Re: Summer 2015 | Page 13

In terms of the national situation it’s, it’s a whole range of things, getting rid of Peter Mandelson, that was good fun and well-needed. I also helped fashion the first cross-party agreement on climate change, which needed to be done. interesting in its own way, but there were different problems – it was grotesquely inefficient and very hide-bound and not very responsive to customers and so on, so that was the other extreme. I then went on to run a wine shop which was a bit of a waste of time, except for learning about wine and meeting my girlfriend. Then I went on to do some writing and I wrote a book which actually hasn’t been published – I want to publish it at some point, it’s a book of short stories, I might resurrect it. I did EFL (English as a foreign language) teaching for a bit and then I got elected to the council at 27 and that’s when the politics kicked in. What ignited your passion for politics? I’ve always hated injustice, that’s what ignited my passion for politics, I don’t like people being treated unfairly – you have all the rich people in this country then all those poor people elsewhere in the world, it’s issues like Tibet - I’ve always felt very strongly about Tibet. us”, and I said “I don’t want to do this any more”, you know, so I ended up walking out and I felt this tremendous sense of, well relief – as I walked out into the sunshine in Kensington High Street. I remember the record at the time which summarised how I felt, it had come out about two or three years earlier - John Lennon’s “Watching the Wheels”, which was how I felt at that point, just like that song. I thought the private sector had been rat