My guest is Dame Emily Thornberry. Emily Thornberry is the Labour MP for Islington South and

Finsbury and last September she was elected as chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

Welcome to the podcast, Emily. Thank you very much for having me.

Right. Well, we're going to talk broadly about Britain's reputation, Britain's

place in the world, especially since Brexit. But before we do, I'd like to talk a bit about you.

I don't know how often you get asked questions about how you came into politics. You became

an MP, just the benefit our listeners in 2005, 20 years ago. But what brought you into politics and what were you doing job-wise

before you became an MP?

Sure.

So I was born into the Labour Party, really.

My parents were political activists, but I think a kind of pivotal event in my life was when I was seven.

My parents split up and my father sort of disappeared, which meant that my mother was rather left destitute, both me and so she had three young children, sort of seven and under.

And so we were evicted from our house and we ended up on a large bit of social housing and went to,

well, we used to have these exams at 11. I failed my 11 plus and went to a school where you

weren't expected to do, you weren't expected to be academic. And my mother lived on benefits for

some time, et cetera, et cetera. So I always say that's a kind of an important part of coming

into politics because it was what motivated me. And it did seem to me that the Labour Party was the

only vehicle for progressive social change in Britain. And I was very motivated to be involved.

So I joined when I was 17. And although I did other things in my life, I was always a, I was always a labor activist and I essentially became a barrister.

My father in the meantime went off and had an international career and was at the UN and was an assistant secretary general at the United Nations.

So I had this very odd background, very poor, but also international.

So my dad would arrive at our council estate on the 50, you know, when I was 15 and say,

...