‘I had a crush on Colin Firth’
Shadow NI Secretary Louise Haigh on that Bridget Jones rumour about Keir Starmer
LOUISE Haigh has fond memories of her first trip here.
The Sheffield girl had just graduated from university — and celebrated by hopping across the Irish Sea.
“I spent a memorable weekend in Belfast with three friends back in 2008,” the 33-year-old politician recalled.
“We took in lots of the city’s fantastic pubs and clubs, and even made it to the Giant’s Causeway. We did as many touristy things as we could.”
Ms Haigh’s most recent visit could not have been more different — as the new Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Then, social distancing rather than socialising was the order of the day, as the Labour MP met, among others, Troubles victims and survivors at the Wave Trauma Centre in Belfast.
There, the people who welcomed her included the centre’s coordinator Alan Mcbride, whose wife Sharon died in the 1993 Shankill bombing, and Jennifer Mcnern, a survivor of the 1972 Abercorn Bar atrocity.
Louise spent time listening and learning but, frustratingly for her, she hasn’t been in close contact with anyone locally-based since that day last July.
Consequently, she is looking forward to the end of lockdown — and finally meeting the likes of First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Michelle O’neill in person, rather than on Zoom.
“I have regular virtual meetings with both Arlene and Michelle, both of whom I respect enormously, but I couldn’t tell you how tall either of them are,” she joked.
Attempting to do her job remotely has, however, been no laughing matter for singleton Louise, whose maternal grandmother hails from Cork.
Of her Westminster colleagues from here, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood is a “good friend” and she “gets on very well” with the DUP’S parliamentary leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, but obviously there hasn’t been so much personal interaction with Stormont politicians.
“It’s actually been incredibly frustrating holding this brief during lockdown,” said the Yorkshire woman, who lives alone in her native Sheffield — except for her dog Milo — but shares a property in London with an MP colleague and a couple of other friends in what she calls “a strange split life”.
“In the first lockdown I had my best friend and her seven-yearold living with me but since they moved out, I’ve been on my own,” she said.
“This last lockdown has been the most difficult because the weather’s been horrendous and it’s felt almost interminable.”
Describing herself as “a very sociable person, she said she has “really missed my family and friends”.
“Some assumptions frustrated me when we went into lockdown,” she added.
“People were assuming Members of Parliament were inflicting rules on everyone else because we were with our families and protected that way, but lockdown has been really difficult for those of us who live alone.”
She hasn’t ventured near a travel agent just yet but is hoping to visit a good friend in Cornwall soon and “more importantly, get over to Northern Ireland in the next couple of weeks.”
Louise, who became the youngest Labour MP when she was elected as member for Sheffield Heeley in 2015, is also the first female Northern Ireland Shadow Secretary since the late Marjorie ‘Mo’ Mowlam — “one of my political heroes” — in the 1990s.
“Mo was unlike any SOS or shadow SOS who had come before,” said Louise of her predecessor, a key architect of the Good Friday/belfast Agreement who, tragically, died in 2005, aged just 55.
“She had loads of personality and although she took the brief very seriously, she didn’t take people very seriously.
“It’s people that really drive me, in the way that motivated and inspired Mo as well.
“There are too many politicians who aren’t motivated by people, and don’t feel comfortable being around people.
“They feel more comfortable in locked offices thinking about policy rather than being driven by the challenges people face in their everyday lives.”
Louise, who studied politics at the University of Nottingham, initially toyed with a career in criminal law — she did a Masters degree in Law after her politics degree — like her father Richard (66). Mum Juanita (64), is a probate solicitor, and her brother Phil (32) is a sports journalist.
Politics, however, ran through the family.
“My uncle was a striking coal miner in the 1980s, while my auntie moved to South Africa and worked for the international Red Cross, fighting against apartheid in the 1970s and 1980s,” she said.
“My grandma also fled from the Spanish civil war in the early 20th century.
“I had a very left-wing economics teacher at school who made me see where my views fitted into a party political framework, and that’s why I joined Labour when I was 16.”
Louise’s first job after graduation was working for MP Graham Allen and “that totally opened my eyes to a whole world that I’d never known before”.
Being an MP herself — she is still one of the youngest people on the famous green benches of the Commons — “still daunts” Louise.
“I look around when I’m in there and think ‘what am I doing here?,” she admitted.
“I still have massive imposter syndrome; you can’t help think of all the incredible people who’ve gone before you. But it’s been an extraordinary learning curve over the last six years.”
Despite the self-effacement, Ms Haigh is regarded as one of the most talented and astute Labour MPS, which is one of the reasons why she is in Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet.
It is her job to keep her Conservative opposite number, Secretary of State Brandon Lewis, on his toes, and has done so on many occasions from the dispatch box.
But she backs Mr Lewis’s attempts to override the devolved government here and push through abortion legislation, which was passed in 2019 when the Stormont Executive was suspended but has yet to be officially implemented.
“It’s a great shame that it’s come to this,” she said.
“Ultimately the UK government has human rights obligations, and the situation in Northern Ireland was found to be in breach of those obligations.
“Women are still facing the completely unacceptable situation of having to travel to access safe legal abortion so, as regrettable as it is, I support the government in what they’re doing.”
It is a different story, however, when it comes to that other major bone of contention, the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Last month the UK moved to unilaterally extend the grace periods for Irish Sea border checks — which the European Union regards as a breach of international law.
With Northern Ireland remaining a part of the EU’S single market post-brexit, and goods and products arriving here from GB having to undergo EU import procedures, the initial grace period was meant to end on March 31. Mr Lewis and his cabinet colleagues decided otherwise.
“They {the Government} have repeatedly put their narrow political interests above the interests of Northern Ireland and we’re seeing the consequences of that play out now,” she said.
“Northern Ireland is not a priority for them like it was for the last Labour government, and the Tories’ recklessness and political games, particularly with the Good Friday Agreement, are resulting in the threat of instability now.”
She added: “Labour knew how potentially upsetting Brexit could be to the delicate balance of identities in Northern Ireland.
“I totally accept what a challenge this is to unionism and loyalism and to their identity and there wasn’t nearly enough consideration given to what their reaction would be. Even in January, Brandon Lewis was still denying there was any Irish Sea border — and that dishonesty has worsened the anger and made things a lot more difficult to repair.”
Ms Haigh’s former party leader Jeremy Corbyn made no secret of his support for a united Ireland, so where does she stand?
“I don’t think it’s a forgone conclusion,” she said.
“The constitutional question will, however, come up over coming years but there are still a significant number of people who have to be persuaded of the merits of a united Ireland.
“For me, the most important thing is making Northern Ireland work for the people there. As Mo Mowlam said, it’s the real lives of people that needs changing and there are huge public policy issues that need addressing right now, from the health service and mental health service to legacy issues.”
If the current opinion polls are anything to go by, Louise won’t get an opportunity to emulate Mo Mowlam and become a Labour ‘SOS’ here.
Despite the many mistakes made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his colleagues since the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the Tories — who have a huge parliamentary majority — remain comfortably ahead of the main opposition party.
And Mr Starmer, who has just passed one year as Labour leader, is facing criticism from many of his own backbenchers who accuse him of sitting on the fence too often and abstaining, rather than voting against, the Government on key issues such as the Covid restrictions tier system.
“I’m desperate to hold onto it until the next election at the very least,” said Louise, who conceded that the ‘vaccine bounce’ has helped the Conservatives enormously over the past few months.
“The government has made enormous mistakes and had massive failures — the highest death rate in Europe and the worst economic impact of any developed economy in the world,” she said.
“They have failed on every metric, but they are enjoying the success of the vaccine.
“The battle for the next election, however, is going to be about recovery and rebuilding our country.
“The Tories are the government that weakened our economy and our public services so drastically ahead of the coronavirus and that’s why we had such a disastrous response to it.”
Ironically, Ms Haigh has personally been helping the NHS vaccination programme her rivals are claiming credit for.
“A GP asked if I would come down and help at one of the local vaccination centres,” she explained.
“They were giving out the Pfizer vaccine to a lot of older people so I was helping them with mobility issues.
“A lot of them were getting their second vaccine and crying out ‘freedom’. It was so positive.”
Despite the criticism of Ms Haigh’s boss, he has acted decisively to rid Labour of the accusations of anti-semitism which blighted the Corbyn era.
Louise admitted the party still had work to do in rebuilding trust with the Jewish community but have already “made enormous strides” with that.
“It {anti-semitism) has been a real stain on our party and one I’m deeply ashamed of,” she said.
On a lighter note, is it true that the Mark Darcy character played by Colin Firth in the Brigid Jones’s Diary series is based on the Labour leader?
Confirming that author Helen Fielding later denied that, Louise added: “I had a massive crush on Colin Firth... I’m afraid I don’t have a crush on Keir Starmer.”