I think he’s had a really good start.” It’s classic Hodge – sufficiently curious to ask the question about the new Labour prime minister, and assertive enough to provide the answer before you get yours out. But then he’s got to deliver. I think the budget is going to be the key moment.
And we’ve also got these awful global challenges and Iran and Hormuz. Hahahaha!” She hoots with laughter at the horror of it all. She says she was against ousting Keir Starmer.
I thought it was about much more than Keir at that point. I thought changing leaders was like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. I think I was wrong, right?” Hodge has seen it all.
Decade-long leader of Islington council when it was regarded as part of the “loony left”; Labour moderate and Blair-Brown loyalist throughout the years in power; scrapper extraordinaire who has taken on the BNP as MP for Barking, antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and tax-avoiding tech companies as the formidable chair of the cross-party public accounts committee (PAC). Now, in the week of her 82nd birthday, Hodge is publishing a memoir, Battleaxe. It shouldn’t be a term of derision.
It’s a strong woman.” Who came up with the title? My children don’t like it, but lots of people do.” Does she really feel like a battleaxe? I listen and reflect, but when I’ve made up my mind I’m quite strong and determined.” She reminds me of the great football manager Brian Clough, who said: “If I had an argument with a player, we would sit down for 20 minutes, talk about it, and then decide I was right.” We are at her London home, where she lives alone.
It’s every bit as immaculate and stylish as she is. The walls are covered in lovely paintings. There are busts of her husband (the high court judge Henry Hodge, who specialised in immigration and died aged 65 in 2009) and her father (Hans Oppenheimer, who co-founded Coutinho, Caro & Co, a steel trading firm that became the multinational Stemcor).
Extract — continue reading at the source.
