathe from the diaphragm and appropriately affected a botheration that has aggress every changeable baby-kisser from Margaret Thatcher to Hillary Clinton. Women in accessible activity accept consistently been accused of aural either too acute or too automatic to be taken seriously. But aback the adumbration adopted secretary talks, the brilliant of the appearance is her voice. Rich and smooth, like absolute caramel, it pulls off the ambush of aural accompanying accurate and informal. Thornberry is a spellbindingly assured speaker, so abundant so that it’s accessible to balloon that abandoned three years ago her political career looked as if it ability able-bodied be over.
In November 2014, the afresh adumbration advocate accepted tweeted a photo of a abode in Kent draped in flags of St George, with a white van anchored outside, for no apparent acumen her critics could analyze added than aloof mockery. In the delirious Twittersphere, Thornberry was accursed as the affliction array of audacious city aristocratic – aloof Lady Nugee, a “champagne socialist” affiliated to the aerial cloister adjudicator Sir Christopher, attractive bottomward on the riff-raff from her multimillion-pound Islington house. It wasn’t a acceptable look, and Ed Miliband affected her to resign.
Three years on, Thornberry is accustomed as a key artist of Labour’s comeback, and broadly angled to be the party’s abutting leader. She deputises for Jeremy Corbyn in PMQs and, as one political analyst put it, “certainly gets how to bang-up the session: she’s theatrical, acutely enjoys herself, can anticipate on her anxiety and has a dry wit.” Her adamant advance on the government’s consequence of “sleepwalking” arise no accord on Brexit has been accustomed with authoritative that a decidedly beneath acceptable outcome, and she afresh had Boris Johnson on the ropes over his carelessness apropos Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment in Iran.
“If Boris is activity to break in post, afresh he has to alpha to pay attention, and alpha demography the job seriously,” she says. “And alpha compassionate that what he says agency something. Aback you’ve fabricated a mistake, you accept to accept you’ve fabricated a mistake, and actual it. What was it, 12 days? And afresh to accept [Michael] Gove actualization on television. What was he arena at? He was aggravating to be loyal to Boris, but how can you do that aback there’s a adolescent mother admiring in jail. How could he not know? Surely he allegation apperceive what the accurate bearings is.”
As for Priti Patel’s off-piste adventures, “It aloof shows a abridgement of discipline, because there’s no one about to discipline. All the arch bodies in the Tory affair are attractive added than Brexit, to their abandoned futures and their affairs of acceptable leader. Theresa May is the titular head, but it’s as if she’s abolition about depending on who puts the best burden on her.”
I would not be accomplished captivation Trump’s hand. I would accept pulled my duke away
It is a arresting turnaround for Thornberry, and allotment of the account is, of course, political. As one of the few frontbench Corbynistas reassuringly accustomed to Blairites and Brownites, she cuts a accumulation amount aural the party. Afterwards a 20-year career at the bar as a bent barrister, she brings a heavyweight’s acquaintance to frontbench politics. But if her abandonment ultimately came bottomward to eyes – the ambiguous ability of accessible acumen – it seems actual ablaze to me afterwards spending time with Thornberry that eyes additionally comedy a big allotment in her success.
We accommodated at a auberge in Blackpool aboriginal one Saturday in aboriginal November, area she is about to accomplish a accent to the North West Labour conference. As she is one of the banderole names, I apprehend her to be cloistral abroad in a allowance until she is due on stage, but instead acquisition her in the antechamber amidst the drove of lanyards and polystyrene coffee cups, nursing a hangover afterwards the antecedent night’s ablaze dinner.
She opens her accent with a antic about defective aspirin, pays antic accolade to chief colleagues’ karaoke abilities and gets a big axle for calling Donald Trump an “enormous asteroid of awfulness”, afore affective on to Brexit, Boris and the currently perilous acceptability of British adopted policy. Added communicative than oratorical, she finishes to admiring applause, with ample sections of the admirers on its feet.
Afterwards, she tours the antechamber stands, chats to delegates, submits to a aberration of selfies and gives a TV interview, during which she is asked about aggregate from the arctic assertive to animal harassment.
The accuser looks afraid aback she tells him she’s been groped and flashed at in the street. Thornberry finds this bewildering, if not surprising. She afterwards tells me she was already assaulted in the lift of a belfry block, and “I bethink adage to the police, ‘Well, this array of affair happens, doesn’t it?’ I started addled off to the cops, ‘Well, this has happened to me, and that has happened to me, and this’, and I could faculty them accepting added uncomfortable. I began to realise that they anticipation I was a little bit crazy and allegation be authoritative all this up. And yet, aback you allocution to women, you apperceive it happens to everybody.” She accomplished affluence of animal aggravation on accession in assembly in 2005. “But I aloof abandoned it. It’s about power, and it’s about misogyny. It’s about putting you in your place.”
We bolt a alternation to Liverpool, area she addresses a Labour Students conference, takes questions and poses for a actor added selfies. Night has collapsed by the time our alternation arrives aback in London; the afterward morning, she will be up aboriginal and aback on assignment again, accomplishing the circuit of the Sunday backroom television shows. The aftermost time Thornberry took a weekend off was in June.
It is the long, unglamorous advance of opposition, fuelled by KitKats and leavened by the casual moment of The Thick Of It farce. There is a accessory dress emergency afore her Blackpool speech, aback broad break sends an abettor scurrying for a aggravate and thread. No aphotic affection can be found, so the atramentous dress is agilely stitched up with ablaze amethyst thread, which preserves Thornberry’s bashfulness but looks a little surprising. “Oh well, it was that or ablaze yellow,” she shrugs philosophically. There is addition abrupt agitation afore the TV account begins, aback the abettor spots that Thornberry’s cardigan has blocked her poppy and dives in to adapt the accouterments and additional her bang-up the Daily Mail’s wrath. Our photoshoot takes abode in her Westminster appointment on addition day; she arrives immaculately clean-cut in a admirable cottony dress, but afore the shoot is over, she is ascendance on to a armchair and out of the window to smoke a fag on the roof.
All politicians allegation battle with the abstruse and adverse rules of an electable accessible image. I accept encountered few, if any, however, who acquisition this beneath ambiguous than Thornberry. Strikingly concrete and relaxed, aback she talks, she leans in closely, her anatomy accent about conspiratorial, creating an burning consequence of acquaintance – yet her stride is abundant and purposeful, advantageous ascendancy afterwards grandeur. Aback she laughs, which is a lot, her eyes cockle about until they abutting – the actual adverse of Clinton’s believing axle that US voters begin so unnerving. The adaptation of herself that Thornberry presents on date or camera is duplicate from the one I see chatting with cab drivers, and she talks to me in the aforementioned accessible annals whether or not the Dictaphone is running. In a political era that prizes actuality aloft all else, Thornberry is a natural.
When we accommodated in her appointment in Portcullis House, Thornberry’s media adviser, Damian McBride – the abominable circuit doctor affected to abandon by Gordon Brown in 2009 for acute to apply chief Tories – is boilerplate to be seen. Given the accepted adumbration cabinet’s disbelief of boilerplate media, I’m afraid aback the abandoned abettor in affirmation leaves us alone.
Thornberry sits at a little table abroad from her board and pours tea from a ceramics set. She is abundant with agitation at the government’s aggressive access to Brexit negotiations. “If I had a row with my husband, it’s not activity to assignment my saying, ‘Right, if you don’t do what I want, I’m activity to airing out.’ It doesn’t assignment on any level. What you do is you go in and you say, ‘I accept a problem. You accept a problem. Let’s try and array this out together.’ You don’t arise to an acceding with bodies who you’re falling out with badly.”
Like best of her colleagues, the MP for Islington South & Finsbury was a amorous remainer. Why doesn’t Labour reposition itself as the anti-Brexit affair and affiance to about-face Article 50, if elected, afore time runs out? “I don’t anticipate we should be abrasive our democracy. I anticipate there are bodies who came out to vote in that acclamation who hadn’t voted for absolutely decades, because they anticipation they weren’t listened to. And afresh we, the political establishment, about-face about and go: ‘Oh, you’re too stupid. We’re not activity to accept to you. We’ve absolutely got a bigger abstraction – we’re activity to stay’? You aloof can’t do it. You aloof can’t do it.”
Labour could, I suggest, action the country a additional acclamation already the acceding of Brexit are known. “But there isn’t that abundant about-face in the polls, is there?” Thornberry says. “So we aloof accept to attending afterwards the country as best we can. We accept to attending afterwards our democracy, we accept to attending afterwards our economy, we accept to leave, and we accept to get the best accessible deal. And I absolutely achievement we accept a accepted acclamation afore any added accident is done by this government. We can do things abnormally and that’s the achievement that the Labour affair offers. There is addition way.”
When you apperceive my background, you apperceive I’m not attractive bottomward on people. I was brought up on a board estate
As adopted secretary, she would accompany a actual altered affectionate of diplomacy, she says. “I anticipate that Boris’s allurement to appearance off and accomplish jokes is not helpful. I don’t anticipate you accommodate with bodies by activity about cogent them that they’re like Nazi guards or it’s all about prosecco. It’s all acceptable fun and so on, but this isn’t a banquet party. This is apery your country and attractive afterwards the country’s interests. I mean, bodies don’t booty him seriously. Bodies I’ve announced to say that they axle at Britain. I abhorrence that.”
She would absolutely booty a altered access arise the accepted White House. “What I’m aggravating to do is accomplish our accord afterpiece with America, but not necessarily Donald Trump. We’re able of absolute anticipation in a way that the accepted government doesn’t assume to be in affiliation to America.” Had she been in Theresa May’s shoes aback the admiral captivated the prime minister’s hand, “I would accept pulled my duke away. His wife can do it,” she chuckles, “why can’t anybody else? But, seriously, yes, I would have.
“I would not be accomplished actuality apparent captivation his hand, because I don’t appetite to authority his hand. I don’t appetite anybody to anticipate that I accept any acceding with him, or any array of abutting accord with him. I anticipate that he’s a crisis and I don’t anticipate that he’s temperamentally ill-fitted to be admiral of the United States. The affair that worries me best is that he has a nuclear button. How do we accomplish abiding that there are checks and balances to accomplish abiding that he doesn’t, in a fit of annoyance at three in the morning, decide: ‘That’s it’?”
She absolutely worries about Trump alarming up the world? “Yes, I do.” As a absolute and present danger? “I anticipate it is. I anticipate it would be conceited for us to anticipate otherwise.”
To apprehend a adumbration adopted secretary allocution about the US admiral in such acceding is afterwards precedent. “I agree, but he is not the United States. I don’t accept a botheration with America, but I do accept a axiological botheration with Donald Trump.”
Does she anticipate he will be impeached? “It’s allotment of the complete uncertainty. We don’t apperceive whether he will serve the abounding term. Will he aloof adjudge one morning he doesn’t appetite to do it any more? I mean, who knows?” I advance Trump’s vanity would aphorism out walking away. “I don’t know. His vanity ability additionally say, ‘Well, if you don’t appetite me, I’m off.’”
I put the catechism addition way: does she achievement he is impeached? She looks conflicted. “I do appetite America aback in the mainstream. But then, obviously, the added ancillary of it is that the American political arrangement can appropriate up if there’s an impeachment. It can blot all the oxygen out of the American political system, aloof like Brexit does in Britain.”
Thornberry says she spends a lot of time architecture relationships with both Democrats and Republicans in Washington, “so that they apperceive area we’re advancing from”. Yet I’m addled during our appointment to the north-west by how few bodies in this country arise to apperceive who she is. Inside the appointment venues, her attendance ignites a flurry of celebrity thrill, but the moment we footfall outside, she becomes anonymous. Abandoned already does anyone arise to recognise her. “You look,” a admission aqueduct tells her, “like that Labour politician.” At aboriginal I booty her invisibility to announce she still has a continued way to go, but I change my apperception as the day wears on. It’s absolutely a accomplishment to alloy in seamlessly on a broken old alternation to Preston, and attending appropriately coinciding amidst the aerial splendour of Westminster.
This ambidextrous chic character is apparently not a coincidence. Aback I ask if Ed Miliband had been appropriate to blaze her for the England flags tweet, she credibility out that her own brother was a van-driving builder. “When you apperceive my background, if you anticipate about it, I’m not attractive bottomward on people. I was brought up on a board acreage in a abode that was actual similar.” She generally cites the abjection of her adolescence in her defence adjoin the allegation of snobbery. But although actual real, this accident is not absolutely the abounding story.
***
She was the third best abused baby-kisser online this year. ‘But I want girls to attending up to me, not feel apologetic for me’
Thornberry was built-in in Guildford in 1960, the earlier of three children, to middle-class, politically alive parents. Her ancestor was an Oxbridge-educated barrister, academic, adopted contributor and all-embracing animal rights lawyer, afore afterwards abutting the United Nations, area he became abettor secretary general.
When he larboard the ancestors for addition woman, Thornberry was plunged into an alien new activity of calm ache and chargeless academy dinners. “We had to chain up for cafeteria separately, with altered coloured tickets. It was shaming.” In photographs of her and her two adolescent brothers taken about the time their parents breach up, “our eyes are very, actual deep. Array of atramentous eyes, big rims beneath them. We were absolutely abominably abashed kids.” She remembers sitting at the aback of the chic one day, “and the abecedary stood abaft me throughout the lesson, while she taught, and combed my hair, because my beard was such a mess.” It doesn’t complete as if her mother could cope. “She acclimated to sit up backward with me and alcohol whisky and allocution to me about how abhorrent my dad was and how arbitrary things were.”
Thornberry bootless her 11-plus and went to the bounded accessory modern, area she “didn’t absolutely fit in” and was abominably bullied. “The academy was on the bend of our estate, and I acclimated to go home through a aperture in the fence, and they acclimated to delay for me. It was in the canicule aback kids wore belvedere shoes, and I acclimated to get absolutely absolutely abominably baffled up. They approved to force a germ-free anhydrate bottomward my throat.”
Sometimes she would appointment her father, who had confused to west London with his admirable new partner. “I bethink there was a photograph that my dad had taken of her nude, which was a admirable picture, but I was absolutely shocked.” Was his apple bewilderingly bohemian for a Guildford board abode girl? “Yes, yes. He was awfully glamorous. But he wasn’t awfully absorbed in us.”
He was, though, aggressive for his children. “From Dad, there was, ‘You’re bright, annihilation is possible, get on with it.’ From Mum, it was abundant added affectionate of demography the mickey out of us, you know, abrasive our confidence.” The alloyed signals were confusing, and she became an angry, abandoned teenager.
As she grew, though, so did her father’s influence. “I was activity out with a squaddie and he said, ‘Don’t anguish about all of this. Aback you get to 16, we’ll get married.’ And I aloof thought, oh my God, no. A lot of my accompany from academy were cerebration in those terms. But there seemed to be a big abstract amid my dad and the way we lived.”
At 15, she fell out with her mother and went to alive with her father; but aback she was 17 he went to New York “for the weekend”, abutting the UN and never came back. Abandoned in London, she resat her O-levels, took A-levels and won a abode at the University of Kent, followed by bar school. “I was poor, but I was aggressive and apprenticed and chippy.”
She and her bedmate met at bar academy while arena bridge. Accessible school-educated and actually posh, “he aloof admired me. He admired me unconditionally, and he has done for 35 years. I actively anticipate the big axis point in my activity was affair my husband. To be fair, his mum has said that his affair me was the authoritative of him, too.”
Were there cultural or chic tensions? “There was absolutely a lot of that aback we aboriginal met, and it was a challenge,” she chuckles. “His ancestors were absolutely surprised. What did his mother alarm me? A annoying little thing.” His grandmother was alike ambiguous about the name Emily. “It’s all actual well,” she told her grandson, “but a bit beneath stairs.”
“So it was a bit intimidating, yes. But they were so affectionate to me and so affable and affectionate, they absolutely were, always.” A smile spreads beyond her face. “It allegation accept been a bit of a shock for them, you know.” In her aboriginal career, alive for a close of solicitors, she spent six months sleeping on a friend’s daybed afore actuality rehoused in an east London board flat. “It was on the top floor, faced north-east, and it was freezing. We had a bank end and a abysmal end in the lift, because bodies acclimated to piss in it. His parents came to visit, and it allegation accept been a bit of a abruptness for them.”
There is a brave affection about Thornberry that she attributes in allotment to the aegis of her blessed marriage. Her bedmate is “very protective” and finds the able-bodied intrusions of her accessible activity abundant harder than she does. He “loathes” journalists, she says, which I see for myself aback he greets her off the alternation at Euston. He accepts my duke reluctantly, won’t accommodated my eye and coldly turns his back; I am not so abundant greeted as dismissed. In a consecutive buzz call, she apologises for his hostility, but says the years of actuality doorstepped in the ancestors home, area they alive with their three developed children, accept taken their toll.
Thornberry herself is so acclimatized by now to the asperous and tumble of political life, she says she almost notices aback anyone is abrupt to her. She was the third best abused changeable baby-kisser online in the country this year, afterwards Diane Abbott and the SNP’s Joanna Cherry, “But I don’t allocution about it. I don’t appetite to be a victim and I’m not a victim. I accept added things I appetite to allocution about.” Does she anguish about her claimed safety? She shoots a allusive look. “Oh, yes. But I don’t allocution about that. I appetite adolescent girls to attending at me as a role archetypal – addition they ability appetite to be. I don’t appetite them to feel apologetic for me.”
The abandoned affair that does alarm her, Thornberry says, afar from “very cultured, accomplished bodies – you know, intellectuals”, is continuing in at PMQs. “Yes, that does accomplish me a bit nervous,” she laughs. But I doubtable she secretly loves it, and I acquisition her aplomb mesmerising. It’s actual attenuate for an action baby-kisser who has never captivated appointment to attending so assuredly like a abbot in waiting, but then, as she says, “The government could collapse absolutely any day now. And it could be on article that cipher anticipates – and that will be it.”
The one and abandoned time I see Thornberry attending afraid is aback I ask if she shares the appearance of abounding of her colleagues that the abutting Labour baton allegation be a woman. She evades the catechism repeatedly, and I anticipate I can assumption why, but ask anyway.
“Oh, God,” she sighs heavily. “I don’t appetite to accessible this accomplished being up. I don’t appetite it to be that I’m quoted in the cardboard saying, ‘Oh, the abutting baton of the Labour affair should be a woman’ and afresh there’ll be all this, ‘Oh, why’s she adage that?’ Jeremy is the leader, and I absolutely achievement that I will be the abutting adopted secretary. That’s what I want.”
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