Can we be friends?

Have you heard the one about the new Labour MP who refuses to be friends with Tories? When Laura Pidcock dropped into an interview with a left-wing website that she has ‘absolutely no intention of being friends with’ any Tories, she was surprised by the fuss that followed. It might have seemed odd to her, but within Parliament it’s well known that friendships that cross the divide spring up the whole time. Sometimes it’s personal: Kezia Dugdale, leader of the Scottish Labour Party, caused headlines when she started dating a nationalist MSP. But more often, political: to achieve something, MPs from different parties often have to work together.

But the new member for North West Durham sounds as if she is appalled at the whole system. Her first speech in the House of Commons was a denunciation of it. ‘The clothes, the language, the obsession with hierarchies, control and domination, are symbolic of the system at large,’ she told her fellow MPs.