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Hello and welcome to Women of Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers.

My guest today is a leading politician who alongside Diane Abbott holds the title of most senior

women in Labour. She has served a variety of briefs from Shadow Attorney General to Shadow

Foreign Secretary and recently had a punt at the top job herself. I'm delighted to be joined by

Emily Thornberry. She grew up in Guildford where she had an early encounter with politics

when a Labour councillor helped her family get back on their feet after her parents' divorce.

She failed her 11 plus,

but went on to study law and was called to the bar. After working as a barrister, she entered

Parliament in 2005. Since then, she has quickly earned a reputation as a straight talker, calling

out injustice and sexism as she sees it, and coming head to head with Boris Johnson during his time as

Foreign Secretary. Most recently, she put herself forward for the current Labour leadership

vacancy, but dropped out of the second round, announcing, I'm proud that I was the only

candidates to secure nominations from all four nations of the UK, and I'm delighted to have

made new friends around the country, met so many dedicated

campaigners who may be deflated by the election result but are determined to fight back.

So with that, thank you very much for joining me today, Emily.

There's lots of things going on in the world, most of which relate to the coronavirus.

You're actually in the office, so we're both not yet in self-isolation, but we do have a good

distance away from us.

Although I think the news is dominated by one thing, on this podcast we're going to stick with

...