How does Alastair feel about having the house taken over by the girls?
He hates it! He really misses the boys and he just can’t understand our interest in shopping or what we watch on TV. I think he also feels a bit like he’s done it all and doesn’t really know what to do next. But you’re both still relatively young… Yes, 51, 52, but I’m depressed about what’s to come next if there’s a Conservative government. It was a fantastic achievement to come out of the 1980s and get to a Labour government, with all the good things we’ve done. Some people seem to have forgotten but I remember what the Tories were like: so many of the problems in society now can be traced back to the last Tory government. The Tories would argue that David Cameron is not Margaret Thatcher, that this is a new, “compassionate” Conservatism… People are falling for that all over the place but I don’t believe it at all. The roots of the broken society, where it does exist, are very often in the communities that Thatcher destroyed. So I don’t feel persuaded at all that they’re going to be a
