Poor Rosie Duffield has had to put up with me drunkenly explaining how much her win in Canterbury meant to me more than once over the months she’s been their MP. It was where I voted for the first time in 1997. While Labour won big that night, we didn’t quite sweep Canterbury along with the nation. She’s always listened and responded with perfect charm and I don’t think I’m the only person so have articulated how important her victory felt last June.
Read MoreWhile Jo Platt is off buying us both a much-needed coffee from the Portcullis House café, her new boss Angela Rayner walks by, stopping for a quick chat. “She’s a bloody superstar,” says the Shadow Secretary of State for Education “she’s keeping us in line”.
It’s unusual to become a PPS (one rung down from a junior shadow minister) so soon after being elected. But it’s quite clear from the passion that Platt shows when discussion education at every level as well as the mutual respect between her and Rayner (who she describes warmly as “an absolute force” and working with her as “the perfect opportunity”) that she’s hit the Parliamentary estate running.
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