BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts

Hello, I'm Nick Robinson, this is political thinking from BBC Radio 4.

Earlier today, there were a thousand people in Southern Cathedral there to celebrate the

life of Tessa Jowell.

It was memorable partly because of who was there, not just the sheer numbers, but the spread,

three Prime Ministers, Blair and Brown and Cameron, politicians from both their big parties,

senior civil servants, figures from throughout British public life.

What was memorable though?

Really memorable was the speech of a man who founded Brixton Soup Kitchen, a volunteer

in the Brixton community, a Somali who described seeing for the first time a small white lady

in one of his meetings.

He had no idea who she was.

She introduced herself as Tessa Jowell, the local MP.

What he said he'd replied to her, what is an MP?

It was a reminder to everyone there of how very different their lives are to everyone

else's.

But what moved that gathering in that cathedral was Muhammad Hashee saying, she introduced

me to the idea that politicians were human.

My guest on the podcast this week is another politician who is popular across party boundaries,

despite having to quit her job as home secretary after one of the most shocking scandals of

recent times, the Windrash scandal, which Amber had paid a price for because she simply

didn't know what was happening in her own department.

...