YouSaid · the spoken record

Louise Haigh

lines on the record: 61
first: 2026-07-09
most recent: 2026-07-09
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, we were more sort of doing keepy uppies. It was to sort of launch the new parliamentary women's football club. But there's actually quite an iconic photo of me sat in the speaker's chair with the football. I did have to write and apologize to the speaker Burkow the next day.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have played football in the past, including, as I'm sure you're about to say, in the House of Commons Chamber. I'm sorry.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we genuinely believed we were going to lose it. We genuinely believed we were going to lose it to Dubai or China. And I think, as you say, all of us growing up have that very romantic kind of nostalgic feeling about watching the snooker on a bank holiday Monday. It's very personal to me as well because my brother was a snooker journalist and has a snooker podcast, so we're just such a Sheffield pair of siblings. No, was really.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was just a couple of months ago, just before the World Championships kicked off that we were able to announce with the government and the government had worked really closely with the council. And it is obviously something I'm incredibly grateful to Kir Starmer for to invest in the crucible and ensure that we kept the Snooker World Championships here for another 20 years at the very least. Yes, that deserves a clap in Sheffield, definitely.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is why the place based approach is so important. So, part of it is devolution and making sure that the authorities as close to the ground.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He absolutely is. And when he talks about the maker field test, it doesn't mean that every policy has to deliver funding for Makerfield. It's talking about how communities like Makerfield that feel that they have been ignored or not by served by the politics of Westminster will have to be top of the list now.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, equally, they're also very good friends. Oh, Louise? I am absolutely happy to say on record that I am not going to be the Chancellor”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that requires them. And if that were the case, they're very good friends, so that would be fine. They wouldn't be falling out.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, I'm fairly sure that's how it happens. It certainly was how it was happening when I was last in government. There needs to be a proper beefed up economic unit in number 10 that both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have access to and that can give the Prime Minister full suite of advice when they're making these huge decisions that affect the country.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Too few people, too few powers. So it doesn't, I think it's right to say at the moment that it doesn't have the ability to commission directly into the Treasury. So the Treasury has total capture over the fiscal context and essentially puts decisions to the Prime Minister who doesn't have full sight of the wider issue.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, exactly. And number 10, I think to say it is at the heart of running the fifth largest country in the world is criminally underpowered.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, I wrote about this earlier this year and was talking about big machinery of government changes. I think whilst Andy has a clear plan for some of that because he thinks really deeply about rewiring the state, I don't think in two and a half years we've got time to break up the treasury because it would just drag everything down and be a huge distraction. But as you say, this is not a new idea. It's been sort of, well, it was done, of course, by Harold Wilson in 1964 when he broke up the treasury and created the Department for Economic Affairs. And it does the rounds as an issue every so often because the Treasury is all powerful and does exert, I think, too much power over other areas of public policy. Even within my budget, when I was the Secretary of State for Transport, I was allocated a budget, an annual budget, but I still had to go and get sign up from the Treasury for every single thing within that budget that I spent.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, think about what he has been through as great a Manchester Mayor through the pandemic, through terrorist attacks, and he's led the police. He's led the health service there. There will have been very difficult decisions and very difficult trade-offs, as there always is in government. But just on the imperial finance department, I did actually go for a drink with Rachel Reeves this week, and she joked that she should have turned up with a crown and scepter as a result of my comments.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't think you can get in frontline politics for 25 years as Andy has and get to where he has now without making some really, really difficult”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no easy choices, and I think part of the problem when we came into government was that we thought there would be and we thought there's a strand, I think, that goes through the Labour Party sometimes that just thinks the opposition, the Tories are the bad guys, and they'll have made loads of really bad, wrong decisions, and will go in and we'll make meta ones. And actually, the experience of government is there's just loads of bad choices. It's like, do you want this terrible thing or that equally terrible thing and you've got to just measure it up on the basis of risk?”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem, unfortunately, was that lots of MPs were raising their concerns with the centre, with ministers, with number 10, with the whips. And I know the whips were feeding that in and saying there's going to be a real problem here. And again, I'm sorry, but to go back to that boys club, there was a, well, they'll just do what they're told. We don't care that these concerns are being raised. They will go through the lobbies and they will vote for the bill. And a combination of the very, very real concerns that people had them not being listened to, them not being dressed, and that attitude from the centre created just that huge opposition that we saw that meant the whole thing collapsed in the end.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“100% at the irony is that Pip isn't actually just an out of work benefit. And the way the government were attempting to do it last year by cutting, it was always designed in order to cover the costs, the additional costs of being disabled. And the way the government had designed it last year would have meant some people who were in work but claiming things to help them get to work would actually fall out of work.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To work, and when you make just hacks like that, it pushes up costs elsewhere in the system, it pushes costs onto local authorities, it pushes costs onto housing. So it wouldn't sustainably bring down the welfare bill. And that's why Pat's done the right thing in bringing in Alan Milburn to look at this so it can be done in a properly long-term sustainable way and encouraging, really encouraging young people back.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely right, the welfare bill is ballooning massively and in large part because there has been such a huge increase in PIP and in youth unemployment. We inherited when we came into government a situation where a million young people, so under 24s, were out of work, not in education or training either. And that number hasn't shifted. And that is a terrible scarring effect for the economy, for society, but for those young people to be unemployed at that stage of your life can have profound consequences for the whole rest of your life. The problem with the way the government tried to attempt to tackle this issue last year was just very blunt short-term cuts, just hacking off the benefit eligibility and the amount that people would be entitled to. And the reason why so many labour MPs were really concerned about it was because there was no sense of how these people would be able to live their lives. Some of them just obviously not able.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm growing up in Sheffield in the 90s. The thing that has always motivated me is the rampant inequality in this country. The fact that some people can barely afford to put a roof over their houses or over themselves or has to fight so hard every week to put food on the table and pay their bills for their children. And some people have more wealth than they can spend in a thousand lifetimes. And Sheffield is a wonderful, wonderful city, but unfortunately it remains quite an unequal one. Danny Dorling did this famous study about the bus route that goes across most of the length kind of west to east of Sheffield and you lose 10 years of your life expectancy along that bus route.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my granddad was in the FBU. Yeah, the Fire Brigade Union, sorry, you keep on spelling out my acronyms for me, which was actually even more interesting that he was in the Fire Brigades union, because he'd actually lost a leg in the Second World War. He was a Royal Marine Commando, and he lost his leg charging a machine gun nest in northern Italy. But then he went on, he lived in Chesterfield, which is not far from where we are now, and he worked in the fire service and was in the FBU. My mum's brother as well, so that was my mum's dad. My mum's brother was a miner who was on strike in the 84-85 strike. So there was politics kind of very much in the background, in the extended family growing up, but I actually never grew up around party politics at all. I couldn't tell you that anyone, particularly around my youth, was a member of the political party. It was actually a teacher, like so many people, you know, it's teachers, isn't it, that are a big formative moments in their lives. And it was a teacher that encouraged me to join the Labour Party.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, she can't go and give him a ring. But yeah, of course I'm trepidatious. It's not an easy thing to do at all. And I look at the way Angela Rayna has been treated over the last few years. I look at the things that are said about Rachel Reeves. I've had the last 18 months as a backbencher being able to come to terms with some of that and focus on the things that matter in the constituency and not have to deal with that daily scrutiny. I look at Angela, who is also similarly about bencher, but still subject to the same level of scrutiny. And I don't, I genuinely don't know how they're still standing. They are incredibly resilient and incredibly impressive. So of course I worry about the pressure and the scrutiny.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, I don't know if I'm having a job. I genuinely don't. And I know far better than to try and brief myself into a job with you, Nick, because Andy absolutely hates that.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it was a dispute over pay, and they needed a pay settlement. I mean, you tell me how you fight them. It resolved. It was way below what other public sector workers received. It was actually quite a tough bargain.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is probably just drawn a bigger target on my back, but I don't think we can shy away from those kind of fights or making the argument.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, on the train drivers, they did get what sounded like a big rise because it was done over three years. They'd not had a pay rise in three years and they'd been on national strike for two years, which was causing, as I'm sure you'll remember, absolute havoc on the national railways. I sat back after doing the deal and allowed that narrative to take hold in the press. And I didn't go out and make the case loudly enough. I don't think the right-wing media are ever going to think very highly of me. So I don't think that the right thing to do in those scenarios is to sit back and avoid a fight. Because actually, I think what the public want to see is whose side politicians are on and they want to see us picking fights with vested interests and with corporate interests that don't work for the people of this country. So I guess what I'm saying, Nick.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had to open the papers most day to read the vicious briefing that was happening, you know, the horrible way they would talk about our colleagues to journalists.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The idea that there wasn't a Cabal of men that were deliberately mistreating women around the government is just fanciful.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think I certainly would take Bridget and Lisa's word for it. I mean, they have both been, as have I obviously, victims of incredibly sexist and unpleasant briefing in the press. Angela has the way Sue Gray was treated, was absolutely disgraceful. She was the”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, of course it takes a huge amount of work to set a culture in an organisation, and especially one as disparate and enormous and sweeping as the government and that has such an interaction with the media on a daily basis. So it's going to take leadership, not just from Andy, but from across the whole political and staff team. And we've really tried to model that already. You know, Andy was really clear in the by-election that he wasn't going to do traditional point scoring, that there wasn't going to be a negative campaign even against the reform candidate. And we've carried that over already. You know, there's been no negative briefing against any of our colleagues, which shouldn't be something to boast about, but is actually very, very different from, unfortunately, the culture that we have seen. We're really trying to model that, really trying to make sure that we only recruit people who are absolutely committed to that culture.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I just think, like I say, there are ways and means to deal with that. Unfortunately, I've had to sack people in my political career, and you don't have to do it in a way that, frankly, so hurtful.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I honestly don't, when your introduction, you said that some of my allies or those on the left of the party would say that I was punished for being seen as the voice of the left. I genuinely don't know because, like I say, Keir promoted me on a number of occasions. We always got on perfectly fine. So I can't, I really genuinely can't explain what went so disastrously wrong, but we've not had a single personal conversation since.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, like I say, none of them ever told me what additional information. None of them gave me the courtesy of telling me what that was. So still now, you don't know. Gave me a chance to defend myself. The circumstances of the conviction are exactly as I describe them now and exactly as I describe them to Kieran opposition. And if anything, as you've just pointed out, the issue has been overreported. There is nothing further to it.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, just categorically untrue, categorically untrue. And I've sought corrections on a number of occasions around that”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But to pretend that I hadn't told him and to brief so consistently and so viciously for quite a number of weeks after that was a deliberate attempt to knock my character down.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was Chief of Staff to Kestop. And asked for my resignation. And I had to really push even for a conversation with Kir. He didn't want to have that conversation with me himself. And both Morgan and he kept saying, well, additional information has emerged. But at no point would any of them tell me what that additional information was. And afterwards they repeated that. And it was painful because they could have said, look, these headlines are awful and it's not going to be nice for you to ride them out. And it wasn't. And to be honest, I would have agreed and I would have gone on that basis because I didn't particularly want to ride them out. It was embarrassing and it wasn't pleasant to go through.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said they wanted you out. Yeah. When it hit the headlines and when the Times got hold of the story, initially colleagues in number 10 were being supportive and put out a statement and the statement included, well, they signed the statement off from me, sorry, and the statement was very clear it was all disclosed to Kir Sarmer in opposition. But then Morgan rang me. Mor”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he kind of knew exactly what's prosecuted and what's not exactly so we went through the detail and he said, I'm really sorry. And then that was that. It was never mentioned again. So what happened?”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conviction was totally fine. And he said, I'm really, really sorry, Lou. That's awful. I don't know why you were prosecuted.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the crosshairs, I mean, the nature of the conviction that came to light all started from the fact that I was mugged when I was in my 20s and had my bag stolen. And when I went into work the following Monday, my boss at the time said, was your work phone in the bag stolen as well? And I mistakenly said yes. And it was a work Blackberry and they replaced it with a different phone. And it was only later that I realized that it hadn't been stolen, that it was in the flat. And because it was at that point a decommissioned BlackBerry, I didn't tell my work, and I should have, but as a result, I was prosecuted for fraud. And when I was in the shadow cabinet, I told Kir about this. And he was very empathetic. He was really, really decent about it. And I explained it was spent. I got a conditional discharge and I paid a £15 victim surcharge.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, of course he said yes, yes, yes, at that moment, doesn't he? Yeah, so obviously then he left Parliament, but I worked very closely with him as shadow transport secretary and transport secretary as I did with all the mayors. And then we became quite close after I resigned and he was very, very supportive of me publicly and privately in that period.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outside Yeah, I mean, we met in 2015 when I was first elected. We didn't know each other very well at all before my mum, who as you mentioned is here today, went to see him at a hustings because of course he was running for Labour leader then in Doncaster and marched up to him afterwards and said, will you give my daughter a job if you're elected leader?”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't know the jargon, all the MPs and the peers as well. And he topped all three. It was just miles ahead. And it just seemed negligent to not attempt to get the most popular politician in the country onto the”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've just been through that now. But what Andy did offer, I think in a way that no other candidate really could was an opportunity to unify the PLP and appeal to both potential reform candidates and green candidates. You looked at where Andy's polling was amongst the membership of the Labour Party, the public, and is standing in the PLP. That's”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let me say, first of all, add an angel of both my really good friends, and they are both incredible politicians, very, very talented, and of course we're both, and already obviously has been leader of the Labour Party. But I think”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very, very much so. We've seen Nigel Farage reinvent himself so many times. And the interesting thing in that by-election as well was the rise of Restore in even scarier prospect, obviously, than reform, because they are Rupert Lowe is explicitly a far right individual, whereas Nigel Ferrar's is always very careful to know where the line is and not go beyond it. He is clearly damaged for lots of reasons, partly Makerfield, but certainly the donations that he's taken, and he's clearly unused to the level of scrutiny that he's currently under and it's rattling him. But I don't think we should ever, ever write him off because he's proven so many times to be able to come back and grip the mood of the nation.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was. We'd just obviously been through the local elections and reform had won 50% of the vote in that seat. They'd won in every single ward and we were trailing on 24%. It was a huge challenge and a huge risk. But he was absolutely adamant that that was the seat he wanted to contest, partly because it is genuinely home and half of the seat is his old league constituency, but partly because he wanted to take on reform and show how they could be beaten. And he said to me, do you remember Lou, when we went for lunch last year and you said to me, you're going to have to show how you can take on Nigel Farage? And Annalise Midgeley was looking at me and she was like, you can't even remember the lunch, Lou, can you? Andy remembers everything you've ever said. So I had that thrown back at me. So I lost that argument and it would make her feel it was. But it was like everything with Andy. He's so instinctive and he was absolutely right. And it was the right seat at the right moment.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, he did to Hugh Grant turned up on the Wednesday night on the eve of polls. Steve Coog could have been there the weekend before. I mean, they'll be reeling now that we've left. It feels like a fever dream.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep, there was a wedding in the back which Andy joined in. There was a wake the following week, which Andy played a very big role in as well.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exotic birds and sell them to each other. I've never seen anything like it. They had a T Rex tribute band on one week. He had a few parties.”
2026-07-09 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · We've got a plan: Louise Haigh on her journey back to power · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source