The Corbynista v PM who saw off Hitler
Career
PIDCOCK: Studied politics at Manchester Metropolitan University, was a mental health support worker before working for an anti-racism charity. An MP since June, wining the safe Labour seat of North West Durham at the general election.
CHURCHILL: Saw action in the Army before becoming an MP in 1900 at the age of 25. He would be an MP for most of the next 64 years. He was chancellor, home secretary and twice prime minister. Led the Tory Party for 15 years.
Achievements
PIDCOCK: Served as a councillor on Northumberland County Council for four years before losing her seat in May.
CHURCHILL: Masterminded the defeat of Hitler. Having spent the 1930s opposing those who queued to appease the Nazi leader, he became PM in Britian’s hour of greatest need. From 1940 to 1945, he stiffened the nation’s sinews and made supreme tactical decisions that led to Hitler’s defeat. He was hailed as a colossus, particularly in the US. An artist, historian and writer, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and had a Cambridge college founded in his honour. When he died aged 90 in 1965, the world mourned.
Greatest speeches
PIDCOCK: Commons contributions unremarkable, except for her maiden speech, an attack on how old-fashioned Parliament is. ‘This building is intimidating,’ she declared. ‘It reeks of the Establishment, and of power. Its systems are confusing, some may say archaic, and it was built at a time when my class and my sex would have been denied a place in it because we are deemed unworthy.’
CHURCHILL: Greatest Parliamentary orator of the 20th century. His greatest lines include: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ (May 1940). ‘We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landinggrounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.’ (June 1940). ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’ (after The Battle of Britain, August 1940).
Housing
PIDCOCK: Complained in June she could not afford the deposit for a home on her £76,000 salary. Weeks later she and her boyfriend bought a £250,000 three-bed house in a historic County Durham village.
CHURCHILL: A descendant of the Dukes of Marlborough, he was born at Blenheim Palace and admitted to a taste for champagne and cigars. But he campaigned for the minimum wage and national insurance – the precursor to welfare. He was acutely aware of the postwar shortage of housing and initiated the programme to build thousands of prefabs.