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

Today I'm delighted to be joined by Margaret Hodge.

Hodge has been the Labour MP for Barking since 1994.

A self-proclaimed old Tuffy, Hodg served as a minister in the Blair and Brown government.

However, it was her role as chair of the Public Accounts Committee,

which will her rise to a certain level of notoriety for her ability to castigate, tax dodges and

civil servants alike. The Lenn head of the civil service, Gus O'Donnell, accused Hodges

presiding of a theatrical exercise in public humiliation. More recently, Hodges found herself in the

news over her party's anti-Semitism problem.

Last year, she accused Jeremy Corbyn of being an anti-semit, after the party's National Executive

Committee refused to ditch a new code of conduct on anti-Semitism, which should not incorporate

all the examples listed in the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. At the most recent Labour conference,

Hodg told a Jewish Labour movement rally, I'm not going to give up until Jeremy Corbyn ceases

to be the leader of the Labour Party. So with that, thank you very for joining us today, Margaret.

And did I get anything wrong? No, you didn't. My time was well spent today. Now, on this podcast,

we like to begin by rewinding the hands of time initially to what you're doing before you

became a politician, so your early life. And you were born in Egypt in 1944, not to reveal your age,

to Jewish refugee parents.

Do you remember much growing up in Egypt because you came to the UK when you were fairly young?

...