MP SARAH TEATHER is a bit of a breath of fresh air. She tends to avoid the clichés that most politicians desperately cling to.
I ask her about political heroes and inspirations; “It sounds a bit false to just pick a name. Obviously people like Gandhi and Mandela are inspirational but on a personal level it would be wrong to say they changed the direction of my life. The people who inspire me are my colleagues in the party, the people I work with.” Ask her about her political roots and why she became an MP, and she won’t drag out a long rambling monologue about how she was influenced by a family member or how she witnessed poverty or some atrocious injustice, “It wasn’t like a Eureka moment, someone just said to me – ‘so you’re a liberal democrat’ and I thought - yes I am.” Her political awakening, if it can be called that, came as she was studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, although she was categorically not a student activist; “I tended to think that the people who were active were weirdoes.” I avoid the temptation to ask her whether she thinks her colleagues in Parliament are any less weird.
Following boundary changes the next election Sarah will contest will be fought over a different area in Brent, something that she does seem stoically unhappy about; “Nobody relishes losing parts of their constituency. You become emotionally attached to your seat and we are losing areas of Brent where we have been working very hard.”
Lightening the conversation, I ask her about the most laughable policy suggestion she has ever heard; “New Labour often takes a good idea and pushes it to a ridiculous conclusion. Baby ASBO’S for instance. Your life opportunities are affected by what happens to you at an early age and we as a society have to help. But instead of coming at the problem with sympathy and compassion they wanted instead to bash people over the head with ASBO’s.
I suppose it is laughable really - but also disturbing” Though she cracks a smile you can tell she doesn’t really think it’s funny. Someone once said the world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. I can’t help thinking the Brent East MP is in the latter category.
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Comment – Sarah Teather MP Interview
Interviewing politicians is clearly an important part of being a journalist. The course task we were set was to contact and interview an MP about their job. MPs, despite being publicly accountable people are remarkably difficult to pin down. I contacted four potential interviewees over the course of 48 hours and Sarah Teather’s office was the only one to grant me an interview. I prepared questions in advance for the interview, but tried to respond to her answers as the discussion went along. I enjoyed the interview and genuinely did find her approach honest, refreshing and surprisingly candid. Though the interview was scheduled for only ten minutes following her surgery in Kilburn we actually talked for 25 minutes. The difficult part of this task was actually cutting the story to size. When there is nearly 2000 words of interview it is quite a task to cut it to under 400 words, especially when it is necessary to cut content that you feel is important.
When interviewing this particular MP I felt that some of the questions I asked were predictable and unimaginative. Furthermore, I would like to have asked her to elaborate on particular answers and to have challenged her on some of the comments she made.
In the subsequent MP interviews I have carried out I think my approach has been more robust and the interviews more challenging for the MPs. Nevertheless, I like this article better as a finished product. Sarah’s responses seem personal and thoughtful, and the article therefore evolved to be more of a political/personal profile than a piece about the job of being an MP.
I realised subsequently how unusual this honesty and directness is in public officials.
I ask her about political heroes and inspirations; “It sounds a bit false to just pick a name. Obviously people like Gandhi and Mandela are inspirational but on a personal level it would be wrong to say they changed the direction of my life. The people who inspire me are my colleagues in the party, the people I work with.” Ask her about her political roots and why she became an MP, and she won’t drag out a long rambling monologue about how she was influenced by a family member or how she witnessed poverty or some atrocious injustice, “It wasn’t like a Eureka moment, someone just said to me – ‘so you’re a liberal democrat’ and I thought - yes I am.” Her political awakening, if it can be called that, came as she was studying Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, although she was categorically not a student activist; “I tended to think that the people who were active were weirdoes.” I avoid the temptation to ask her whether she thinks her colleagues in Parliament are any less weird.
Following boundary changes the next election Sarah will contest will be fought over a different area in Brent, something that she does seem stoically unhappy about; “Nobody relishes losing parts of their constituency. You become emotionally attached to your seat and we are losing areas of Brent where we have been working very hard.”
Lightening the conversation, I ask her about the most laughable policy suggestion she has ever heard; “New Labour often takes a good idea and pushes it to a ridiculous conclusion. Baby ASBO’S for instance. Your life opportunities are affected by what happens to you at an early age and we as a society have to help. But instead of coming at the problem with sympathy and compassion they wanted instead to bash people over the head with ASBO’s.
I suppose it is laughable really - but also disturbing” Though she cracks a smile you can tell she doesn’t really think it’s funny. Someone once said the world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. I can’t help thinking the Brent East MP is in the latter category.
(390)
Ends
Comment – Sarah Teather MP Interview
Interviewing politicians is clearly an important part of being a journalist. The course task we were set was to contact and interview an MP about their job. MPs, despite being publicly accountable people are remarkably difficult to pin down. I contacted four potential interviewees over the course of 48 hours and Sarah Teather’s office was the only one to grant me an interview. I prepared questions in advance for the interview, but tried to respond to her answers as the discussion went along. I enjoyed the interview and genuinely did find her approach honest, refreshing and surprisingly candid. Though the interview was scheduled for only ten minutes following her surgery in Kilburn we actually talked for 25 minutes. The difficult part of this task was actually cutting the story to size. When there is nearly 2000 words of interview it is quite a task to cut it to under 400 words, especially when it is necessary to cut content that you feel is important.
When interviewing this particular MP I felt that some of the questions I asked were predictable and unimaginative. Furthermore, I would like to have asked her to elaborate on particular answers and to have challenged her on some of the comments she made.
In the subsequent MP interviews I have carried out I think my approach has been more robust and the interviews more challenging for the MPs. Nevertheless, I like this article better as a finished product. Sarah’s responses seem personal and thoughtful, and the article therefore evolved to be more of a political/personal profile than a piece about the job of being an MP.
I realised subsequently how unusual this honesty and directness is in public officials.
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