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Hello and welcome to Women with Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's Trailblazers.

My guest today is one of three candidates vying to be the next leader of the Labour Party.

She grew up in Manchester to a historically left-wing family, the daughter of renowned

Marx's academic, DePak Nandi.

Her grandfather was a Liberal MP who later sat in the Lords.

She entered Parliament in 2010 as the MP for Wigan, but she was quickly touted as a rising star and potential

future leader. After Labour's disappointing election result in 2019, she made her move and

free her hat in the ring, explaining her decision, she said, Now is not the time to steady the ship

or try not to oversteer. What is needed are the hard yards will

winning the argument inch by inch in town halls, workplaces and pubs. This is where we fight

to regain people's trust. The next labour leader will have to be up for a scrap,

willing to run to places where we are loved, take the anger on the chin, make and win the

argument. Since then, she has been the surprise

success story of the contest, making the final ballot when more well-known politicians, such as

Jess Phillips and Emily Thornberry, fell short. I'm delighted to be joined by Lisa Nandi. So thank you

for joining us today, Lisa. As I mentioned in the introduction, you had a political upbringing in some ways. Your father was a Marxist academic. So was politics and particularly left-wing politics part of your life from the early age?

I mean, it was a normal upbringing, so I didn't spend a lot of time going to rallies or, you know, protesting against Margaret Thatcher.

I spent most of my time playing with my friends and going to school and generally getting

terrible school reports from the teachers and that sort of thing.

But I suppose it was quite unusual in the sense that it was a very political time.

It was Manchester in the 1980s, a lot of friends losing their jobs,

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