Hello, my guest in this program is someone who 20 years ago was playing a major part in running Northern Ireland.

She was a junior minister at the NIO, famously banning hair coursing and listing Harland and Wolfe's iconic yellow cranes as scheduled monuments.

She went on to serve as Gordon Brown's Parliamentary Private secretary when he was Prime Minister and now

finds herself leader of the Lords and Lord Privy Seale. Angela Smith, Baroness, Smith of

Basildon, welcome to Red Lines.

Thanks very much, Mark. Terrified then when you say it was 20 years ago that I was in Northern

Ireland. It doesn't seem that long ago at all.

Does it not? Time flies when you're having fun.

Well, we'll talk about whether or not you were really having fun at that time in a moment or two. But it is quite a journey for someone whose first family home was a flat over a shop in Hackney with an outside toilet. Yep. And I think my parents feel that as well. You would never have picked me at that point to do what I'm doing today. And if you told me even when I was a teenager, the things I'd have done in life, I'd have probably just got under the covers and hid. Really? Yeah. You must have been, you must have had a vision, you must have had drive and ambition. No. There must be something there, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it.

But I don't think I would have done hardly anything I've done with that encouragement from other people.

I had to be pushed to start with.

People pushed me to stand for the council.

I remember, oh, when I was 22, it was the first time I stood for a local council seat.

And I was just sitting very

quietly at the back and there was a hoodweather candidate and so I said I think it's

one of our young women but I think Angela should do it and I said no no no I don't

want to do this and a group of them said yes you must and that was the start of the

journey into politics so they were persu persuaders? They were persuaders,

persuaders, enablers, supporters. The generosity of spirit of people that have encouraged me has been

fantastic. We'll maybe talk about some of those people during the course of this conversation,

but I want to talk about the home that you grew up and you moved to Basildon in Essex when you were 10 from Hackney. Would you describe the home you grew up in

as a political one? No, it wasn't. I suppose we're instinctively labour. Now mum comes from

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