Labour’s new golden girl

When I arrive to interview Stella Creasy in one of the cafés in parliament, she’s sitting in a meeting with two earnest, wonkish types, the coffee mugs having been cleared from the table. As time ticks by, her body language becomes urgent, but she’s too polite to wrap it up. I begin to see why her rather protective assistant insisted that this interview should be no more than 30 minutes. Creasy, though, has a lot to say and we speak for an hour before she goes off to write a speech on this summer’s riots. She’s a politician in demand.

MPs enjoy few things more than posing as talent scouts. Within hours of a new intake arriving in parliament, the old hands start picking out the ones who they think will go far. Creasy instantly caught the eye of the Tory benches. Her media-friendly manner and pitch-perfect attacks on the rates charged by pay-day loans companies were an example of how to do opposition politics.