Speaking on the National paper’s podcast, Lara Bird also Lara Bird-Leakey, also Pyla Bird-Leakey, the new SNP MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, has complained about people pointing out her accent-switching. Oh no! Anyway…
She said it showed politics has ‘changed’:
“I did not expect so many people to to get riled up by my accent. And that sort of leads into the the second point which is no one was commenting on what it was that I had been saying. And one of the videos in particular I was talking about Gaza and I was talking about Palestine and I was talking about continued occupation and it was I think the video was just after the UK government had recognized the state of Palestine. And so I was discussing that in the round.
But when that video surfaced, not a single person commented on the actual substance of the video. It was all just on the way that I was presenting it and the way that I was speaking. And I think that speaks huge volumes as to the way that politics works nowadays, which is that actually it’s far more important how you’re saying something than actually what it is that you’re saying. And that changes politics, I think, quite drastically.”
Bird-Leakey is an English lawyer. She must cherish those quiet moments with her family when she can speak in her heretical Southern accent, away from prying ears…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”