By Matt Foster

06 Jun 2016

This time last year, Louise Haigh had only just become an MP. Now she’s Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet Office minister, holding the government to account on civil service issues – and making her voice heard on Whitehall’s diversity record. Matt Foster meets her


It has, Louise Haigh admits, been “a very steep learning curve”.  

Just over a year ago, the 28-year-old shadow civil service minister was one of many fresh-faced candidates vying for a seat in parliament in an election whose outcome few dared to predict. But a mere four months after being elected Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley, Haigh found herself on the opposition frontbenches, going toe-to-toe with seasoned government ministers.

“That was very daunting and you have to learn very quickly,” she tells CSW. “There are good things about being thrown in at the deep end. It makes you take responsibility straight away. Perhaps I would have liked a little bit of a longer lead-in time, because learning to be a new MP while learning to be a shadow minister is quite a tall order. But we are where we are – and I love it.”

Haigh, born and raised in Sheffield and with a CV that includes stints as a call centre worker, a trade union rep, a researcher to Labour’s Lisa Nandy, and at City insurance firm Aviva – is currently her party’s youngest MP. And while she’s certainly no slouch – tabling a prodigious 600 written questions in the past year alone, well above the average – her rapid rise also owes something to another Labour promotion that few saw coming.

Haigh has undoubtedly had a lot to take in in just eight months. And while being a relatively young woman in Westminster presents its own challenges – Haigh reveals that parliamentary staff have prevented her from entering the chamber on a few occasions because they “didn’t quite believe” she was an MP – she says her early fears that the Commons might still be home to “rank sexism” have proven unfounded.

These may be fractious times for Labour, but Haigh says there’s also been some “really good comradeship” in the parliamentary party, and a recognition “that it’s a particularly tough time to be a new MP”. She’s even made friends with the neighbours, Tory MPs (and fellow newbies) James Cleverly and Will Quince. “Most people in here are here for the same reason,” she says. “We just differ drastically on how we achieve it.”

But while she may be starting to settle into the groove of Westminster life, Haigh says she’s determined not to become a creature of the place.

“It’s a real cliché to say it’s a bubble. But it’s based in truth – it is a very strange atmosphere. I think the challenge is to not enjoy it too much here. I want to get home as quickly as possible. Sheffield is very much my home.” 

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