YouSaid · the spoken record

Stella Creasy

lines on the record: 36
first: 2019-05-17
most recent: 2019-05-17
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

“No, look, I have a huge amount of respect for the people I work with, and I see things in a different way. Someone once said to me, oh, you're a bit like the Uber of politics, as though they thought that was an insult. And actually, I thought, well, some bit of creative disruption might not be a bad thing. But if you can't win an argument, you can't make any change happen. So if I wasn't able to work with other people, we wouldn't have been able to make the progress we have on Northern Ireland or payday loans. I just see things a different light, that's all.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I can't sit here and say, look, I think the system is broken and then say, ah, but what I want to do is keep the system ticking over. I think we need wide-scale political, economic, cultural reform. So I want to be part of that. I want to be part of making those arguments. I will do that wherever I am. There is no hospitals I was strong.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because So it depends on what battle you're talking about. If you're talking about anti-Semitism, that is a battle for the soul of the Labour movement because you cannot be an anti-racist party and tolerate racism. And we have a big problem with anti-Semitism. And I have it in my local community sadly, and we have it at national level. And I've been one of the people championing an independent process because I think it's not enough to go, there's a problem you have to come up with an answer. If it's about policy issues like Brexit, you have to have a better process. And I think it is pretty telling that right now, if we're honest, a lot of members are frustrated because they feel like, well, we've had all these debates and we've been clear that we want a second referendum to be part of our policy and yet that doesn't seem to be coming through in what's being said. So I think there's a case for reform and what we're doing as a party as well as what we're doing as a country. I'm genuinely in favour of saying maybe there's a better way of doing this about a lot of things. That's probably why most leaders of political parties think of me as a pain in the neck.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another new one called No, no, I No, I'm a socialist, you know, I've lost lots of arguments within the labour movement. I'm still losing lots of arguments, but I've won some too. I have no problem with being in a political movement where there are differences of opinion. I have a problem being in a movement where then that becomes a source of harassment and where people are being drummed out. And I think the worry right now is that is happening. It breaks my heart when I see people like Bridget Prentiss and Sheila Murphy feel that they can no longer be part of the labour movement. Because, you know, as a political movement built on the idea that collective action changes the world, losing people is never a good thing.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sorry, I need to know what you stand for, what you do before I vote for you. That's not an unreasonable request from the British public.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In what way? I mean, Tom's done an amazing job, and Tom is working very hard, and I think has been very clear on Brexit, actually, to the point where he's taken a lot of abuse for that, which is insane to me. I mean, if your Democratic socialism doesn't involve debate and discussion, it's not democratic and it's not socialism. I come from a different part of the Labour movement. I come from the cooperative wing of the Labour Movement. That hippie earnest, let's get everyone involved. I mean, I'm your worst nightmare as your MP. I always say to people, if you come to me about an issue, I am going to get you involved. I need to warn you. I've told you about it and now I can go home and have a cup of tea. It's like, great, when's the revolution?”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because there's never been a single change, a single campaign, a single difference that I like to think I've been part of that's been me on my own. It's about the consensus and the people that you build with you. And you can't do that if you're just talking to an echo chamber.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, they're very clear about it online and offline. Again, as my mother would say, it's not what matters. What matters is the changes that you're trying to make. Does it drain you? Yeah, absolutely. Is it about your own integrity? Yes, it's frustrating. It's frustrating being told that as somebody who, for example, has been campaigning on PFI for a windfall tax or who took on the payday lenders or took on the DUP that I'm this terrible right-wing Zionist zealot. Yeah, but it's also a kind of political jiu-jitsu where you get bogged down in this agenda that is about the badge that you wear rather than the difference that you make. I didn't go into politics to be like scouting and I used to work for the scouts where you wear various badges and drink fair trade and that's enough. I went in to change the world.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. And I think you also have to separate out people who have a genuine concern about a policy area and people have a different agenda. And I have huge amounts of respect for people who disagree with me. I learn a lot from people disagreeing with me. So many people disagreed with me over payday lending. It was really, really helpful because it made me think, well, what are their concerns and how can I address them? I have zero time for people being tribal and zero time. I've been in the Labour Party 26 years now, right? I've never agreed with any Labour leader entirely. They will all say I'm a pain in the neck, but I've always campaigned for Labour governments. I'm a woman who knows her own mind and I didn't join a cult and I'm not going to start acting slavishly now.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About whether to support the airstrikes, which we now know have basically broken up ISIS, but at the time, it was a risk, there was no good option there. So I didn't expect those people to necessarily agree with me, but I wanted to show them essentially my homework and how I'd come to the decision that I came to. And I think people respected that.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So at the time, what I did is what I will always do. I did lots of public meetings, lots of engagement. So I held a meeting 350 local residents showed up to talk about the issue. I brought somebody along who'd voted differently from me.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I would no more say to somebody, don't walk the streets than I would say, we'll give up social media. Everybody has to find their own way of dealing with it. For me, I'm very clear I call people out. I will often be what I call aggressively nice to them and say, thank you so much for that commentary. I will send people kitten pictures if I think they need to calm down. But above all, I don't want to send the message to the next generation of campaigners, the next generation of politicians, that this is par for the course, because if we let that settlers normal, it's a very dangerous path to go on. I get Schaustat in the street as well as online as well. So it is normalising a very toxic culture, I think, for everybody.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It here on this podcast. But if that was about racism or religious identity, we'd immediately say, well, that's criminal. That's a form of hate crime. So we're talking about equalizing the protections that we give people. I think it's really important not to separate online and offline. Frankly, Twitter doesn't make you a twat. If you're a twat already, having another forum in which to express your views and to express your hatred just shows you up for what you are.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, this is one of the other campaigns I'm working on at the moment is to make misogyny and hate crime along with, because at the moment, as a woman, you are protected in the workplace, but as soon as you step out onto the streets or you're online, you're not. And as we've seen with what's been happening to Jess, my colleague Jess Phillips, who is getting the most vile, misogynistic abuse and threats and discussion about whether she would be raped or not, we can't normalize that. And yet that was about...”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, nobody ever copes with it, and I don't think it's really important that we look at this debate again through the right end of the telescope, where we stop talking about how you manage it and the kind of don't feed the trolls thing, as if these people will stop because you haven't interacted rather than just go and bother somebody else. We need to tackle the people who think it is acceptable to try and threaten and harass people. It's not free speech when 50% of the conversation is intimidated.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, it's character assassination, it's death threats, it's rape threats. When I first started getting rape threats from working with Caroline Crioto Perez on trying to get women on banknotes, there was one, because my dad is brilliant because he doesn't like to show fear, but he did show up at my house kind of late at night with a large pot of ice cream, which is an equivalent for my dad of being like, are you okay? I always say this. I've lived my life very luckily in a bubble of love, right? We're a very tight, very close family. They take the piss out of me relentlessly. You know, I'm not a special person to them. My mum is absolutely clear there's no bigness in what I do. Like, it's not about me. It's about what difference you can make. But we are like lionesses for each other. So I know when people have a go at me, there's a safe space I can go to where I will always get a hug and then kicked out the door to carry on.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did they think I was mad? I think with my mom and dad, they've been used to me being braver than they realised, I think they would call it. So when I was 18, for example, I just decided in my, I didn't have plans for a year out. I decided come to London and I basically set myself up. I learned to touch type. Best thing I ever did so I could earn two pounds more an hour than a receptionist. And that gave me the money to be able to volunteer for free at the Fabians before all the intern campaigns. And that was around 95.96. And as somebody from the Sticks who had no political contacts, it was the most extraordinary time to be around the labour movement that was preparing for government, that was buzzing with ideas. If I look back now and think of an 18-year-old...”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is ironic now that Walthamster has the most estate agents per square mile of any place in the country. And they're not fans of mine.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Animal rights. I know, again, very aging, the idea of live animal exports, trying to explain that we used to do that to young campaigners now. So Britlingsee Dock that was happening, friends of mine were going down at six o'clock in the morning and shouting at the sheep. And at the same point, the local elections were having, and the then local Labour group leader was saying, well, actually, if we win control of the council, we'd win control of what happens at the port. And we'd say this shouldn't happen at the port. And I was like, guys, guys, this is brilliant. And they were like, no, no, we need to go and shout at sheep at six o'clock in the morning. And, you know, as a 15, 16 year old, I kind of, I did the maths then. The light bulb came on that maybe there was a purpose to politics as well.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not one of them. I want to be different. As a young kid, I wore Victor Yara t shirts and thought everybody drank Tradecraft coffee because everybody understood that fair trade was terribly important. So, you know, I was a little bit fish out of war, it's fair to say. I had a strong Mank accent as well, which didn't go down well at school. Where's that gone?”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm glad we've done that. We'll forgive you for me. I was gutted. It was just the start of Manchester, the Stone Roses, and I moved to small town Essex. I mean, literally, I wasn't, no, I was 11, 12 when I left, so I was a bit young for the Hacienda. But I remember all the Sone Rose's music just being so excited by it. And suddenly I'm in a small horse town in Essex, which is a lovely place, Colchester, but nowhere like Manchester.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I come from a family, the worst thing my parents ever did when I was a young adult. So we moved from Manchester to Colchester and it was a big culture shock to me because suddenly I was amongst people who were very right wing, didn't really seem to me to care about the world. And I remember saying to my parents, the world is unfair. And they said, what are you going to do about it? They've regretted that ever since they said that to me. Let's just pause while we...”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because both my, I'm sadly in the recent years, both my mum and my father and my partner, and indeed my brother who doesn't even live in Walthamstow have taken abuse for having the same surname as me, partly because there's an element that, of course, a woman in politics can't know her own mind, so she must be the puppet. I mean, you know, I've had my father compared to being a mafia don, which given that he can't stay awake to watch good fellas, let alone reenact it, is always a challenge.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Neither of your parents. No, my parents aren't. My parents are constituents of mine, and I always say that I... I meet people who say, I was going to come and see you about something, but then I met this woman in the street and she said she'd have a word with the MP about that. And they've met, because my mum helps run the local night shelter for the homeless. My dad's very active in the local community as well. She's her own person. She'd like that to be noted because”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tell you two things. I mean, one, when I was first elected, it was always an article of faith that you could make a difference. Now I know you can. It's just bloody hard work. Secondly, you never rest because replacing Wonga is guarantor loans where companies are chasing two people for the same loan. And I'm now campaigning and having long detailed arguments with the ministers about bringing in a cap on all forms of credit because what's happening is these companies are evolving. So I still see the damage that's being done in my community. It's just being done by a different name. But if you think the legal loan sharks have gone, you don't understand this is a country with a massive personal debt crisis. Another issue that in any other time period people would be paying huge attention to because it is decimating lives. But Brexit, that Monty Python foot squishhing everyone out. And therefore, as far as I'm concerned, letting the government get away with murder, which is to not learn the lessons of wanger, not to wait until millions of people are in debt before you do something.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's been the irony for me today, frankly, to see a number of mainly men across the political spectrum expressing outrage at what's happening in America. They see, for example, in the state of Georgia, the heartbeat rule that you can't have an abortion if there's a heartbeat, which is six weeks term limit. Alabama has basically outlawed abortion under any circumstances, including rape and incest. And yet I haven't yet heard those voices speaking up for the fact that we as a country don't just prosecute doctors, which is what they're talking about doing in Alabama. We prosecute women as well in Northern Ireland. You know, a mother of 15-year-old who is on trial for getting her daughter, who was in a violent and abusive relationship, abortion pills, I believe that abortions should be safe, legal and local. When you stop abortion, you don't stop abortions happening. You just stop them being safe. But this government is very clearly making a political decision that the rights of women in Northern Ireland come second to keeping Arlene Foster on side.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A bunch of people who Committee of Absolutely not. Absolutely not. The point about a citizens' assembly, and the Irish model says it explicitly says it makes recommendations as it sees fit back to Parliament. I'm not trying to take away the responsibility I have as an MP to have to make decisions on Brexit, but I want to have a better conversation with the public before we do it.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, so I see Parliament as but one element of the job of being, look, I adore my job, I adore Waltham Stowe, I adore the possibility of being able to make change happen. Do I think Parliament is broken? Do I think Parliament doesn't have the same set of tools and the same ability to make change as it used to? Yeah, I do. But the answer to that isn't to sit around and say somebody should do something about it. It's to say, okay, what are the things we could do about it? And the challenge right now is to find the airtime and the space for people to be able to look at something and go, well, actually, if the process isn't working, what's the right process to use?”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just think we have to be honest about it. Nobody's enjoying this. I think even Mark Francois is beginning to get a bit tired of it.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can sit in a room and find common ground. It's crazy to say that people even if they disagree on Brexit couldn't be civil to each other. It's the process not the people that's the problem. And that's kind of the same in Parliament. And I say that as somebody who I came into Parliament the day after a 14-year-old in my constituency had been stabbed to death. Horrific, horrific. I'd been talking to his family. Everybody was devastated. And I came and I sat through an hour and a half of points of order about the speaker's bumper stickers and whether they said bollocks to Brexit and all this sort of thing on it. And I just was sat there with my head in my hands going, there has to be a better way, there has to be a better way for people's time and a better way of doing this.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't think it's a fair character. No, actually, I mean, if you look at the ballot papers they used in Ireland, they had an iterative process to go through all the different variations of the conditions under which you might accept abortion. The time limits, who would be involved in making the decision, what medical evidence would be needed, all sorts of quite, I mean, if you think that abortion was an easy, is a kind of a yes-no, you don't understand either Irish society or indeed the nature of that discussion. And crucially, I don't think people necessarily know this. Ireland's had five citizens' assemblies. It's not just been about abortion. Now, abortion had to be a referendum because it was a constitutional issue for Ireland, but they've also had them on climate change and on how to support the ageing population, what to do about electoral reform and also same-sex marriage. And when I talk to people in Ireland, it's the kind of ripple effect of actually recognising that even when something seems impossibly controversial and people are incredibly divided on it,”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not the question time audience. It's not a town hall meeting. It's not Macron's three hours of him talking at people. It's not who's prepared to show up. It's not something you can rig with activists. It's a group of people who are selected like a jury selected to be representative of the country. And rather than having a yes-no argument, which I think is one of the reasons why our democracy is problematic actually, because when I go into parliament, I have to go through either I or no. There's no, well, what's our priorities? They have a facilitated discussion about what do you think we have in common? Where do we want to get to? What are our priorities for this? And what it does, it allows you to have a different type of conversation. And I think whether you are a lever or a remainer, if you've been watching Parliament over the last six or seven months, you've been thinking they definitely need to do this differently.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the other thing I think postpones it for a bit. The other thing I think people sometimes forget in Parliament, because people get very caught up in sort of the wrong end of the telescope, I think is the polite way of putting it, is that, especially for Nigel Farage, this isn't an argument about Europe. This is an argument about democracy. And he's right, there is an argument about democracy. Our democracy isn't working right now. That's one of the reasons why I've been saying, okay, we might be the mother of all parliaments, but the idea we can't learn from other countries about how maybe to make decisions in a better way, in a more constructive fashion, that's why I've been talking about learning from Ireland and Australia and Canada and Iceland about using citizens' assemblies.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, you're never going to make anybody happy, so you may as well ask them, well, okay, now this is what it is. Do you want that or do you want something different?”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, totally. I mean, we just didn't. Nobody, whether they were a strong leave or a strong remainer, and I had both in my constituency, you know, London wasn't stitched up one way or the other, I think, as people forget this. But nobody came to me in 2016 to talk about the intricate details of the customs union or Eurotom or the Erasmus scheme. They do now. Or do they? Oh, gosh, yes. I mean, I'm on the Council of Europe, and it's quite funny when we go out and we talk to our colleagues in other countries, and they express admiration for just how much the British public know of the inner workings of the European Union.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because look, Parliament can't resolve this, right? Nobody's going to be happy with whatever deal is put forward. Everybody will cry betrayal. And in that environment, this is a completely different argument to what was happening in 2016 because it's a completely different set of issues. Now we know what the deal is. It seems to me entirely sensible to say, all right, what do you think now? I mean, it's the kind of terms and conditions referendum for me, but I also think it's some honesty about what you really think. We've sat through three years of this debate now. We've had Brexit means Brexit means breakfast means Brexit. We now know what the deal is. I look at that deal. I don't think it's better than what we have now.”
2019-05-17 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Stella Creasy One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source