Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Alan Tolhurst, and for the final episode in our summer series of one-on-one discussions,

we have Dawn Butler, a Labour MP for Brent Central and a former minister under Gordon Brown,

who in 2009 made history as the first black woman to speak from the House of Commons dispatch box.

So Dawn, you just released a book called A Purpose for Life, what I've learned about breaking barriers and inspiring change out in your career.

You talk about politics, you know, not being your kind of thing originally because nobody looked like you in politics. So when did you first kind of decide you wanted to move into politics and become an

MP? I say like politics found me. Right. And then like people said, Dawn, I was a trade unionist.

So people are like, look, we want a trade unionist to stand. You know, we want somebody with your kind of values or socialist values to stand.

Would I stand?

And this was in Hackney.

Hackney's half and I was like, no, I'm all right.

I'm good.

I'm okay being a trade union official.

And then I asked my family, what do they think?

Obviously my mum said no, because that's her favourite word.

And then, you know, well, would you want to get mixed up and like that? Yeah, it's like, don't be silly,

don't do that. In the end, I thought, okay, I will give it a go and see what it's like and

if I could do this. I entered the race quite late. But when I entered and going around and

talking to people and then having people kind of

believing what I was saying and then coming over and supporting me, I thought, I could do this

and I could do it my way. I could be the kind of politician that I want to be really.

And that's why I say, I don't lose. I learn.

...