Women With Balls: Nickie Aiken
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2024
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On the episode, Katy Balls talks to Nickie about how she got into politics, why the tea room is the most useful part of Parliament, and the scourge of pedicabs in London. Not seeking re-election at this general election, Nickie also reflects on the politics of the past few years and on what the future might hold for the Tories.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis and unrivaled books and arts reviews. |
| 0:05.1 | Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12 week subscription in print and online, along with a free £20 £10,000 or Waitrose Voucher. Go to spectator.com.com. |
| 0:13.0 | Go to spectator.com.com. Hello and welcome to Room of Balls, where I, Katie Balls, speak to today's trailblazers. |
| 0:22.6 | My guest today was born in Cardiff but grew up in Wales and Scotland. |
| 0:26.6 | She studied sociology at the University of Exeter and briefly considered a career in journalism. |
| 0:32.6 | Instead, she went into PR and later politics. |
| 0:35.6 | An elected public servant for 18 years, she served as a councilor and Westminster for 16 years, |
| 0:42.0 | including as leader of the council. |
| 0:44.5 | Elected as the Conservative MP for the cities of London and Westminster in 2019. |
| 0:49.2 | She had a baptism of fire with the pandemic happening early on, meaning much of the time spent outside of parliament, |
| 0:55.3 | and then the succession of new Tory leaders. Now she has decided not to stand for re-election |
| 1:01.2 | and is joining the podcast today with some reflections on what that period was like. |
| 1:06.0 | My guest today is Nikki Aiken. |
| 1:11.8 | Nikki, thank you for coming on the podcast today. |
| 1:13.8 | We've spoken about this for a while. |
| 1:15.6 | And then you took the quite drastic step of quitting Parliament. |
| 1:21.0 | Partly, well, officially you're moving abroad. |
| 1:24.0 | But I wonder if it's partly to make sure I actually did sort out this podcast. |
| 1:28.2 | Yeah, I was so bored of having to wait for you to phone me and say, oh, should we do the podcast? And you |
| 1:33.7 | avoiding me in PCH every time I saw you in Parliament, I thought, well, I'm going to just |
| 1:39.4 | resign and then you'd have to do it. Exactly. Well, it worked. So here we are. And we're going to start with |
| 1:44.5 | the same question we always start, which is, I suppose, would you describe your childhood as a |
... |
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