Many assume that Britain’s political elite is an inbred dynasty, but newcomers like her typified a different, often unappreciated, tendency. She was the first member of her family to go to university; for all her brains and charm, she found Cambridge daunting. Other students had parents who were diplomats, and had taken exotic gap years. Her only foreign travel was package holidays in Spain, and she spent her summers packing toothpaste in the factory where her father worked; indeed she had assumed, until school pointed its head girl farther afield, that she would spend her life working there. Realising how much it mattered to know the right people and talk the right way knocked her confidence. But it did mean that the House of Commons, another self-satisfied, mysterious and privileged institution, was easy in comparison.
Also unlike a stereotypical politician, she had a real life. She commuted to Parliament by bicycle, from the houseboat she shared with her husband and two young children. She spent ten years as an aid worker before seeking public office.