Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 14: Gina Miller

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

This week I think I met a real superhero. Remember Gina Miller who stood on the steps of the supreme court, seemingly alone, as she sued the government for being unconstitutional? Some misunderstood the case as being anti-Brexit but it was about standing up for failrness, something she's done ever since having a special needs daughter at the age of 25. This was something that affected her profoundly and that she has used in a positive way. We talked about some of the tough times she has gone through and her drive to fight for justice. See?... A real life superhero! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hello Spinning Plate Podcasts. How are you doing? Have you been having a good week? What's been happening around here? It's been a mixture of things really. I know we've entered into a second lockdown phase here

in the UK, but it doesn't feel quite the same as the first one, mainly because the kids are at school. So I'm sort of getting through bits and bobs of the day, although I've still got a ton of things I meant to sort out weeks don't know weeks ago I'm sitting as I speak to you in the room that is actually where my littlest one Mickey sleeps but it's also my dressing room and the poor kid it's a good job he's not able to articulate how he feels about being surrounded by piles of shoes clothes uh various items and accessories, or else he'd just be saying, Mum, please, it's a little bit overstimulating in here.

But then maybe it's quite nice to be surrounded by feathers, chiffon, bright colours, sequins. Don't worry, I do make sure he sleeps in the dark so he's not kind of being dazzled by my sequin garments as he tries to sleep. This week I spoke to someone, I'm going to be very, very honest with you. I'd never met Gina Miller before. I knew of her after she took Parliament to court over initiating Brexit unconstitutionally.

But I was a bit intimidated, actually. And when I first sent off my email, I just found the contact for her when I did a bit intimidated actually um and when I first sent off my email I just found the contact for her when I sort of did a bit of a google search and I sent off this little email into the ether saying I'd like to speak to her um and when she got back to me uh I was a little bit like oh I've actually got to follow up on this now because um you know, it can be quite intimidating to speak to somebody who's clearly very bright, calls out any unfairness, has a good sense of justice, and has really used all those skills for good.

You know, not everybody acts upon those impulses. Not everybody is good at standing up on their own and being the only one to call something out so I thought ah you know is she going to be scary which actually I'm kind of sheepish to admit but I think maybe it's worth voicing because I think sometimes it's you know it's how you feel isn't it's your gut reaction to someone when they're whip smart but actually she was completely lovely and warm and brilliant at explaining her motivation for wanting to do things like take the government to court,

which actually was born out of initially a sense of unfairness when she had her first baby at 25 and her first baby, a little girl, had special needs. And Gina found herself really quite alone and that set her firmly in her sights. I have to fight for my little girl. It's for the two of us now. She raised her as a single mum, and it was really defining and I think completely changed the course of her life. As is often the case if you have a baby, but it's particularly a baby that has

extra challenges and maybe you need to be an extra voice for them for the rest of their lives actually uh the rest of your life um so yeah it was a pleasure to speak to Gina and to hear how brave she'd been and uh yeah thank you to you for lending me your ears thank you Gina for her her wisdom and her time and um I'd be really interested to know what you think I I felt like I learned a lot from Gina. I felt like it was a real privilege to be able to sit with her and just have a proper chat. So, yeah, I'm excited to share it with you, as ever,

and I'm going to listen to it again from the comfort of this dressing room, and who knows, maybe I might even get around to hanging up some of these piles of stuff while I'm listening in with you. All right, lots of love. See you in a bit. Bye. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Gina. It's lovely to see you. I've been really, really keen to meet with you. And I'm just trying to think.

We haven't met before today, but we did have a very brief phone call last week and I think we probably spoke for about four or five minutes and managed to cover tons of topics. So I'm hoping that we can pack this. I was just so excited. I think within that five minutes, we covered raising a child with special needs, what it's like having someone that is being cared for this year

with lockdown, women in the business room and how because now people are working from home this might be something that's detrimental to female business women and maybe that's quite a good place to start actually because it's something i hadn't thought of at all because everybody's saying so much about how brilliant it is when people are working from home and setting their own boundaries about working from home but actually the practicality of that for lots and lots of us is it's been a bit of a nightmare really well I think it's um there's so many things like um undercover of COVID as I call it which are not necessarily going to be as positive as people are portraying and I think part of it is because it's too early to tell um you know we're making or businesses in particular making seismic decisions when we

have so many unknowns. And I'm just baffled as to how they can already have decided on that. So I started becoming suspicious because, unfortunately, I've got a suspicious mind. And I thought, I wonder if there's something else going on. And so I started reaching out and speaking to quite a lot of my girlfriends and friends who work in different industries. So no particular industry, just generally when working from home and they started saying the same things which is they're not being including in meetings um they're having to do the same workload but at night so they're having their present you know they may not be at present at work but they're present at home so the call

on them is enormous now to try and really be superwomen and juggle everything. And the kids and husbands are expecting them to cook more and be more homely and, you know, all the things that the media is saying how it's wonderful that they can do at home. But then they're having to work at night to catch up because their workload at work hasn't gone away. So their days are longer, they're more exhausted, the fact they're not being included in meetings. When they are included, you know, they're silent, they're being spoken over because it's so much easier to do that on a Zoom meeting or Teams to actually speak over someone and silence them. So there's this feeling that they're being pushed out and sidelined.

And if that's already happening after just a few months, I'm really concerned about what that means for the last few decades of advancements we've made of women being in work. I mean, we've fought for generations to be in the workplace, to have the freedom to aspire and to live our dreams outside the home. And all of a sudden,'re saying well actually your place is in the home and that's a really really worrying trend and then I started looking around to see if there was anything academic that was coming out or any research and I alighted on a research paper from McKinsey's just two weeks ago and they spoke to a huge number of women and 25% of women were saying already they're finding the pressure too much. And so they're either making thinking about lessening their time at work or stopping working.

And I'm thinking, my gosh, 25% is a huge number again already. But then there's also the issue of those who are working from home and do stay at home. What is an employer's duty of care? How do they look after them online? How do they ensure that their mental well-being is fine at work? Has remote working suddenly opened the door to less health and safety and duty of care from employers? So this is a sort of a bit of a hornet's nest I think that we haven't we're going to have to address and talk about and I what I'd like to see is women's

voices being heard because of many of the positive voices or the ones who are talking about how wonderful it is a male we're not hearing that many women talking about the practicalities of you know this hybrid life that we're going to have in the future yeah well i think it's um there's a bit in your book i think we said something like women are expected to be commanding in the boardroom and sort of nurturing and motherly when they're at home and i suppose this year has really made the juxtapositions those two things but they're not easy bedfellows at all and i suspect the dynamic of things in my house is mirrored in households up and down the country, if not around the world, where, you know, whilst I have a very modern relationship, my husband and I still have some traditional elements in that he has a place he can go to that's his workspace,

and I don't, and I never have done. And some of that was a bit conscious, because when I started working, I thought I don't really want the fact that I go to work to be something that's held over my kids heads when I'm at home I want them to be I want to be very accessible to them I want to be there for them but when I tried to reintroduce boundaries this year it's been really stressful it is stressful and I think that's that's the thing that we we're going to have to see how this goes in the future because it is we I don't want to close the door on women having the opportunity to pursue their dreams and then I think back to

a few conversations I had four years ago when I deliberately in my campaigning um sort of life I deliberately tend to go and see people who don't agree with me I think I learn more because I want to understand but also I you know I know people agree with me so you know let's go into the lion's den as it were so I took it on myself to go and see lots of politicians and business people who didn't agree with me when it came to Brexit or political parties or whatever and one of the things I was told which is also worrying me in the place we are now, and I have echoes of this conversation in my head, was there was a period about three or four years ago, when I don't know if you're in London, there were about four deaths in one week

in gangs, there was there's a horrific two or three weeks. But in one particular week, there were four deaths. And I was talking to this individual, very senior politician, member of something called the ERG. And he sort of said, no, no, you're not thinking big enough, Gina. And I thought, okay, what does that mean? He said, well, be it absenteeism, you know, low attainment levels, what's wrong is there's too many women in the workplace. He said, well, it all comes down to the fact that the family unit is fractured. And that whole conversation of that real belief, he didn't say it because he was being misogynistic. He really meant it. He really believed it.

And I'm thinking and I'm looking at politics now and very many of his ilk are actually now in power. And I'm wondering that phrase undercover of COVID, what it allows them to maybe bring in is more of what they see as a more traditional view of family and work and extolling the fact that women should be doing gardening and we should discover sewing and knitting and all the conversations that are now starting to bubble up but in a positive frame of mind rather than so the narrative has changed around these activities but it's still putting us back in our box almost and that's what's really concerning that is concerning there's a lot to unpick there and i'm wondering as well when you first i mean now obviously you know you you work as a sort of business activist but you know looking back over in life story it seems that when you were young the world of politics and business is quite far away from the environment you were offering it's not I mean were your parents in the business world and are they in politics so my father was uh very much an activist lawyer so he was I was really fortunate to be his daughter is my view,

is that so he would come home and talk to me, he believed that the law wasn't in books, it was about people's lives. And he'd tell me about who he'd seen that day. And when we were growing up, I was about six or seven, and we then had a dictator. And my father was instrumental in setting up a political party against him and trying to bring people's rights to the fore. So I grew up with it all the way through my life. It was fighting injustices was just something we grew up as a family knowing. I mean, I'm the only one who's not a medic. It's quite interesting. In my entire family, I say mind, body, plastic, surgery, they're all covered. But they all went into a sort of vocational profession and I wanted to go into law but from the point of view of

seeing it as a vocation not just as a profession and that was tough in the UK but my mother she was different she was disciplinarian but she was an eco warrior before I think the term was even invented so her lessons to us were that you know everything you have could be gone tomorrow that every tin could be reused every bit of sort of string was rolled up and put in a drawer everything had a place so she was very practical but always that thing she drilled into us is take care of what you've got because it could be gone and it could be you asking for help tomorrow so they were very caring and very nurturing individuals um so i think my campaigning comes from the fact that they instilled in me this idea that everyone has a responsibility yeah um for the world we live in and it's the way i

bring my children up so i don't have different conversations with my children than i do with my friends i mean the tone and the language i'll use is different but I so I I carry I've carried on their tradition um of of that sort of sense of responsibility yeah I mean it sounds like your parents instilled a lot and especially a sense of fairness and um and and as you say like the possibility that everything can turn tomorrow so you know look after the world that's around you because you might not, you can't count on anything for the next day. But when you were growing up and sent to, it's Eastbourne, isn't it? Yes. I still think the world of, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm being really naive here, but to me, the world of politics is still quite different to, you know, growing up with a lawyer father.

I suppose what I'm getting at really is, was it very intimidating to start being present to those things or is it something that comes quite naturally to you? Oh no no I mean I say it's taken me 30 years to find my true voice as a campaigner it's terrifying to start with but the positives are that you can learn to get better at it it's something you can learn but it's pretty terrifying when you're taking on the establishment, basically, and taking on people who are much more experienced than you and have teams around them. But for me, my first awakening was through motherhood. And I think that's the thing, because, you know, being a mother, you're a lioness and you're going to fight for your child. And so for me, my first I found my campaigning voice through my daughter, through my special needs daughter, who's now 32. my campaigning voice through my daughter through my special needs daughter who's now 32 but if you can imagine being a young mother I so wanted I decided I want I had a plan and my plan was I was

going to be successful in whatever I was going to do but I didn't want to give it up and have time out to have a family so I was going to have the family young and they were going to grow up with me you know I've all got to work out beautifully of course it didn't um so I was pretty young I was 24 when I had her and um or when I fell pregnant and so I was young I was excited but the UK NHS was more or less where it is now it was really about to fall over and we had a huge shortage of midwives um postnatal care so when I went in to have her there were there was nobody to deliver her so instead of me going in labor at sort of 11 o'clock on the Thursday she wasn't born until the Saturday night to 10 o'clock so she was in huge distress um and she was starved of oxygen so there I was

my you know couldn't wait to hold my beautiful baby girl but very soon my instinct mothering instinct kicked in and everyone around me kept telling me I was paranoid that I was a first-time mother I was fussing too much and it took me a whole year before anybody would believe me because she started missing her life her milestones but I instinctively knew something was wrong she was too good she never cried she never even when she was hungry, she never actually would cry and ask for food. She just didn't react as a baby should. And so I started asking for help and asking. And what I found out very quickly is that unless I had money to access consultants, or I had money to access advisors or, you know, whoever it was from the council,

from lawyers, legal profession, whoever I went to, you had to have money to try and get anywhere. And I just felt this was wrong. So I started, I turned up at the East Sussex offices, the council offices and said, I want you to see my child. There's this thing, I know you have these things set in place for assessment of children with special needs. I want my daughter to have that. And they kept saying, no, she doesn't qualify, you don't qualify. And so I started campaigning. And the, you know, the culmination of that work

led to the Special Needs Act in 1996, which I drafted some of the legislation for. And that was it. I was fighting for her. Because to me, the injustice was that all parents and all children should have access to special needs help medically, but also when they go to school to statements. And at that time, it wasn't the case. And I just felt it was so inhumane yeah to not have that so I think she gave me the bravery to take on I mean I remember vividly sitting outside literally terrified to go in there and take on the counsellors um but I knew I had to do it for her yeah because then you were

still only what like yeah I knew I mean because the alternative was what what the local authorities were telling me and local authorities were telling me and the doctors were telling me is that she should go to institution and that was my choice I either fight for her or I lose her so you know faced with that choice it wasn't a choice no wow yeah I mean the way I've heard you speak about your daughter is really beautiful. It sounds like it's been such a formative and loving relationship. And I mean, it's so, I always think it must be so tricky because when you're having a baby, everybody always says the same thing. Well, so long as it's healthy.

You're hoping for a boy or girl. Don't mind as long as it's healthy. And actually, if anything happens that makes you fall outside of that, it's healthy and actually if anything happens that makes you fall outside of that it's incredibly isolating um and during this time your relationship with your daughter's father was also yes he he was um you know very sort of proper family if you like sort of middle class eastbourne type family and they just believed the experts and said she should be in a home i mean there wasn't no questioning of the experts no um you know how could you and so they then started saying sort of turning on me almost and saying but you're wrong

you what do you know you're her mother yes fine but you're not the expert and and in the end that's about so that would fracture any relationship and then when I the more time I um so first of all I refused to give her up which they thought I should have done. And my husband was then started thinking I was spending too much time looking after her because I didn't want other people to come in. So he felt neglected. So it was a terrible combination. And, you know, and I just couldn't. I couldn't see anything other than her and her care.

just couldn't I couldn't see anything other than her and her care I was just totally focused on that because I kept thinking no she's going to be the best she can be she's just going to be so things like I'd spend four or five hours when she was about two and she still wasn't walking and they didn't find anything wrong with her physically I should take her to this playground in Old Town in Eastbourne and literally put one foot in front of the other because I knew she loved coming down the slide so that was her reward but we work hard for hours putting her one foot and me physically putting her foot one foot above the other on the step and in the end she learned it but it took months but I was convinced that she was going to do it and then the other thing which you will love to hear, is that they never thought she would speak.

And I had this really rusty Mini. Do you remember the old Minis? I literally, in winter, it was ice, and I put my foot through the bottom because it was so rusty. It was terrible. And I had this old secondhand car seat for her in the back. And do you remember the old cassette players? Yeah.

And they were telling me that she'd never be able to talk or whatever and I looked in the rearview mirror one day and I realized she was trying to um mouth the words from the song so I bought um a toy you remember early learning centers of course yeah so I bought a toy um drum kit for her um and one for me and we tapped out words from songs. So that's how she learned to speak because music has an incredible therapeutic side to it and it connects a completely different part of the brain. And so she learned to speak because of music. And a few years later, when we moved to London and it was her and me and I'd be sort of cleaning the house on the weekend or the flat,

we'd be jumping around the sofas to Iggy Pop and to pretenders because it was the thing that brought us together that made her so happy oh does she still love music now oh yes yes she absolutely I mean it's it especially live music it has a very different therapy to recorded music yeah no there's so much that music can do for for kids and for people with special needs and it's like a really vital thing. I think the way it builds morale, good for memory and for joy and fun. It's just joyous, yes.

Yeah, all these things. I'm very glad to hear about that. But can you remember back to what it was like for those months, you know, that stood there just you and her in the playground? Did you feel, did you have a support network around you? Did you? No, I felt very isolated because Eastbourne is quite a, I'd say,

I'm not saying this because it's not true or it's a negative, it just is a white community, it's a fairly white community. I've been to Eastbourne, it's okay, I would agree with that. Very traditional. And so my school I went there was wonderful and multicultural and it was brilliant, but my husband was from East, so we went back there when Lucianne was born. So, no, there wasn't much of a network. And what I also found was this competition between parents.

So everyone was talking. When you go, it's my child doing this, then doing this. And, of course, she wasn't doing any of it. And, you know, we had four or five different people from the NCT and we kept together and she was falling so further behind. And that's something my, her father couldn't cope with. He was, he wanted to be proud of her doing these things. And of course she wasn't. So it was incredibly isolating. So when she was four and the marriage fell apart, I, I came to London. I came back and that's when I had a network because my brothers were here.

They were younger than me. I hadn't really told them what was going on because they had to get on with their own lives. But then I was able to have a network with my elder brother, his wife, new wife, who's Irish and completely insane and loveliest person with a golden heart. Honestly, the most wonderful, gentle person ever.

So suddenly I had her my brother and then my younger brother so so then there was a network but that must have been such a scary time for you so you moved into a flat just you and Lucianne well I moved in first of all with with my younger brother um but that was too much for for him uh he also found it quite stressful having her around because she she was very disruptive at that time we hadn't sort of worked out how to get her into a routine at sort of four or five so I hired I couldn't afford it so I hired a one-bedroom flat in Stoke Newington um Princess May Road it's called and uh I slept on the sofa because I didn't I I wanted her to be I was quite

strict with myself because it would have been really easy to just give in and mollycoddle her and just wrap her up in cotton wool. But I wanted her to be able to survive in the world. So I decided that she would not sleep in my bed. She would not sleep with me. She would have her own room and we'd start building boundaries for her. So I couldn't afford a two bedroom. So I slept on the sofa bed and she had the bedroom.

And we were there for a couple of years but that was tough as well is this when you started studying yes and I started studying again and that was I mean it was wonderful because I didn't even know when I started looking in so I this was my second degree and I started looking into it and there were the I didn't know that universities repeated for the sort of older students matured students they repeated classes in the evenings where you could have a choice of when you went so I would pack her up with her little Tomi Walkman and her music and her snack and she'd sit in the front row with me while I was in my lectures and she became you know the lecturers got to know her other people in the and suddenly that was an

amazing network because I'd have study groups and they'd all come and play with her and they would then look after her so I could go and work at Pizza Express sometimes to earn money so I suddenly that was an amazing network that was the students were much younger than me but they were so supportive and full of energy it was a really sounds tough time it was a really lovely time I found it incredibly joyous being a student for three years with her because she was with me well I suppose as well you've got that sort of fizz of like independence you've actually come through a lot of really difficult times already and you're now somewhere where there's hope and optimism yes and I could also see that I was able it was going to give me the ability to earn to look after her because I just decided right that's it it's up to me it wouldn't be up

to a partner or anybody else I had to get my myself to a place where I could start a business I'd already worked out that I couldn't work in a big organization because I wouldn't have the flexibility to look after her so um no it gave me I could see you know light at the end of the tunnel as it were at the end of the degree I thought I'm going to be able to do this this was a business degree yeah I was doing marketing in HR, yes. And I was good at it. And I was doing well. And my lecturers were fantastic. And I could, yeah, I could see light. Was she the only small person in the room? Yes. The thing is, and that's when I discovered something about her that I hadn't realised,

which is that her emotional intelligence is extraordinary. And so we'd have those study groups and some of the other students would come around and she'd go up and cuddle them if they were sad. And she'd say to me, you know, Helen's sad today. And I realized that she had the ability to pick up, which she still does now. Her emotional intelligence is off the charts so I say I discovered that she had different abilities so they weren't necessarily academic but she had the ability to feel when people were sad and needed a hug or when she was just a carer yeah this instant ability to care for people with something when I started looking into emotional intelligence and I discovered yes a side of her

which was extraordinarily powerful well it sounds as well like sometimes you the two of you almost like this little team and you have to keep putting yourselves in situations and saying right where's her natural ability here and where if I just push it a little bit can she actually excel yes like with the feet on the yes no but even things like I didn't know because I didn't have the access all the time actually to take to see lots of specialists so I knew I had worked out that music was a good therapy for her, and so we worked on that. But then the whole thing about order

is that she was then getting older, seven or eight, but, you know, everything, so it doesn't matter how tired I was studying at night or whatever it was, I had to make sure that the bathroom, her bedroom, the fridge, anything, everything was in exactly the same place all the time. Wow, that's a job in itself. And then she could get up and get herself breakfast

because she couldn't work out problems. So that's the thing she still can't do. Her long-term emotional memory is extraordinary, better than most people I know. But her short-term memory to work out a problem. So if something's not in the right place, how do you get it? How do you refill it? Those sorts of simple everyday things she can't do so everything has to be very ordered um and that was yes that

was tough but I by accident realized that and did you feel like you had a lot of I mean if you're someone that's raising a child that has special needs like that do you get find a way to find other parents in the same situation or is it quite a lonely path? In those days it was because people didn't talk about it. You know, people talked about children who looked as though they had special needs. So the difference was if you could see a disability, people talked about it. But people didn't really think about, you know, what I call the invisible abilities. So the mental health or, you know, some sort of people who had starved of oxygen or the invisible disabilities, it's not something people really talked about or actually

acknowledged even. It's just that they were stupid or slow or, you know, the parents were exaggerating. You really didn't have the acknowledgement. And so that was tough. That was pretty lonely. So it tended to be about physical disabilities. And she again picked that up I mean I remember years later when do you remember the Olympics in London there was the Paralympics which was so extraordinary yeah and she went with my older brother and my sister-in-law and she came back and I was working that day and I said to her because I'd seen some of it on TV and I'd said isn't it extraordinary isn't it amazing Luciana and she looked at me and went no and I sort of said why she said and the same thing she said to me because everyone sees that they're disabled but nobody sees I'm disabled so it's that sort of ability for her to just come out with something which is extraordinary and so she she didn't have the same empathy or sympathy for

those people because she just felt well everyone's fussing over them um so it it it it's easier now but now we've almost gone the other way because the spectrum has grown and grown and now suddenly there's this massive spectrum of special needs and autism and and it almost needs to be drawn back in again um because i think that the the downside of the recognition is they're written off and actually they have so much to offer so i would love people to start talking about different abilities more because everybody is good at something everybody has something to offer we just need to discover what it is yeah no that's i think that's a really important point and i think also what you're talking about with the sort of hidden hidden disabilities and the idea of someone that looks like an adult I mean it makes me feel there must

be so many times where you know what the pace of life is like and how people can be so impatient and they want to have that little fight with the person who's taking too long at the front of the queue or someone that's dawdling to pay a bill or you know walk fast on the pavement and you don't really know what's going on with well this she's experienced all of that in bullying and being pushed over all that sort of thing but then it crosses over to where we are today with with with mental health too because you know we are so focused on living life fast and I think again it's probably a positive for COVID is that we're being made to slow down but I've always said to her and the

other my other two children is, you know, it's that thing, take three seconds, take three, give people the benefit of doubt. You don't know what they're going, you don't know what's going on behind someone's face. You don't know what they're experiencing, if they're sad, if they're feeling lonely, if you have to give people the benefit of the doubt.

And just be kind. And that's something I think we could all learn from because you don't know what's going on you don't know if someone is feeling a loss if they're going through bereavement if they're struggling just to get out of bed that morning yeah and all those things I've lived with her for 32 years because she has as you say she she is a fully grown adult I mean she her father's blonde she She's really stunning looking. She looks like one of the Gauguin paintings, actually. She's absolutely gorgeous, but it's a child inside. And, you know, I've helped some of her friends as well growing up. There's this wonderful young man

who is Jamaican, and he's six foot three. He's this gentle giant. He's a child too. There are a number of times he's been arrested for just hanging around outside places, whatever, because he's waiting for someone. Because people don't realise that he is that child and because he stumbles to talk, he'll just get bungled into the back of a car

and taken off to the police station. But I do think we have to take time to think and to empathize and to find out what's going on with other people yeah and I think you're right that there are some elements of what's happened this year that have actually slightly shifted some of that thinking because people are aware that everybody's got a sort of story behind the day job or the way you normally interact with them. And I know, certainly from my own experience, there's been lots of times when what would normally be quite a simple interaction with someone,

maybe in a shop or something, ended up with people sharing a little bit more about the fact that things have been tough or how the footfall's been in their shop that day or how they've been homeschooling their kids or whatever it is that's behind the scenes. And I think, I suppose it's because we've all been through something

that there's nobody that hasn't been touched by what's been going on globally this year. I mean, which is pretty remarkable thing. It is remarkable. And I think some of the trends, COVID's going to turn out, I think, to be a double-edged sword. I mean, there will be a price to pay,

but there's so much that actually was happening before that we decided we shunned and we didn't really look at and face up to and I think he's giving it and that time to talk and time to think the two things I think are going to be really positive that we're going to give ourselves not just ourselves space but we're going to give other people space too and that's a good thing that's a good thing So with Lucienne, how long were you like a single mum with her? Eight years. Eight years.

So it was, yeah. Because the other thing I, you know, when you're trying to have a relationship and you say to somebody, I've got a child with special needs who is not going away. It's going to be with me probably till she's an adult. That's not always something people want to take on. And because she was, she needed a lot of my time you know it was a difficult thing but also presumably as well makes you have to vet someone for that the ability to be patient and caring with all of that too it makes you extra

you're not just protecting yourself yes no no no i've not but then the flip side of that was a sense of guilt that i always had in the back of my mind, because obviously I wanted her to be in a family, to have siblings, to have a father. Even though she had her father, not in a day-to-day basis, because he became sort of quite distant, but still had a relationship, but not a particularly close one. So that guilt was always there. Coming from a South African background, we grew up a huge family, and we'd all sit together.

There was always that sense of guilt that she didn't have that and that always played on it on me but I suppose the other other side of it is it sounds like such a defining thing in terms of your work that you went back and did your degree and then having these part-time jobs so what when you came out the other side of getting the degree obviously you said you had this plan okay I want to start my own business but what was the reality the other side of the degree in terms of so I didn't know what it would be but in my I was fortunate in that my final year my in doing my masters my two lecturers were both lecturers but worked still as consultants and so they invited me to do some work with them they got a contract to do an audit of financial services and marketing in the sector that wasn't working. You know, it was the 90s, things were changing. And I worked

on that for my, and they said, that could be your dissertation. So I actually got paid for my dissertation, some of the work on it, but it was pretty good. But also, I suddenly realized how far from understanding marketing that sector was. And the more I learned about financial services, the more I realized that actually it wasn't consumer focused, but yet it was such an important thing. What I've learned about myself through looking back, and I don't tend to look back, but writing the book, I was made to look back and I had to reflect. And what I've realized is I've been drawn to setting up businesses where I see a I suppose all people do with entrepreneurs but I was drawn to a business where I could see that it wasn't satisfying a societal good and for

me the way I see my world of investments and pensions and money is that it's about financial health and if people don't have good products and don't have a good outcome then they can't look after themselves and their families and their future and there's nothing there's nothing more inhumane to me there's so many things but one of the things I find very inhumane is the indignity of elderly people without money without care without so. And the whole point about products that we sell is to give you the ability to do that, to look after your older self. And that's not how the industry was set up. And when I would talk about things like that,

when I did eventually set up my, I set up a consultancy, that was a bold thing to do. I remember saying to my brothers, right, I'm going to set up a marketing consultancy. They went, but you've just finished your degree. And I said I said well I have a feeling I know more about marketing than some of the people and I literally set up and within a year I had 12 clients which was fabulous so um because I was trying to tell them about connecting with consumers but I did have other people who said you're talking a mom I remember the phrase you're like a mama and papa business nobody's going to take you seriously you're so sort of soft things woolly things you're talking about um it's just not how you do business it's not

you're not going to be successful and again I fast forward to COVID and I'm thinking these are the things we're talking about now and I feel so I can take a step back and sit back in my chair now because I've been fighting since 1996 which is when I set up my my that consultancy about the idea of social good and a triple bottom line and not just pursuing profit but planet and people and I'm now thinking it's coming of age so I can sit back because those conversations now are the right ones I feel as we go forward because we became greedy and you know so I stuck because it was me and her and my overheads weren't that high I didn't need to be successful straight away or I needed for me success was being able to look after her and myself and build it organically so I was able to do that and do you think that there's still a lot of um sort of mystery for people quite often when it comes to sort of dealing with

their finances in that way in terms of pensions and investments and things yes absolutely but part of it is the industry has done it on purpose because you think about it how can you justify all these lovely fees and you know if you if you speak in plain English, which we do, and you explain things, then people will think, well, maybe I'll do it myself. And I say to the industry, but yes, people will think that, but then they're busy doing their jobs. So therefore, I mean, you could become a plumber, but you're not going to

because you tend to have other things to do. So, you know, why use this mystery and pretend it's all a black box? It isn't actually. Because my view is if we made it more understandable and people trusted us, you'd actually end up getting more clients. Because the fact is, especially now looking forward to post-COVID, no public purse is ever going to be able to look after the elderly in our population. We have to encourage people to look after themselves and to be prudent. So, you know, that's our social good. That's the thing we should be doing. And yet we're not producing language, education, literature that's explaining

that to people. And I spend a lot of my time specifically speaking to women. So I've set up clubs and networks and all sorts of things trying to educate women about finance and about looking after their older selves because it's so so important yeah i mean i wish someone had had that conversation i mean actually maybe at school i think they could start conversations about so i i think there are a few groups um who are doing things at school the research i've done is school is a little bit young because people really come start youngsters start thinking about money at university. That's the first time they're really thinking, right, how does a budget work? And it's not about investments or pensions.

It's things like, you know, what does loans mean? What is APR? What, you know, how does compounding, how does interest work? How does mortgage work? And I see it as killing two birds with one stone if you start at university because people at university

are likely to be the employees of the future. so they can help their staff and look after their staff but also they're the ones who can start saving younger as well it's just a reality of it and they can take more responsibility and also that first year of university if you made it something really practical it would give you so much confidence about money because unfortunately we don't have um very monetary confidence in this country no people tend to you talk about any of those subjects or talk about maths where people shy away and go you know i don't know i don't know of course they would know it's just it instantly puts a wall up um and i think we need to bring that wall down yeah i mean a lot of that sounds a bit like me, really.

I mean, I think maybe not just at university. I didn't actually go to university, but I think at that age. At that age. It's at age. My husband hides behind his hands when I do. There's one presentation I do for the Women's Network. It's called, it's the Ladies' Number One Club. It's right from John Smith's book,

I thought I'd call it that, number one investment club. And so, and I explained the stock market like a wardrobe of clothes. And my husband actually hides behind his hands because he's our investment manager. He goes, I can't believe you're just doing this. And I put, everyone gets it at the end of that.

I was going to say, absolutely. And everyone gets it. Yes, what's the the aim here just to make it into practical terms and actually it makes it a lot less intimidating and I think you know certainly when I was in my 20s and the first time I was having to deal with finances and planning and I was lucky enough to you know have a mortgage and um going to meetings with my accountants and I would just I remember just sitting in the accountant meetings thinking does my face look like someone who's understanding? Am I nodding at the right places? And then as a reflex, after every accountant meeting,

I'd always feel like I had to go off to go and buy something silly, like go to Topshop and buy a dress or something. It was just sort of like a purge of having to think about money. It was so weird. It was such a reflex thing. But it's even something simple like that. So another example is this whole idea of how fees work and I say could imagine if you went to Topshop you bought that dress and it said on the ticket um 50 pounds and you pay with your credit card and when you got your credit card statement a

month later it said 80 pounds you'd be furious wouldn't you because it was not what it said on the tin or on the ticket price and that's how the whole world of investments and pensions works because the price you see is not the price you're going to pay and when people realize that I say and then what you do is you say to them no don't tell me the ticket price I want to know the true cost what is going to come out of my bank account and so it's a question so giving people the ability to not just understand but ask the right questions is so important and that sort of thing that it's not difficult to do so by the time you met alan and then you had your second and third baby is this what you were doing you're already running yeah i was already so i met him so i'd been going quite a few years and i was approached by his boss

who was a big wig in the city who set up a new company. And he asked me to launch his new business. So I launched that in 2002. I helped them. It was something called Newstar. And Alan was the investment manager there. And he always says, he saw, so he's such a wonderful man. He always says, I saw you. And I couldn't move. This is what he always says. He said, because I came into the building. He said he just stood there for a few minutes. I'd watched me walk across the floor. And then we didn't get together for years after that. But he sort of always remembers the first time he saw me.

And he said, I fell in love with you then. And it's just such a wonderful thing to be told three years later. But, yeah, so that's where we met. And he also then laughs and says and then we had our first date and you spent most of it telling me why we shouldn't have a date and why I shouldn't go out with you because you're really demanding you're you're really ambitious you've got this daughter and I and uh so he calls it the so what dinner because he says and then I just kept saying to you so what and you just kept going on and on about trying to put me off well I guess you know if you've been through ups and downs but also have been

learned how to be so independent and and fairly bulletproof with it actually like at the core of it you and Lucianne and then all this sort of stuff you set up is I mean the fact that even when you said you first moved to London to wait with your brothers but up until then you hadn't really bothered them with what had been happening in Eastbourne these things it's quite it's very independent minded to sort of think I'll I'll focus on the things I can do that are practical for me my daughter and I won't really burden anybody else as you would probably yes I felt it was a burden but I mean there's something that happened there before I met um um Alan that uh so I that guilt of always being in the back of my mind of of wanting to give her a family so one of my um clients uh um that I met was this

incredibly charming Irishman um gift of the gab just wonderfully very religious had three children seemed to be the perfect man for me he was caring supportive knew my world knew the world of investments was very successful in his own right and it seemed to me a ready-made family but it was just I connected with him he connected with me the children were adorable I loved my my then became my stepchildren the youngest was the same age as Lucianne and everything seemed to be right time right place everything seemed to be almost I'd use the word magical because I'd been so focused on looking after myself and being independent. I hadn't given myself any room or space to be cared for. And suddenly there's this person who was offering me everything.

And so we got together. I moved out of London. I went to just outside Bath. We got married and within two months, everything changed. And it turned out, long story short, we stayed together a couple of years, but it turned out that he saw me as somebody he could own and break. And so he systematically set about destroying me two months after we got married. And I have no idea who I was. I lost all my confidence. I say,

it got to the stage where I felt I was drowning. I had no idea who I was, what was real, what wasn't real, I don't remember knowing anything about myself. He was incredibly manipulative. He was, he cut off all my friends, all my family systematically. It was almost a, later on when we, when I went to the police and I got away because it came very physical, He said to the police, I remember him telling them that I deserved it because I didn't, I was too, the word he used was, I was too argumentative, that I wanted my own way. And that's not what women should have. And I remembered thinking at the time, so why did you actually, you know, why did we ever come together as a couple? i've learned now 16 years ago and i do a lot of work i'm dealing with domestic violence coercive behavior is that for some men you're a challenge

so bright independent supposedly women strong women because there's this taboo this thinking that only weak women suffer from domestic violence i know that's not the case um it's that for a lot of the women i've now spoken to who've been in Survivor as I am, they say it's because you're a challenge. There's something about you that they want to break and own. So it becomes almost a game to them. And so when, I mean, two years, that was, I can't, I think it took me probably 12 years to get over those two years.

And so it was a very gentle thing when I met Alan. It took a long time for me to trust anybody else, but I instinctively knew he was different. But what I discovered from that relationship and that marriage was that I couldn't trust anybody ever again. And I think that was the thing when I that what so dinner what else dinner with Alan's I said to him straight from straightforward I said to him I'm so sorry but I can never love you 100% because I'm incapable of doing that the fact I've survived means that I would never be that honest with anybody again and I think that's one of the scars you know I always I try to talk to survivors I say you you were a

beautiful vase you still are a beautiful vase but when you're broken and put back together there's always scars there and that's what it's like you always have the scars and so there's always this you know self-preservation there because you've survived um and that means that you never truly give the same way again to somebody else. And that's terrible for good people. I mean, you know, I apologize even now to Alan. We've been together, you know, 15 years. And I say, I still apologize to him for not loving him the way I think he deserves to be loved.

That's interesting, though, because I wonder to what extent you can ever really have control over that. I mean, if you have a happy and loving... I understand that if you've been in a controlling relationship, the way you've learnt what love looks like during that time is ugly and wrong, and that's not how love should be in your life. And I know when you meet someone new and they treat you so much better and give you freedom to be yourself and respect and love in its proper sense it takes a little while to to learn that

language again but can you really maintain that distance from someone if they are a good person it gets over time you get closer and closer um But every so often, I'll still have a nightmare, or he'll say something and I'll have a flashback. And he doesn't mean to, or somebody else doesn't mean to. And actually, in the last four years, what has really been difficult for me, particularly going through all the abuse threats I've had since, you know, my court cases, is that some of the language abusers are using, he used, and so I'm realising now he was also a racist as well. So he saw me as being,

he needed to own me, because I was, and I've since learnt that, this is how weird it is, is that he actually did become, join a right-wing party after we split up, is that he felt that I was using my voice but it wasn't my place um so it was really there's so much wound up in that whole in that relationship but uh that's brought back some of the memories because I'd managed to Alan and our relationships managed to heal that but now I still have some flashbacks because of the things I'm told about, you know, the rape threats. A lot of the things, it's a language he used, which I thought I'd gotten over. And that's the thing, you never know when something will take you back to that place.

Yeah, I can't even imagine how hard that must be. So you now have two children. I have two. Yeah, so one of the things. You have two teenagers? Yeah, no, I said to Alan, because he was so longing to be a father. He didn have two children. I have two. Yeah, so one of the things... You had two teenagers? Yeah, no, I said to Alan, because he was so longing to be a father, he didn't have children.

And I sort of said to him, I think I'm too old now to have any more. I've been told, you know, late 40s, it's difficult. And I didn't want to do IVF or anything like that. So we had started... There's a film with Hugh Laurie, I think it is, where they, maybe baby, where they jump on the bike that was us we were we were we were trying everything and I was phoning him about we would literally and I opened the side drawer to the bed one day and I saw these charts

and thermometers and we changed our diets and I was um I went to shiatsu I was having baths in herbs I was trying everything to get pregnant naturally and I got so fed up after I said to shiatsu, I was having baths in herbs. I was trying everything to get pregnant naturally. And I got so fed up after, I said to him, should we just nip to Paris? So we sort of went off to Paris for the weekend and ate all the things and drank all the things we shouldn't have been. We, you know, diet went out the window,

all the rest of it. We came back pregnant. The moral of the story is... No, no, no, no. But it's also, I think it's a mental thing if you worry so much and you're so you almost become sort of slightly obsessed with it and i think that's inhibits you as as so so we fell pregnant with with our son and uh i was just so happy had him fed him till

he was eight months old and then a month later i said to to the gynecologist my gynecologist I said oh I'm pregnant again and he went no Gina you're not it's the hormones coming down from you stopping breastfeeding today I went I'm telling you I'm pregnant he went so I went in did the test with him I was pregnant he said don't ever tell any of my patients this so yeah there's only um, 10 months between them. So we then had, and that was extraordinarily difficult and tested us as a couple because, so Lana, who's now 13, she was showing all the signs of complex special needs. She was, yeah, we were advised

when she was 24 weeks to abort. But I, my mother was even reminding, trying to push me to do it because my mother was saying to me you've been through this once you can't go through this again um but Alan was kind and he and he and I both agreed we're in a different place we were fortunate enough we had the money we could care for her you know we could find whatever care and I just feeling her kicking I just couldn't there's absolutely no way I could do that um so we had her and she is she has an impaired immune system she has asthma um but apart from that

she's perfectly fine you know I have to be very careful with her through COVID you need I took her out of school in February because she has a very her immune markers they're called in her body are in their thousands so but apart from that she is feisty funny and absolutely wonderful with her brother they're like an old married couple the two of them um and and presumably Lucianne has been living up until you said last year she yeah so so we she was just she was just getting to the stage because the other thing that happened with all the threats and everything that I was getting is my own mortality really started weighing on my mind. I started writing letters to them and all that sort of thing.

And I thought she needs to be in an accommodation. She needs to be cared for. Because Luca, who's 15, he got very angry with me because I had this conversation with the whole family. And he said, no, no, no, I'm going to care for her. And I said, no, it's not your responsibility. Of course, you're going to care for her and love her, but she can't live with you. You need to have your own life. So the two kids were not happy with me going down this path, but they understood in the

end. So we started looking for assisted accommodation for her and found it just before lockdown. So she was really excited about going and living with somebody who, there's three of them in the house, but somebody who is a musician. And so he's got severe special needs, but he's an amazing, talented musician. So we put up all the stuff. We had everything ready. And then lockdown happened the week after. So I had to bring her back home because I couldn't see her.

The support bubble, there was no such thing in the first lockdown and she reacted dreadfully she thought I was telling her off that she'd done something wrong remember she's an adult now she had she's physically an adult but this child and she just started hitting out slamming doors breaking things just getting very very angry and then taking it out on her brother and sister. She was pinching them. She just couldn't understand why she couldn't go to her new house because we'd put the bedroom together.

She'd all obsessed with pink and fluffy things. So she just couldn't understand why she couldn't be there. And then all her clubs that she goes to that keeps her sort of mentally and physically well, they'd all shut. So she couldn't go to her art club. She couldn't go to her dance club. She couldn't do anything. She didn't understand Zoom.

She felt that was horrible. Why can I see people, but I can't go and see them? And so, you know, I know lockdown has been terrible for lots of carers of people with special needs because all the support went. lots of carers of people with special needs because all the support went yeah um so she went back in in july and you know now we have to consider what happens if we go into another lockdown but uh she's a support bubble and we are so we can i can still see her yeah it's just hard how do you explain to someone that doesn't you know have special needs what's going on at the moment it's such an abstract thing even for people that do get their head around it it's a lot of it's quite it's quite it was quite extraordinary though because she was also at the

same time she would watch the daily briefings with me and sometimes she would say to me things like but they're not telling me the truth her as though they were talking to her and I said what do you mean she said well look at their eyes and so she she but that's how she could that she she literally looks at people's eyes she's obsessed with looking at people's eyes and so she would tell me things like that and I'm sitting there going okay you really need to be in that room I feel like I wish I know I was gonna oh my gosh she's extraordinary she's absolutely extraordinary yeah um she she has she has done some extraordinary things. She's been able to tell a girlfriend of mine who had cancer that she had cancer. She's able to identify somebody who was, funny enough, also abusing his wife.

She knew when she met him. And somebody I'd worked with for years and years. And she'd never met him. He came for a party at home, pre-doctor, a couple of years ago. And I said to her, say hello, because she'd always come around and you know say hello to everybody and she just hid behind me and wouldn't say hello and she just kept saying whispering in my ear bad man bad man mom and i and later on i asked her when when he when everyone left and she's and she said because he's not kind to ladies and i just she just has this is the thing her the

emotional ability is extraordinary it is absolutely extraordinary her ability to read people because the thing is if you think back we are animals we give off signals we give off signs and there's something in her ability and it's not just her there's some you know people with special ability uh special needs they can they seem to part of their brain they're they're able to tune in to those animal instincts and to read people well i guess as well they're not looking at the other signals that we will give you they're not socialized like us so they're looking at something completely different completely different um so we haven't really spoken about yet but you've

sort of alluded to you know death threats and um abuse that you faced but all because of what happened when you took on the government with brexit so what was the thing just before that that started that was just a sense of unfairness about what you were saying because i because of my background of always being obsessed with governments and parliament politics i always have been so i my first march i went to was the um against blair was the iraq war and so i was on that march i felt that was wrong. And I thought the powers he was using were wrong. So one of my hobbies is I read Hansard.

I've been looking at the debates in parliament. You know, I'm, to go to sleep, yeah, I read about the most boring things. Can I imagine? Hansard to go to sleep is me at bedtime, which is a bit, yes, curious. But so I realized in the Hansard Society, there's a group of us who are really getting concerned, the politicians, because we're only one of three countries which doesn't have a written constitution,

which means that you can push the boundaries. And so in 2014, 2015, when I was becoming more and more alarmed and more and more activist and more and more working with other, collaborative with other people, we discovered that in that one year, had used henry the eighth powers with these ancient powers 90 odd times and that means you see i've always seen politics as about policies and policies is how we live our lives it's actually about our lives every single day it's not it's not something abstract or happens in a building in the middle of London. And so when Mrs May talked about triggering Article 50 with royal prerogative,

I actually knew what it meant. And I was alarmed. Because if you don't have a written constitution, things are set by precedent. So if one prime minister does it, then other prime ministers could do it in the future. And that would completely change our system. And they wouldn't be answerable to anybody,

not even parliament. They could literally just, if you think about that against the backdrop of what's going on at the moment, because the COVID, this government, actually the MPs nodded through, they have a lot of these powers now, so they can do more or less what they want.

But we're going to have to try and find the redress at some point. But for me, it was ensuring that Parliament was sovereign. And I was naive, so naive, because the threat, it was a very febrile environment, but I persuaded my legal team, because they had already started getting abuse. I persuaded them that this was such a simple case, that, you know, we were defending Parliament, we were sovereign even the people didn't disagree with me on brexit would actually support me because it's a thing they've been talking about so i thought i'd be i put my head above the parapet lots of other people

would join so i was so naive i thought academics business people other politicians cross party i never thought i was going to be on my own i thought i was going to look around and be lots of people supporting me yeah so i think what happened was when people started seeing the abuse I got, it put them off. Even really good people just said to me quietly, Gina, we wish you the best, but we can't be supporting you. We can't be seen to support you. And so I had to draw on my strength. And I think everything I'd been through I'm quite a fatalist and I remember the meeting when my lawyer said right what do we do because there were supposed to be two other two men who were going to join me especially financially um and they couldn't uh and it was the right thing

that they couldn't because I think they were very well known their families their businesses everything would have been uh pillar. So I said, when they asked me, what do we want to do? And it was that point. To me, it was no choice. It's either I don't do it and nobody does it, and this changes our entire country, or I'm going to do it. And I

said, you know what? I said, the things I've been through in my life, this is my conversation to the lawyers. I said, the things I've been through in my life, nothing's going to dent me. They can throw whatever they want at me. Again, being naive and not thinking what was going to come was going to come. And so I said, right, we're going to go for it. And so it was, it then revealed a whole different, I never, ever, when I had that conversation, that two hour meeting with my lawyers, my legal team, ever, ever, when I had that conversation, that two-hour meeting with my lawyers, my legal team,

I never foresaw a future in which I'd be looked after by a terrorism squad. We'd have 20-odd alarms around our house. We couldn't go out anymore. I don't go out with my children because I was worried about if anything happened to me, that people would be taking out, you know, raising money to have me killed, that I could deal with all of that. I did deal with it. There are many days I went home and cried because it was so, it was a lot to deal with, but I felt I could. What I couldn't deal with,

and I had to have help with my family and people to support, is when it was my children. So to get a letter, because it wasn't just online, to get a letter saying, we know where your children go to school, they'll be taken. And me not knowing if that's true or not. Or other letters saying, oh, we've discovered that your husband is, we've discovered that your husband's Jewish and you're

ethnic, so your children are Mongols, we're going to put them down. And that's a whole different emotive sort of rollercoaster And tsunami of emotions that comes to you Because then how do you look after your children? And so we just stopped going out We stopped for three years We lived in a very different life We sort of

I say in an odd way Lockdown is a relief to us Because I can go out in a mask And I can sit and wear sunglasses And we don't go And other people are distracted. So in an odd way, the three years, this last year has been easier for us than the last three years. So I never envisaged any of that.

Well, I mean, listening to the sort of big sort of life events with having your first daughter and feeling on your own in that. And then your very traumatic second marriage and feeling very alone in that and then again with brexit and sort of it feels like there's been these times in your life where you've sort of like when you said you thought you'd look around loads of people yes do you think that with with the brexit um campaign people didn't understand what it was you were doing and that's why they were yes no no i think it well it became the the governments uh and politicians politicized it and they were never talking about the constitution even when i brought my second case you know we had a prime minister who lied to the queen and yet it was about brexit so i and it was so tough it got to

the point where i stopped because everyone kept calling it the brexit case i was going but it's got absolutely nothing to do with brexit because i win it goes to parliament point where I stopped because everyone kept calling it the Brexit case I was going but it's got absolutely nothing to do with Brexit because I win it goes to parliament and it goes through so how have I stopped Brexit nothing I did ever stopped Brexit so actually I was very specific to my legal team and I said it must never delay it either so we we always worked to timetables we've met the government's timetable which meant that we had juniors sleeping on the floor in their offices working weekends working all night I, the teams were absolutely incredible. Because normally it's sort of a case that, you know, the thing that gives me pride is when I think, you know,

this woman who should have shut up and not had a voice, I won the two biggest constitutional cases for 400 years. I mean, that's pretty, you know, does make me smile to myself. And, you know, and my children. And, you know, but they me smile to myself and, you know, and my children and, you know, but they know what I do. But then I put it aside and there's so much more to do now. But I think that's the fatalistic, I almost feel it. Yes, it should have been me. And it was going to be me. Because A, I was strong enough that nobody's ever going to tell me what to do or where to be or what to say ever again or try and silence me. But also because I can be independent and I do have the strength to.

It's not about bravery or courage or any of those things, because I think if you shut yourself off, you become strong. You actually are a lesser person. I stay soft and I feel things. And as I say, I cry and I'll get upset and I'll write letters and, you know, to my children, whatever it is I do, I still try to be, feel all my emotions, but I work through them. And that's what I found I can do, even when I'm on my own. It's a slightly selfish thing to do, because when you're on your own and you you can work through your own emotions you're not listening to other people's voices you can listen to your own voice and you can figure out what you can put up with what you

can't put up with when you need to stop um and that's the hardest thing actually to listen to your voice is saying stop look after yourself now because you need to be strong tomorrow um because we we think we have to be strong all the time or you know go all the time so I've those periods I've I've discovered that I actually quite like my own company and I and um and I listen to my own voice and I do and when I say I listen to my voice I listen to my voice um through the echoes of my parents my parents still have a huge influence in me. And one of the things I try and do with my children is they don't know an airbrushed version of me. They know everything about me, warts and all.

And I talk to them about why I'm doing something, my thought process of why I'm doing it and what I'm feeling. Because I think it will help them understand who they are because they're part of me. So I try to get them to, for them to see the real me all the time um yeah and and so that that helps them and it helps me too and do you think that your children because it sounded from I was reading before that your kids in particular Luca was actually very much watching what was happening

with uh Brexit and the referendum and all these things i felt like he was very sort of tied into you know the news and was very upset and distressed when um you know leave was announced and and i suppose it's about their future too i mean do you think well remember remember the schools were doing mock referendums they were doing debates it was really something i think this is a secondary yeah a lot of what secondary schools were. Yeah, a lot of the secondary schools were. And I think a lot of parents don't realize how engaged and how upset the young people were because they were talking about these things. Yeah. And they were getting pretty vocal about it.

And they were pretty indignant as well because, you know, at school they're being taught to look at facts and to learn things. And they were learning things in school and then they were hearing what the politicians were saying. And unfortunately, the legacy of that period is we have a generation like him who don't trust politicians. They only see them as people who make things up. And so their trust in our political system is quite different from when we were growing up. And that's something I don't think politicians in the future

are going to have to work really hard to restore trust in that generation, in the four years when those secondary school students, because they don't feel that yeah and what they now have is when I move around especially when I'm talking to kids now and I spend a lot of time talking to universities and uh sixth form is still now I still do a lot of zoom events with them um is that this indignation because with black lives matter they won't put up with it they have a real sense of indignation that we're not going to put up with lies. We're not going to put up with racism. We're not going to put up with climate denial.

They have a very much more heightened sense. Whereas when we were fighting and I was demonstrating against Iraq, we were demonstrating, we were going to try and change things a little. They don't see things as doing change a little. They want to change everything. And I think that's brilliant. But there is that people forgot that they were learning. don't see things as doing change a little they want to change everything yeah and um i think

that's brilliant yeah but but there is that people forgot that they were learning they were hearing all this stuff they they didn't exist in a different world so of course he knew my thinking and what i felt um you know is that we stay and we have a stronger voice and that yes there are things that are right and wrong because i i try and tell them all the time, everything you hear, see, outside school, wherever, don't ever be black and white in things. Nothing in life is black and white. You have to always, it's a phrase I use with them, and is, you know, and I try and teach people this idea of prismatic thinking. You hold it up and you look at it from all angles. Because then that will give you the true light on an issue and so i say that to them you know nothing is black and white everything has nuances and you have to try and figure out your way through them yeah actually i remember when when uh the referendum

did happen there were two things i felt really overwhelmingly the first one was i thought i must make sure my kids are engaged in politics because you have to know what's going on. Like you, I feel that politics is not something that happens over in Parliament, but it's everything in how your life, you know, how society is. The other thing I felt was that because everybody became about whether they would leave or remain, it was incredibly binary. And if you were on whichever side you were on, you felt you were right and the other people were wrong. And I thought for how society needs to function, that's so dangerous.

Because no matter what, we've all got to rub alongside each other. And if you vote leave, the one thing you know that's true is that you're not happy with the way things are. And if you're living the life you want to live in somewhere like London, which would mainly remain, it's not the same as growing up somewhere on you know some town but the thing is it's we we're still we're still living through it because the the politics of division actually serves the politicians and this is the thing it it i mean we're seeing it in america we're seeing it through wiping through a modern western world is this they are politicians are promoting that that nuance that sort of black and white way of looking at things,

because then it's easier for them to message to their followers, if you like, because they don't see them as voters, they're followers. It's quite interesting. It's got quite a few of the edges of almost cultish type behavior. So you indoctrinate people with a certain thinking and othering of others.

And we've seen it in history, because my other thing is I'm a bit of a history geek, not a bit, I'm very much a history geek. And I think, you know, we are seeing echoes of the past. And, you know, these are not, these are not the rules they're following this, if you could write a Janet and John book of how do you actually move politics to the right, we're going through it. And on top of that, you know, you have a turbo, turbocharged method, which is the internet and social media, to spread those messages. We've never had that in history. So you've got a turbocharged way of spreading

a different ideology, a different truth, a different alternative narrative. And you see, I don't believe that there's ever been a society that's never had sort of on the edges of it people who are voices of hate and dissenting and intolerance. But what happened is we became civilized and we said that those are intolerant voices. So we sort of pushed them to the edges of society.

What's happened with the politics and social media and everything we have and certain media is that they're giving oxygen to those people. So now they think they're mainstream. So suddenly the voices we always look down on as being those that weren't promoting a healthy society and now the ones in the center talking about their view of society

and the rest of us are unhealthy. So the dynamics have completely changed and we've got to recalibrate it so that we're back to those voices that destructive are on the outside and the ones that are looking out for each other and for us together because this is the thing i mean i spent again when i said i go and speak to people who disagree with me um i spent both my summers in

2016 and 2017 actually in 2018 all three of them my poor children and my husband going around to leave areas so i traveled around a lot of leave areas to go and talk to people um there was one occasion I went to a town hall and they they knew I was coming so we don't advertise it way ahead so I went in and it's about 80 people majority uh certain age middle age and upwards white male and so I went in had a little coffee table and a chair and a glass of water and I came on and the booing started and the swearing and the you know go back home and all the rest of it and so I sat no no no I was expecting it so I sat down um and I sipped my glass of water and I sort of didn't really react when they carried on and after about however many minutes I said well I'm not going anywhere um so do you want to stop

shouting and we'll talk or do you want to carry on because at some point you're going to get exhausted because I'm not going anywhere and after a good few minutes they sort of some of them sort of said to the others oh quite now quite now and they started really aggressive questions but I always answer the questions um and I'd be as honest as I can and at the end when I was leaving this group of the ones who were really being aggressive at the front, he came up and he said, thank you for coming. He said, I've never stopped to think of what I was saying. And it was just, I spent my whole time telling them that we were the same.

That they were worried about their children. I was worried about my children. They were worried about what's happening in the NHS. I was worried. They were actually, if you put on a piece of paper all the things that made us the same it would cover pages and pages and you might have one side of A4 of the things or even half the side of A4 that made us different or we thought differently but nobody talked to them so I and I still do that now I mean I met one of my worst trolls for a documentary on BBC and for him and he was the same he had a 14 year old son we talked he said I hated you I met one of my worst trolls for a documentary on BBC for him. And he was the same.

He had a 14-year-old son. We talked. He said, I hated you. I saw the headlines. I was part of a group. We were going to try and kill you. And he said, but I never thought that you were real. This is an interesting thing because he said he never thought I was real.

And so that's why I think we do have to. I know and I'm afraid people on our side of the argument have fallen out with me too recently, because I'm saying we're all leavers. We have to, we hurt each other if we don't get this right, whatever happens next. You can't, you know, it's that old saying, you can't, you know, spilt milk, you can't do anything about it. We have to find a way forwards together. Absolutely, yeah. And so, but there's still some people who are still stuck in that you know still fighting but there's no war that war is not over there's a different war now which is let's try and get the best we can get so we move forward

and we can survive as a country for god's sake we all have to survive exactly well it goes back to the joe cox thing of look what for what unites us not that which divides oh yes we have to we have to and also with covid and everything else that's coming down the line, because if you read, because I read on the investment side, so I'm not looking at the newspapers. My team, we're looking at all the data because it's what we do and we have access to it. So we're looking at all the scientific and the medical data all the time.

You know, I said to the children the other day, again, we were talking about the vaccine. I said, well, SARS was 18 years ago and we don't have a vaccine for that yet. And COVID is a type of SARS. So there's no real guarantee we're getting a vaccine, yet it's the thing everyone's being promised. So I said, you know, we need to live with the reality that, you know, it's going to be tough for a while. So we've got to try and find ways of making life joyous again. We have to be real. We have to be real about what's coming down the line economically socially health-wise you know we've got to we've got to have honest conversations about the future yeah do you think that the things

you you've been doing with your activism would be the things you would do regardless of having raising children or do you think they've played quite a big part in what's motivated you well with luciane it started me off i mean i was doing a few things before and i have done other things that are not to do with them so i mean i worked on the uh and i were the funders of and i helped write the report that became the modern day slavery act um and so i've been you know and the city is nothing to do with them so that's that's different and my business i always had the mindset because again i i grew up in in a third world country or in a british colony learning about people like dickens

and the um you know cadbury brothers i learned i read all about the victorian philanthropists and to me that was my sense of how businesses should be. And if you think about it, going back to my sector, I work in financial services and banking and investments. It was started by Quakers who wanted to do better, give people the ability to look after themselves and to have money put away to look after themselves and their families. So it came from a sense of responsibility not from

a sense of profit and so I've always seen that as how business should be so whenever I've come you know in my business dealings I've seen the opportunity to do that I would campaign for that so there's two sides I think there's my the way we live we live our lives but the way we look after our money those are different things so it's my professional and my personal life that I've sort of, if I can speak up, I will. And it sounds like in this year with working more from home, it's something that your kids are quite interested in anyway and your youngest son and daughter take an active sort of interest.

Yeah, but they do. But then again, it's what they're learning at school. I mean, you know, they're learning so much about, you know, they don't learn geography the way we learn geography at school. They see it through the lens of climate change. They're looking at agriculture through the lens of the fact that we may not have enough food in the future.

You know, there is a very social dimension to the way education is being taught, which I think is brilliant. I actually don't think it's going far enough. I think we ought to teach philosophy and ethics and all these other things as well. But they have, education has come a long way. But the only thing I worry about in the education that they have access to is that a lot of their peers are in a bubble, a privileged bubble,

where they don't have enough of an understanding of what people ordinary people's lives are like which is why for me i took them up to all the areas so when we went to um you know north wales and when we went to minehead or whatever i take them with me all the time because i want them to experience that they're you know i don't want them to grow up thinking that their life is what everybody else has they're fortunate to have the life they have but I want them to be mindful I have to say I was very I'm probably a terrible parent for their schools because the when my daughter went to the secondary school we got this letter saying that they were going to do mindfulness lessons it's just me saying the word reminded me and I she so I said to her after her first couple of lessons so what did you learn in

mindfulness so she told me and I sort of wrote a letter to the school and saying, Lana won't be going to mindfulness lessons anymore because the only mindfulness I want her to learn is to be mindful of others. And so I just said that was it. Because she kept coming up telling me about, you know, I must listen to my, it was all about her. And I had actually, and she had then started using language which I

still now I feel very um worried about she kept saying she was depressed and you know they're learning language of illness and I was saying no you're just sad or you're disappointed or I've just told you off for something so you're angry you're not depressed so it's sort of you know I try and ground them but I do worry the slightly of the education we are sort of giving them language which is positive. I got told off about that when I was a teenager as well. I remember coming to the kitchen, oh, I'm so depressed. And my stepmom going, no, you're not.

I remember it really clearly being pulled up. And I was like, but everybody says depressed. Yeah, but they're learning even more language about it, I think. But whichever way, I just wanted them to know. I just want them to feel grounded and to go out you know to go out so instead of doing for example after club you know the TA that I said to Luca I said look what do you want to do and he said no actually I'd like to go and teach reading to one of the disadvantaged schools in the area so they both have I mean they're my children they are um he he she she's she's gonna be terrifying um she's gonna i mean i honestly if she ever becomes a judge or a prison warden watch out i mean she's going to be absolutely

terrifying but he is he is has an incredible aura and kindness about him and he's a real peacemaker and it's just something about him yeah, do you have more things in your sights or do you feel the other side of everything that happened with the sort of abuse that came alongside taking the government to court? Do you feel like that's in the past more now? No, no, I don't. And I have to find something positive to do

with all of that negativity. So I'm pushing for an online harms bill because we cannot allow these spaces. Online has now become a place where women are not safe and it's a growth of misogyny and racism and hatred. And there has to be, you know, the people who own these platforms are becoming billionaires with impunity.

So I'm pushing and I'm lobbying for a regulator and an online harms bill to come to parliament next year. There's a white paper and they're pushing it back to 2024. And that's not good enough. No, it's not. And um and you know there's a lot of lobbying the other way saying it's closing down freedom of speech i'm sorry it's got nothing to do with freedom of speech but even but it's not just about hate it's um also because crime is moving online so it's a lot of trafficking money laundering on unsupposed crowdfunding platforms there's a lot more um money laundering stuff there's a lot of of bad bad stuff is moving online so crime is moving online and so this is about income income encompassing all of that yeah um so you know

no no i'm absolutely pushing for that and it's got to be a big big part and then in my world in financial services i'm concerned that when we leave with no deal or a paper-thin deal, whichever one it is, that a lot of the work, not just myself, you know, we've spent, we've been campaigning and changed legislation to protect consumers here since the last financial crisis.

That was my point at which I really pushed forward for change. All of that's going to be rolled back because most of the changes we got through were through EU directives. So I'm, all of that's going to be rolled back because most of the changes we got through were through EU directives. So I'm really concerned of what's going to happen to the world of investments and pensions in the future, that consumers are going to be missold again and we're just going to go back 20 years.

So those are two things that I'm really going to push for next year. Well, I think the idea of people being able to look after themselves in their old age and looking at the way that online um you know hate speech and these things are patrolled is a really important thing i think i would i would definitely sign up to anything that would encourage there to be some kind of um platform that can regulate what's allowed online it's oh absolutely because the excuses that the platforms are giving is that they don't have the technology to do it. But they have the technology to follow you on just about every single thing.

Of course they do. They just take their hands away. Yeah, but it's because there's no fiduciary or regulatory or legislative burden on them. No, nothing. None at all. They're not required to have any morality. I mean, for me personally, I can stand up and say this,

because up until, so I was thinking about it anyway, but then during lockdown, something happened, which was that in October last year, I didn't know this, but a general member of the public sent me a screenshot of a platform called GoFundMe that had for five months a headline which read, raising £10,000 to hire a hitman to kill Gina Miller. And it was up for five months. And so I sent it to my team, the police. They contacted GoFundMe, and they said they couldn't release the data for this, that, and the other money. I mean, honestly. They wouldn't release the data?

No, no, no. It took them months. We finally got all the information. It turned out it was a gentleman in Newcastle. So we went into lockdown. The police got the information in February, bearing in mind we'd found out about it in October. GoFundMe, the chief exec in LA, sent me an email saying,

oh, we're really sorry that this has happened. Won't happen again. What? Okay. So we went into lockdown. We knew the CPS had got it. He was going to be charged with threat to kill. I didn't know if the case was going to go up.

In lockdown, it was heard. I then got a letter in July saying that he'd been charged with a much lesser charge of malicious communications. And he'd got £200 fine for causing me distress, which is less than you get for most motoring offenses wow and he didn't go to jail whereas the viscount who'd done the same thing in facebook but for half the money five thousand pounds went to jail you know two years before so i thought this is extraordinary so they have absolutely no algorithms because those are every word you could possibly have got

in a headline um my name triggers all sorts of things as well but so they have and they had to admit there's no algorithms so these people so them saying that they've got stuff they're looking at they don't it's extraordinary for anything like that and then we know then we found out so when i was looking into all of this and talking to the police the police are saying crime is moving they're the ones who told me this they said crime is moving online we don't have the resources they keep putting police in the wrong place we need to have the resources to combat online crime and we don't have the regulation we don't have the funding and we really really need it so i've so we've got to help them do it and how aware are your children of that kind of thing happening oh no well i showed it to them they they i mean they know and and also things like uh we've had luciane's been groomed on

facebook and a whole different story but when she was nearly taken because somebody pretending to be at somebody else's special needs because she had put in at college she was doing a life skill course she'd put she had special needs so i didn't know she had a facebook page because college were trying to teach them to be independent um but yeah no no we've got to but the the what what it's changing our society because what's happening is in politics in the last election 19 um mp female mp stood down and the number one reason they gave is the abuse they get online they couldn't put themselves and their families through it. So it's changing the face of our democracy. It's changing the way people are interacting and women and people with vulnerable individuals are using social media. They're being told they have to stay safe.

Well, why is the burden? That's completely the wrong way around. So it really, really is important because it's not going to go away. There's lots and lots of fantastic positive things about platforms and online and social media, but we have to deal with the dark side as well. And it's the fact that there has to be responsibility. I set up my business in financial services. There are rules and regulations I have to abide by. I have a duty of care for my clients' money.

I have to do certain things a certain way. So why shouldn't an online platform? Well, no, quite. And what do you think it is that keeps you you so driven I mean if there's 19 other female MPs stood down how what what how do you keep going if there's death threats and I mean in terms of your work I know you've always got your home life but just how do you keep I see myself as being very fortunate. I'm very fortunate that I'm lucky enough to be financially secure that I'm not beholden to anybody.

I don't have to go to, it's my money. So poor Alan who says, don't come running up to me when you've lost all your money or got rid of all your money and expect me to look after you. No, he only says it as a joke. But anything I own, I will spend as much as I always have done that. My first business, 25% of it went to our charitable endeavors.

But all my businesses have done that and I've always done that with mine. But that is a huge, that freedom gives me a huge amount of power because I don't, I'm not conflicted. I'm not having to go begging and having any strings attached to anything I do because I mean that, and that is a huge amount of power because I don't I'm not conflicted I'm not having to go begging and having any strings attached to anything I do because I mean that and that is a huge responsibility I see that you know I'm successful enough to and I'm privileged enough to be in that position

and yes I've worked hard but I can work just as hard doing good with it so that's a great freedom and the other thing I think is um the book really helped me my book really helped me get to where I am today because as I said going part going back and writing my life story and understanding for the first time what I actually did survive yeah because I just moved on and went to the next and survived basically I think I'm it was almost I'm forged by a fire that makes me strong enough to carry on so for as long as I can, I will. Yeah. You actually remind me of a sort of modern-day superhero, I think.

I'll tell you something very funny on that. When we were growing up in British Guiana, we didn't have television or many books. We had shipments of books came in from England once a month. But from America, we had lots of comic books. So I grew up as a complete Marvel sort of geek, you know, complete super fan. And so...

So I'm right. No, no, no, no, no, you are right. So I dreamt up a new character called Superwoman because there was Wonder Woman and Supergirl. So I dreamt up Superwoman. And as a girl, I think it was a run around with a towel tied around my shoulders. There you go.

And I think I probably did grow up with that, but that was the other one so I was obsessed with superheroes but also Bruce Lee because I have three brothers and my sister's much younger than me so I used to watch all the Bruce Lee films and him talking about how you use negative energy so I think I was a complete tomboy um but yeah there was something of that in there and I realized that lots of superheroes were lawyers and had this sense of justice. Justice. So I know. Fairness. I know.

So I did sort of... The only big thing, years later, I realized, because, of course, I never thought Marvel films would ever come out, is that I threw away all my comics, but I had them all. Can you imagine how much they must have been worth when I did? Well, I think, you know, maybe this weekend, just find a little towel, put it on your back, run around a little bit.

Superwoman. There she is. So that was lovely Gina Miller. I had such a great time talking to her. And I thought so much after we spoke about so many things she'd spoken about, you know, how many of us could say that, you know, we could see something that we knew was not fair not right i mean her case obviously most high profile is something unconstitutional but there's been lots of injustices that she's had to stick up for and so this doesn't this doesn't feel right but how scary must it have been when she you know decided to launch her case against the government and looked her left and right and saw lots of people saying we totally agree with you but we're too looked to her left and right and saw lots of people saying,

we totally agree with you, but we're too scared to do this. And all the death threats, it's extraordinary really. But I think a lot about what she was saying about travelling to areas where she knew that, in general, everybody had voted leave when she feels it's more remain for the UK referendum. And she decided to try and build bridges and say, look, what's done is done. We've now got to look at where we have things in common,

not things that divide us. And I think about that sort of stuff a lot at the moment. We've just had, obviously, the massive presidential election in America that's dominated the news and much of our thoughts for the last week. And, you know, as it happens, I am firmly in the Biden camp

and I'm absolutely thrilled that he is the president and Kamala is the vice. And I posted something online saying, you know, I'm all for this. And I got lots of comments of people saying, I don't want to hear your politics. How dare you unfollow? And I just thought, what a shame I mean like I like to think that if I was following someone and they had very difficult political different political views to me that that'd be an opportunity for conversation and and to learn how we can try and pull people to see things our way too rather than just going I don't agree with you get out of my life um and I think you know as it turned out Biden

won by quite a quite a long way but there's a long time in the news where it's really pretty neck and neck between biden and trump and i thought this is actually quite scary you know when things as we know from what happened in the uk with the referendum it's it's quite scary when things are sort of there's not a really clear majority because it leads people to think in a very binary way. I'm right, you're wrong, that's the end of it. We must look at that which unites us, not divides us. It's so important. So I hope you found Gina inspirational, like a real life superhero, like I thought right from the start. She's smart, she's fearless, and she has a good sense of right and wrong. That's a superhero, isn't it?

So hopefully we can all take a little bit of that. I'm still setting up my dressing room. It won't surprise you to hear I didn't really tidy much of it up while I was listening back. But I definitely have a few things that have a cape on it, often covered in sequins. So maybe I'll wear one of those for the rest of the day. And you know what? Around my house, normal bat an eyelid.

All right, I will see you next week. Thank you so much. Lots of love. Stay safe and sane in the meantime and see you soon. Thank you.