Women With Balls: Chloe Smith

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4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

Chloe Smith is the Conservative MP for Norwich North and minister at the Cabinet Office. She entered parliament at the age of 27 and rose through the ranks quickly. In 2012, she was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman in what has been described as a 'car crash interview' when she was sent out to defend then-Chancellor George Osborne's U-turn on fuel duty. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about what it was like to do that interview and the aftermath, why she proposed to her husband, and what it was like to receive a fake anthrax package.

Women With Balls is a podcast series where Katy Balls speak to women at the top of their respective games. To hear past episodes, visit spectator.co.uk/balls.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Get 12 weeks of The Spectator in print and online for just £12.
0:05.2	And we'll give you a £20 £20 Amazon Give Voucher, absolutely free.
0:10.1	Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.
0:17.7	Hello and welcome to Women of Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers.
0:23.2	My guest today grew up in Norfolk and spent her gap year not travelling the world but working
0:27.6	for a Conservative MP. She went on to become one herself, entering Parliament in 2009 as
0:33.6	the baby of the House. She was soon promoted in 2011 when she was appointed economic secretary
0:39.2	to the Treasury. That stint saw a rather memorable politically interviewed Jeremy Paxman,
0:44.5	that we should go into some detail of later. Since then, she has worked across a range of briefs
0:49.7	and was promoted to Minister of State in the Cabinet office in February, now leading the government's
0:54.4	work on the Constitution. My guest today is Chloe Smith. So thank you for joining us today.
0:59.9	We are recording a socially distanced, distance, it doesn't quite work, in the spectator office,
1:06.0	and it's nice to finally be off some of these Zoom recordings we've been doing over lockdown.
1:11.0	On this podcast, we like to begin by talking a little bit about your early life before the career,
1:15.5	which we know you for.
1:17.0	So you grew up in Norfolk, and one question we tend to ask everyone on this podcast is,
1:21.5	would you describe yours as a happy childhood?
1:24.0	Yes, I definitely would.
1:24.9	I was extremely lucky to have a loving family, two wonderful wonderful parents. My father was a furniture maker and designer, and my mum was a teacher, textiles. So quite a lot of arts in my household, actually, and lots of wonderful experiences around that, growing up with my big brother. And we had a, yeah, we had a very a very very happy childhood and was politics discussed much
1:45.5	when you're growing up because as I mentioned you spent your gap you're working for a conservative
1:50.1	MP so I'm presuming that wasn't just by chance you were interested in politics and specifically
1:56.2	the Conservative Party from an early age well I was some I mean a couple of things maybe on, on this.
	...

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