YouSaid · the spoken record

Harriet Harman

lines on the record: 41
first: 2019-07-11
most recent: 2019-07-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I'm postcard scenario, I'm afraid, but I think that... You know, I mean, you're an institution. If you think I'm the establishment, an institution, take Nick Robinson, you know, so”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really don't know what to say about that, but I think it's going to be what they want to say. I think you will be probing, you're always probing what they perhaps don't want to say. And as a result, often their guards up”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These screens, we're going to be very Peripatetic, we're just going to be not just sitting in a studio like we are here. I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be talking as a member of parliament for the most inner city area to the person who represents the wild windsweptures of Cormorant. And I'll have, well, but it's not a technical problem. Honestly, trust me, Nick, technology these days, even an idiot can do it. So I'm not worried about that. We're all just going to let our hair down. It's going to be...”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Otherwise, Brexit is all about that, quotes big beasts, it's all about only about Brexit. And actually, MPs are getting on with their work in incredible ways.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to turn it off. I'm going to be chatting to MPs. Okay, it's the mother of the house podcast, mothcast. I'm very into branding. It's going to be called Housework, which is also, you know, brand terrific. And I'm going to be chatting to MPs about what's going on in their work life, in their home life, what they're able to achieve, what they aren't, and it's going to be very confessional. And we're all going to let our hair down, and I shall no doubt reveal all sorts of things that I'm not supposed to, and they will. And, you know, because otherwise...”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've got one of these little machines now with a big whiskery hat on. I've got all the technology going. That's not me wearing the whiskery hat. That's the sort of microphone.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when you've had big movements for social progress, there will be always some people who get there at a slower pace, but there's such an overwhelming majority of support for those things. But one of the things that I am concerned about is the regional inequality, that sense of these post-industrial areas, not the big cities in the north, but the smaller towns around them who really feel left behind and excluded. And that sense that when we were in government, we thought that it was going to be enough to have good tax credits, to have newly built schools, pensioners better off by financial transfers. We didn't actually regenerate those economies such that people wanted to stay there. And the legacy of that, I think, is a whole many communities just feeling left. Out, and that's a big equality issue that we need to tackle”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm nervous about the Brexit party for two reasons. One, because they represent Their reactionary culturally, and I feel they envision a Britain of the 1950s that they would like to take us back to, which we spent decades fighting our way out of. And I'm also concerned about the Brexit Party because the conservative party don't seem to be handling the situation very well. And it's allowing the Conservative Party to be pulled to the right. So I'm worried about them for two reasons.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I'm never panicking but that doesn't mean that I'm not energised for the quest. So I think panicking is pointless, wringing your hand is pointless. You just got to keep your sense of what you feel needs to happen. And you know, there's people out there that are depending on us. So us just giving up and wringing our hands and thinking this looks bad, that's not what I'm elected to do. I'm elected to press forward. So that's what I'm going to do and that's what my colleagues will be doing as well.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the Labour Party has been going for a hundred years. And over that course of time, we've had very serious problems. But the underpinning role of the Labour Party to speak up for people from Scotland, Wales and England about equality, about opportunity, about tackling injustice and prejudice and discrimination, that role is still the one that falls to us. And if you look at the course over a period of governments, social progress comes when labour is in government, and that's still the case. So that's what we're united to fight on for.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I do remember the time when we were only three points ahead of the Lib Dems in an election and everybody said Labour will never get back into government again. Labour is finished. And I just had a very strong belief that we were necessary, that our values and principles were good, and we just somehow had to fight our way through it. And I feel like that today. You know, the polls make very grim reading, the European election results were very grim, as were the previous council election results. But the question is how you react to that. Do you wring your hands or do you stand back like an observer and say, well, this is a bit rubbish, isn't it? I mean, what you need to do is just... Let the other views prevail.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I hope if we have a Labour government, it will be implemented. So Clause 1 of the Equality Act was about race discrimination, sex discrimination, discrimination on grounds of age and disability, but one of the big things that holds people back that permeates inequality is class, social class, your economic situation that you're brought up in. So I put in the Equality Act the first clause, which would require every public authority and agency in every decision they make to ensure that what they're doing is narrowing the gap between rich and poor. And unfortunately, the Conservatives didn't implement it because the Act was in 2010 and we lost government and they needed to implement it and they didn't, but it's still there, it's still on the statute book, it just must be brought into effect.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now got DWPs to be used to be used to But if I look across the time that I have been a minister and in the cabinet, I can think that there are things that I really wanted to do which I did manage to do, but they take an awful long time.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that when I look back on my ministerial career, I think of being able to change the law on domestic violence, having a new law on domestic violence. I think of bringing in the Equality Act. So actually, although I absolutely did loads of kind of cock-ups when I was minister and in fact got fired early on in my ministerial career, I actually...”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think in a way the speaker is a referee in that they have to make sure that in the chamber there is fairness between all sides and everybody gets their say because every constituency is equal. But they're not a referee in terms of the relationship of parliament and government. They are on parliament side to make sure that parliament can prevail.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't really sort of want to look ahead on that because it's like I wouldn't welcome if there was people, I mean, the speaker's given an indication that he's going to stand down, but he hasn't set a date. And I certainly wouldn't want people in Camwell and Peckham to start discussing what they were going to do when they took over my job. I just think, you know, that they just, you just got to support the person in the job, not start falling over yourself. And I've got loads of things that I'm doing right now as mother of the house and as Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham and Chair of the Human Rights Committee.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, we haven't got a vacancy at the moment. So I think it's right actually that John Burkow is staying on at this time of massive instability when Parliament is incredibly important and resilience of Parliament to get its way irrespective of whether or not this does not please the government.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that women and men are still not sharing power on equal terms in the House of Commons. Well, you know, when we get to our new prime minister, we'll have a man on Wednesdays Prime Minister's questions. We'll have a man as Prime Minister, a man as leader of the opposition. The third man will be the leader of the SNP. We've got a man in the chair. It'll look like the 1950s. Women are still always just subject to being invisible. There are more than 200 women there in the House of Commons doing amazing things, but it's still...”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kindred spirits on that side, and I remember saying to one woman who arrived in the House of Commons, one Tory woman, you know, was just chatting in the lady members' room, you know, waiting for the Lou, sort of what brought you into politics. And she said, oh, you did. And I was like, oh, I didn't realize that's what I was supposed to be doing. And I was very delighted that she was in politics, but was I supposed to be bringing women into the Tory party, but that spirit of the women's movement, whether it's in the SNP or the Lib Dems, is really an enormous social revolution and will not be turned back.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's very strange because the very, very few women Tory MPs they had were really kind of sort of tweedy matrons who disapproved of me as much as their male colleagues did. And we, of course, then had 100 Labour women coming in, you know, inspired by the women's movement in 1997 and the Tories still didn't have hardly any women. But now what we've got is we've got what I describe on the Tory benches as the daughters of the women's movement. They've been brought up by women who say, get out there, you can be equal. And it's quite baffling for me.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“admiration for how strong they are and how determined they are. I mean they are incredible the women in the House of Commons now.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a real misogynistic backlash. A whole load of women who feel that they are entitled having been elected to speak up they really, really unfortunately are met by a big misogynistic backlash. And any progressive movement always results in a backlash which tries to push things back. And it's very ugly and it's often violent. I mean, we lost Joe Cox. We nearly lost Rosie Cooper. It's not just verbal threats, it's verbal threats, which is intention to intimidate and to silence women. So all those women in the House of Commons now who are speaking up, they are getting barrages of abuse, which is designed to try and shut them up and for them not to have the temerity to be a woman in public life. And I'm just so full of admiration.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet, but I don't think it's any more male dominated than the organisations and institutions that support the Tory party. It's just that the women who are in the Labour Party as MPs are agents for change and therefore they are a challenge to power rather than just people who are going to rise up through the system without ruffling feathers.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were a daily aggravation and challenge to the male establishment in the Labour Party, and that means that you don't like them very much and you don't want to be admiring them as a leader. You want them to shut up.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It absolutely has to be a woman leading the Labour Party and the idea that we can't find an excellent woman leader, woman prime minister in the Labour Party is ridiculous. And it's just been a default position to have one man after another. But the only explanation that I can find of it is one offered to me by Jess Phillips. I'm not sure it is. It's certainly not an excuse, but I suppose it's a bit of an explanation, which is that the women in the Labour Party are subversive. We're about change. We're in there saying things aren't right. We want everything to change. And we want power on equal terms, whereas the women in the previous days in the Tory party, and I think up until including Theresa May, more or less did it on the man's terms. I'm going to beat the men at their own game. I'm not here to throw over the traces and make everything different. And therefore, they weren't as subversive and challenging force. I mean, we...”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, it is embarrassing, excruciating, wrong, and our next needer needs to be a woman full stop. This is my message to all the aspiring and excellent men in the Labour Party. You can make progress and be ambitious, you can be deputy. And I'm deadly serious about that. But I think actually...”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was a torment for a young woman feminist who'd all, we saw labor as the home for progress. After all, the Conservatives by their very name, they were not about change. Yet blow me down the first woman prime minister was Margaret Thatcher, who represented everything that we were fighting against being a arch Tory on the right wing of her party. So that was really a tough moment for us feminists, but we quickly got over it and got a whole load of banners together saying the First Lady puts women last.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was very like that, and it was a different world. But I think that men found it very threatening because actually what I was representing is a view which was that parliament was wrong because politics was not just for men, it had to be for women as well as men and that meant we had to be sharing power on equal terms. And they saw women as women like their wives who took second place, who supported them because they were the most important thing. And I was like, no, we want to have our own say. And that was very troubling and disturbing and therefore they ganged up against me. But I was not going to be driven out because I knew that there was a change that needed to be driven forward.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will not really tears because I'm not a sort of weepy type, but it was really hard. I would be called a stupid cow across the chamber. You know, people would constantly in the media describe my colleagues as saying that I was thick. I mean, it was really very hard and there weren't any other women.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I mean, it was just, I mean, remember that there was only 3% women in those days. I wanted Parliament to change and to modernise, but I knew I was going to have to do things differently. And I really did suffer in those early years. And so many times I was ready to throw in the towel and just say, I can't do this anymore. It's just too hard.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would make us legislators, not just scrutineers. And I think the public would like that because if we do agree, then why argue for the sake of it? Let's not fudge our disagreements. But where we agree, let's crack on with it and not wait for government.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there is that too, but now there are things where, I mean, for example, on issues to do with women, there are now women on the other side of the house who are having babies who are concerned about maternity services, who are trying to be working in the House of Commons as well as bringing up their kids. And actually, you know, we can work together on certain things. I think one of the things that I'd like to see happen at the moment we have a backbench business committee. I mean, this is all slightly technical, but a backbench business committee, and they can carve out some time for backbenchers to debates where there's something that backbenchers want to talk about, but the government don't want to allocate it time. I think that should be upgraded to a backbenchers legislation committee so that we can actually legislate. Because at the moment, you can only legislate if the government say, I'm going to legislate on this and this is our priority.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was a very combative and conflicted time. I mean, people think that it's combative and conflicted now, and it certainly is, but it has been in the past as well. But what is different and the difference that Brexit's made is that it's eroded the power of the whips and therefore MPs are more likely to talk across the different sides, not just on their own side, it's created cross-party alliances. All sorts of things are going on, which means that the young ones, I see them chatting between divisions, they vote separately, but then they're all chatting away. They know each other, they're friends, and I think in a way it means that they can work together in a way that they didn't used to before. And that's for the good.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely not because basically it was very binary. There was the Tory party and we were against everything they stood for and we were the Labour Party, the underdogs fighting our way through and we were really dragging behind in the opinion polls. Lots of terrible things were happening in my constituents when you were first elected. Yes. So the height of that.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are. We are father and mother of the house, respectively, and look after all the MPs in the House, but we're not actually married. But we might as well be because we've been together for so long on this. When we were first in the House, he was the Praetorian guard of Thatcher's cabinet, you know, the devil incarnate as far as I was concerned. And I certainly wouldn't have talked to him or really any other Tory and didn't for about 20 years. The atmosphere is so different in the House now. And he's been on such a journey.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Potential story I find hard to believe. I did have a bit of a laugh with Father of the House, the said Ken Clark, because I said I would like to sit down and chat to him on my mothcast.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they are relaxed, but they also are entitled to be relaxed with me because they know I will not stitch them up. I'm not a journalist. I'm not looking for a story. I just want them to be able to... To tell me what's making them tick and what's going on. Do you think”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's going to be called housework, and it's basically, I mean, Brexit has thrown a hand grenade into the work not only of Parliament as a whole, but individual MPs, their work lives, their home lives. And there's two things going on. One is massive disruption that's been created by Brexit, but also it's masking all the incredible work that MPs are actually doing and how they feel about it. And also, I am incredibly nosy. I just cannot beat down my nosiness. So I'm going with it. And I'm just going to be talking to them about what makes them tick. So I think it's going to be quite confessional. And they know, because I'm the mother of the house for heaven's sake, you can tell your mother anything. They are going to”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so I thought this is now a thing. So I put it on my notepaper, Mother of the House, Moth for Short. Everything's got to have an abbreviation. And I put it on my Twitter and now I'm doing a mothcast.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said, oh, and it's me. So I kind of said it as a joke. And then actually Theresa May picked it up the following election and said we don't just have a father of the house, we have a mother of the house.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you should actually. I mean, it's really a thing. It's a real thing. People have known about, well, a few people have known about the father of the house. And the father of the house is the longest serving MP. So after a general election, when somebody's got to preside over the election of the Speaker and then things go up and running, it's the father of the house who gets all the newly elected MPs together and conducts this election. Ken Clark is the father of the House at the moment. And he says he doesn't really like being father of the House. Well, I made a joke when I was doing an introduction to the new speaker when I was standing in as Labour leader and said, oh, you know, it's wonderful about the father of the house and, you know, he's presided over us all. And then I suddenly said, oh, stuff it. I'm fed up with his patriarchy. What about we have a mother of the house? And then I suddenly realized, of course, I was the longest serving woman.”
2019-07-11 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Harriet Harman One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source