Women With Balls: Fiona Hill
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2022
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In her first interview since leaving Downing Street five years ago, Fiona Hill speaks to Katy Balls about how difficult she found it being attacked in the press after the Tories’ election disappointment in 2017. ‘Luckily I’m a strong person. But if I’d been a lesser person I may have thrown myself in the Thames.’ She also reveals that in the month after the election, Hill came face to face with someone who had broken into her flat.
Produced by Natasha Feroze.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Women with Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers. |
| 0:09.0 | My guest today was born in Glasgow where she started her career in journalism as a football reporter. |
| 0:14.0 | A fellow colleague said she turned up for work one day and just kept coming back. |
| 0:19.0 | This driven nature continued throughout her career, moving to work for the Conservative Party |
| 0:24.6 | as a press officer, then later selected by Theresa May to be her closest ally on the Home Office. |
| 0:30.1 | In 2016, when May became Prime Minister, she moved to number 10 as the first female |
| 0:34.7 | chief of staff in Downing Street. |
| 0:39.2 | She covered all areas of May's political career from the Modern Slavery Act, Brexit negotiations to the 2017 general election. She resigned |
| 0:45.6 | after that general election when the Conservatives lost their majority. Now she runs her own |
| 0:51.4 | strategic consultancy, specialising in policy, reputation and crisis management. |
| 0:56.6 | Describe one former colleague, that she's a woman is neither here nor there. She's just a professional. |
| 1:02.3 | My guest today is Fiona Hill. Fiona, thank you for coming on our podcast today. You have been |
| 1:07.7 | high on our list of guests. We have been very keen to get on for some time, |
| 1:12.1 | so very happy to have you here. |
| 1:14.1 | To begin on this podcast, we ask everyone, |
| 1:16.3 | would you describe your childhood as a happy one? |
| 1:18.9 | Overall, yes. |
| 1:20.4 | I am exceptionally close to my siblings. |
| 1:24.3 | My sister, Amy, is 12 years younger than me, so she keeps me young. And my brother is four years younger than me so she keeps me young and my brother is four years younger |
| 1:31.4 | and we're just really really tight and also my mother is a force of nature and just very cool really |
| 1:39.5 | so the mixture of that combination was a happy part. |
| 1:47.5 | There was a few challenges with my father and they got divorced, |
... |
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