Gillian Keegan | The Future of Business Leaders in Politics

33:18if it involves dementia you pick up the cost yourself and that is what Teresa May tried to solve that you remember that probably Boris tried to solve it so when he explained to me that he thought I would be good at selling this policy and be able to you know put the reforms in place because what you're doing is first of all you're trying to explain to the public why why you need why it's worth spending a bit more collectively to take us all off that hook and secondly then you need to work with all of the stakeholders and it is a sales job to some degree as well as a technical sort of reform job and he said you know I think you could do that so you have to get yourself then up to the point where you believe that you can and that's the same as you always do you go start a new job spend the first three months asking every question under the sun read everything and you can never be dumb in the first three months right that's That still applies everywhere.

34:14Maybe it's a bit less in ministerial terms. And certainly I don't think the morning breakfast TV presenters give you quite as much leeway as that. But in general, when you're asking, when you start something new, nobody expects that you're going to know it all. So I did actually enjoy that job a lot more. And then, of course, mental health because of the pandemic. This is the second half of the pandemic. Became a much, much, much more concerning thing because many more people's mental health suffered. during the pandemic, through that isolation, through that uncertainty, through not knowing, through the whole routine and structures being upended.

34:50And that's something that will take us time still to recover from. Yeah, well, as Tony Blair made the point of this podcast, spending a lot more money on it than we were. And then you're main minister of Africa. That was a random one, yeah. Seven weeks. Actually, I love Africa. And I've done quite a lot of business travel in Africa. and I don't think that's why I was given that role but that was the Liz Truss period and I didn't vote for Liz Truss at all What did you say to Liz when? Have you heard this story? She asked me whether I'd back her and I said no Liz and she tried to say you know woman to woman thing and I said no and she said why and I said because you're crackers and I thought and I meant it you know and I didn't mean it unfairly but I said to her you know it's just one step too far.

35:39I said, you know, I wouldn't think I could be Prime Minister. I wouldn't sit there and say I could be Prime Minister. It's a big job and it's a big role and you've got to have the temperament and, you know, listening skills are massively important in any job you do. But certainly you know, in that job, listening to the markets, listening to other people and I didn't see a great deal of listening skills to be honest. Quite a lot of assertiveness but not much listening skills. But you were quite rare in the sense of you were given a job having not backed her. Yes, I think there was about three or four of us.

36:13I mean, I never, you know, I used to have people say to me, unless you back, I didn't back Boris either, unless you back Boris, you won't get a job. And I used to say, I've had loads of jobs. I've literally been working since I was 16. In fact, I was working since I was 13 in St. John's Market as a Saturday girl. So I've literally had loads of jobs. I'm not going to do what I think is the wrong thing just because of getting on the ministerial ladder. I mean, by that time I was 49, 50. So, you know, you don't have quite the same. You've proven yourself more to yourself a little bit, I guess, than having, you know, I've never really had a big important job and that ministerial job is really going to be it for me.

36:52That's going to be my first big rung on the ladder or second big rung on the ladder. So I was in a different position, I think, than most. But I still probably would, I'm quite forthright, so I probably would say the same. Anyway, so I did get a job. I still haven't worked out how, but it was Minister for Africa. And I was very excited because I love Africa. It's also super strategic in geopolitical sense. I mean, you know, Russia and Chinese strategies are being played out there on a daily basis. You know, you've got critical minerals, you've got shipping routes, you've got all other transportation hooks that are being purchased and invested in all across Africa.

37:29and I think I'm right if the figure's right but something like in 10 or so years time the quarter of the young population will be African but even if that figure's not right the sentiment is right most young people will come from Africa in the future because their birth rate hasn't stopped and it's stalling in many many other parts of the world so it is super strategic so I only did seven weeks but I read such a lot and I really enjoyed it and I did one ministerial visit before I was moved although when I was moved I was promoted to the cabinet so I can't really complain. Yeah that's quite good.

38:07Where do you think you get your kind of and we'll come back to that but where do you think you get your kind of like innate curiosity from? I am very curious you know right now I'm looking at trying to do looking at courses into AI and ethics and things like you You know, I went back to study at 42 and I'll probably go back at, I don't know, maybe late 50s to do something. Probably a short course. I won't do a long course again. But I am very curious because I don't know where it comes from. I think it probably is in your DNA to some degree. But I've always been very curious. How does this work?

38:42Why is that doing that? You know, why is why is a great question? And I suppose it makes things more interesting. I've always also liked variety. Yeah. I don't like to do one thing all the time, which is why the MP role, even though I never thought of it myself, even though it was something someone suggested to me, when it came to actually doing it, I loved it because I loved the constituency part. But I equally loved, I even loved the morning round, even though I didn't love it. I felt a sense of achievement for doing it. So I would say yes to everything. You know, people, I'd say yes to, you know, that's why I was on the media a lot, particularly during COVID.

39:20A lot of people were smarter than me, maybe, and said no. But I am curious. And because we only have a short time here in the world, right? Why not be? Yeah, no, no, I completely agree. So time is education secretary, probably the dream job, I imagine. Yes, it was. And I knew the department pretty well because I'd spent almost two years as the apprenticeship and skills minister before being moved to health. And actually, when I started that job, three weeks later was when the pandemic hit. So it was a very intense period. But, you know, obviously you learn a lot. And then going back to education, it was all the same people.

39:59And it's the first and only time I've been able to go back and say, you know that thing that I asked you to do? Did you do it? And thankfully, because you're always a bit suspicious that they just wait for the minister to move on and then put that one's in the bottom drawer. but thankfully all the things that I had been working on um particularly with apprenticeships and skills you know trying to get the completion rates up because there's something going wrong there you know all the things that were going to improve the system they were working on and they had continued to work on um so that was that was good to see and and then just having a more a broader remit so then you obviously you've got school school standards but I had Nick Gibb who is literally the king of school school standards actually now globally he's going around advising people you had a real rock star ministerial team i did like yeah rob halfon who knows more about skills than probably anyone else on the planet i would say uh and then damien hyde had been a former education secretary as well and claire coutinho as well when i looked at it earlier i was like that's quite yes well when rishi asked me to be um cabinet minister which i wasn't expecting and and this is proof i'm sure everyone says that but the proof i wasn't expecting is because i had not washed my hair and i would definitely have washed my hair if i thought i was going to be doing that walk down dining streets you know just for just for the neighbors and my mom and dad back home but um i hadn't because i thought maybe i'd get back up to a minister of state because i had been demoted the african minister was actually a demotion even though it didn't really feel like it but um i i as you get that sort of cabinet minister the first thing i said which is so me is you know how am i how am i going to be able to do it you know um will i be will i be good enough and i said i need a really good team now uh i don't know if anyone remembers but there had been times when there hadn't been that good a team certainly there were some ministers who were not that great um prior to that so i was thinking i you know i i really do need a good team and rishi said don't worry i'll give you a good team and i kind of hinted at some of the people that i thought might be really excellent in these positions but i didn't obviously say the names because it is the prime minister's decision um but let's just say i was delighted with the team they were an amazing team yeah um but it is it is funny isn't it because you are basically becoming the sort of chief executive of the education department you don't really get a say over any appointments on the ministerial side or the civil service side i mean that is one of the big differences between politics and business right hugely different so in business um within your team and as that as you get more senior obviously that grows and maybe even the CEO of the whole company you get to normally hiring decisions firing decisions if somebody's underperforming promotion decisions bonus decisions all the levers that you have to incentivize and motivate performance or indeed sometimes you do have to you know manage out poor performance because keeping poor performance actually brings everybody else down because everybody sees it and everybody notices it so you know that's one of the things you really learn um you know when you've been in many leadership positions that it isn't kind to do that to the rest of the team yeah um but doing all of those they're all within your gift as a leader um in these roles they're not as you say the civil service is its own complete organization um and yes okay there have been occasions where some people have managed to you know get rid of a civil servant or whatever but it never ends well and it's uh it's also not within the usual sort of role that you have um likewise you don't choose the ministers so you know if a minister decides you know they don't don't want to really do the job or listen to what you say or have very different ideas you've got to use your persuasive skills so the skills you use in politics are very much more around persuasion and trying to um gain the respect of your colleagues and it's also more of a flat structure.

43:57Everyone in politics gets one vote, which is ultimately what happens in getting legislation through. And going up or going down can switch. You can be Education Secretary one day and a backbencher the next day. You can be Prime Minister one day, Rishi Sunak, and backbencher now. So these things, those hierarchical changes do not happen in the business world. It's a real snakes and ladders politics in that sense of things. um so i asked a few teachers for questions and various things and the one that came up again and again i hadn't sort of appreciated this is just how many teachers are kind of leaving the profession yes at the moment and it's almost up at sort of 10 in the last couple of years right and department for education figures why do you think that is and how do we stop that so i think um we had two key issues in terms of the workforce one was trying to make sure we attracted enough people in to the profession.

44:56Which is always a sort of obvious one, right? And then the other was the retention. So we had a retention strategy. And the reason we looked at when people were leaving. So first of all, there was a spike in year three or four. So they'd just started, they'd got into the profession, or even two or three, and thought, my God, this is so different than the classroom version, where I did a placement, but, you know, this environment is so different. I don't think I can do it. And they would leave. So that was one. And then the other is early retirement, taking retirement a little bit earlier. And, you know, often that's because it's not just teaching.

45:38People have sort of readjusted their lives now post-COVID and thought, you know, I don't want to be working full time. So there's a couple of things we were trying to do. One is to use AI and other tools, actually, to make the workload a little less repetitive. So there is a lot that you could do on the workload to make the workload easier. So that you're doing what you think is the fun bit of teaching, which is actually teaching the kids, as opposed to a lot of the stuff behind the scenes. And also a lot of that stuff behind the scenes takes up a lot of your weekend if you're working full time.

46:11So that was part of it as well. The workload had just become too much. Sometimes behaviour in the schools as well is impacted. I mean, teaching friends who I know, one of them has left because, you know, she was attacked in school. You know, no one's going to put up with that kind of stuff. So that's the behaviour. And that's why we put a lot of focus on behaviour, behaviour hubs, etc. Because without behaviour, you can't do anything on standards. And it certainly doesn't help the teachers feel valued and comfortable and enjoy enjoyment in their work environment. and then the other thing was flexibility the thing that's happened in lots of other professions is flexibility so you know there's more working from home there's more flexibility in terms of how you do your hours how many hours you do teaching is still relatively inflexible so it was to try and enable those job shares so we had a number of sort of schemes to try and enable that to get you know part-time teachers to be able to do you know three days a week maybe with their prep time that would be four and maybe that suits a lot and that could keep people in the profession who just don't want to spend all week all day every day plus a day of their weekend um you know working when they're in their 50s and maybe could take their pension a bit early so that is another factor as well so um all of those were part of the retention strategy some of it is happens in other professions as well you know there are other professions where you see some of that but I think it's certainly something that you just need to continuously work on because there are so many teachers who have such brilliant experience and that's the problem.

47:51You're losing a lot of experience. It's very interesting, this Charlie Colnutt book which I might give you afterwards is interesting on the amount of bureaucracy and shadow work there is like right across the UK. So he's basically done the opposite of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. He's gone and spoke to 70 people about their jobs today and what it involves. And there's a story in there about a soldier who retrains a teacher and says he finds teaching more stressful than being a soldier, which is like striking on any level. But it is also just generally across the board, the amount of shadow work and bureaucracy in it.

48:25There's a construction site manager in there saying it's impossible for me to have a site on, impossible for me to have a conversation on site without having to then go and put it in an email. yes that that's that that is a definitely um a probably a change in a lot of working environments where uh people do feel they need to write things down so that things are recorded and that's probably because um you know could come back to bite them later if they didn't it's procedures and process and when you look at a lot of things that happen between you know things going wrong in the workplace, often it's you didn't follow procedure, you didn't follow process.

49:07So that's, you know, that's something that people are really, really well aware of. And that is part of, you know, the thinking and probably the difference between a larger company or public sector environment than a small startup, for example, where you probably don't have as many of those things in place. Otherwise, they'd never get anywhere. And I think that is something you always do need to be asking yourself, which procedures, who's this helping? And what is it really there is it really adding value to the business because we are all adults right we are all grown up and we should be able to have conversations without um you know having having everything recorded yes but i do wonder well we'll come on to ai in a second but like of where yeah technology does actually create more work and more sort of side of it but um on what you talk about teachers and teachers being attacked etc have you watched adolescence yes what did you make of it I found it very disturbing in fact I was in tears at the end of it because half of me thinking um I mean because I went to a school in Liverpool that was not a very good school so half of me going back to that um and thinking you imagine things have got a lot better now I actually went back to my old school it's not the same school because they knocked all the schools down in noted but it's on the same site on the same playing fields as as the old one and it was amazing I was so pleased as education secretary I went back it's now a good school for the first time ever we have good schools in Noseley we haven't had them all the way through and the kids behavior was I mean I couldn't believe it I couldn't believe it they were quiet they were taking their mobile phones because they left them I couldn't believe it it was brilliant so I'd had this sort of sense but I think as a as a minister you do get um you know you do get to see perhaps um the improvements more than the things that are not going well even though I asked all the time take me to something that's failing take me to something that's not working and I did go to see them but I found it deeply disturbing um and then of course there's the storyline itself so one was about the school the school sort of environment that all the kids were in and then there was the storyline itself which is how much young minds can get influenced online and how that can spill over in the real world with the usual kind of you know taunting humiliation bullying which is not acceptable but I think all of us would say we saw examples of that in our childhood right that happens that's what bullying literally is often and all of us have seen bullying or been bullied as well in our childhood so but how that spills over I found deeply deeply disturbing and of course you're always asking the question what more could I have done what more should I have done and we did ban mobile phones in school we put the back you know I put the guidance in place Now they talk about making it legislative.

51:52I don't know whether that's required or not, but, you know, the hook is there for the schools to do it. The technology is there for them to do it cheaply. But we did talk about going further and how you could, what you could do with social media. Now, we had the online harms bill and there's all these talks and calls for banning social media, which is difficult to see how you can do that without it going completely under the radar. But, you know, some countries are actually looking at that now. But there's no doubt that everybody, every parent, everybody in teaching absolutely can see the impact of social media on face to face relationships.

52:36and that's that's worrying everybody what do you wish you'd done as education secretary or even from your whole time in politics what's the one thing that you wish you'd had the chance to do all the things you didn't get to finish so you know um free child care we were rolling that out we did the first chunk of it yes um which was 30 hours for for uh you know two-year-olds and then 15 hours for younger children but we had a whole plan to roll that out um for everybody over nine months for free uh child care 30 hours a week free child care subsidized by the government that's that's something i think they are continuing doing so at least that policy hasn't been cancelled but we were nervous that they may not social care it still needs to be fixed if we don't fix social care if we don't fix the proposition in terms of the financial aspects of it the workforce which all feeds into this then it's almost impossible to ever have a function in nhs because every single problem we ever had was always down to something like 85 percent of the patients are over 80 and normally when they're the inpatients in hospitals and normally they're on their way to a journey where they need a bit more support to leave hospital.

53:56That could be permanent or it could just be temporary, but they need a social care package or they need a respite home or they need a social care, a care home. And if you don't have that part of it working, then that blocks up the hospital. And that's why we saw, you know, 14, 15 hour ambulance queues. So all of those things, the perennial things, people have been talking about them forever, but actually you know I was in positions where I could have fixed them and I was part way to fixing them and then either you're moved or in the case then the levy got scrapped so the the funding to to to change social care got got scrapped but you know for every one of them there's so much good things that we did introduce um but to me politics has become rather too performative you know making announcements everybody pretending that they're the answer and nobody else can fix anything um which is wrong you know basically the problem the reason things don't get fixed is because they're hard to fix and we don't have the will uh often politically because they're difficult and you have to have hard conversations and we don't have the people who even understand how to do it often in in some of the ministers you know i'm very very worried about the complete lack of experience of implementing anything in the current cabinet.

55:21How do you think the job of an MP is changing on that? Well, the job of an MP, I think, is actually becoming more and more full on in terms of every constituent can access you. Everybody's got access to emailing you, your social media, your surgeries when you're out and about in your constituency. So actually, from that perspective, the constituency role, I think, you know, we'd get thousands and thousands of pieces of correspondence, you know, on single issues. So I think from that perspective, if you go back 30 years, you know, maybe they get 100 letters or something, you know, so it's very much changed from that perspective.

56:03From the ministerial perspective, what's changed is two factors. The first is the type of people that go into politics, when you used to be able to have two jobs you would very often get people who ran a business or were senior in in the law or in health or whatever but also were mps and they they did that job in the afternoon so you would have people who had experience yes always or people who'd worked in coal mines or people who'd worked in factories people who were union conveners people who had a lot of experience of actually the real world were then coming into parliament um and that's probably you know not not kept up with that kind of level.

56:42We do have more people who do come into politics very early and basically know they want to be an MP. So even if they do a job before, they're just treading water until they get the shot to be an MP. So they don't really have an awful lot of experience outside of politics. And that shows. Because what's different from politics? What is politics? Politics is someone saying, your boo sucks, you're rubbish because you're the blue team if it was the red team it'd be better that's effectively what they're saying every day in some kind of maybe a few bits of data and facts that have been you know picked deliberately to support your as far as data and facts yeah and you can statistics you can use whatever you want right depending on which which year you're looking at or i mean they use the waiting list this is a great one waiting lists are going down every month but they're comparing them to when the doctors were on strike you know so it's like things like that you think well okay that's not it's it's it's a it's a use of the statistics that suits your narrative but the reality is to to actually fix things first of all you need to be brave enough you need to really understand how you're going to do it um and then you need to have a plan in place you need long enough to do it i was quite struck the other day actually i went through all the uh new labor mps to look at who'd got business experience and all that kind of thing and i was quite shook at the beginning i was like i'm 38 right and i was like oh they're younger than me they're younger than me and it was like by the end of going through the list i was actually far more shocked by occasionally finding someone who was older like it was i was really struck by just how much that had kind of shifted as a sort of average age and of course you've got do it partly like that they are the new intake they won't be that young forever they'll probably do it for 10 years at least but yeah it was i was just kind of quite struck by it also the other interesting bit on the amount of correspondence that you receive obviously completely agree with that and completely agree with the poorest nature of being an mp but i do wonder how much of the role of being a constituency member parliament will change with ai because a lot of what the job is as a backbench MP is effectively being a router for constituents around government and various different levels of local government as well because people know the MP, the rights to them, and then it's often kind of directed.

59:03I do wonder how much that could potentially change with AI, like in terms of being able to do that. Yeah, possibly because actually what you're often doing is you're unlocking a service that they've tried to access anyway and the computer says no. Computer says no, computer says. And then they'll come and they'll, you know, come to the MP, get a surgery and say, you know, I'm having to home school my child because I cannot get the right special educational needs place. And even though we were building a lot more special educational needs places, we were not keeping up with the demand. The demand outstripped how long it took us to build the new schools.

59:43But that will get, you know, that will come right soon when they're assuming they don't cancel those programs. But that when you've got somebody, it doesn't matter any of that because, you know, they're really worried about getting that place. You can get the child that place. You know, you can speak to the school. You can say, you know, when when is this? This is a real, you know, this is a real sort of need. And and of course, the school wants to help as well. So it's a question of just, you know, trying to say, you know, we'll put something in place short term in the meantime with the council, etc.

1:00:14All of those things, you're normally unblocking a service that people should have access to. As a minister, you think they do have access to, but then on the ground, it's not quite as it seems. And there's a lot of, you know, computer says no, or, you know, you don't have access or go and speak to that person, you know, pillar to post, go from pillar to post. And that's actually one of the things that does. there's a lot of waste actually in local services through that overlap of the budget brinkmanship and people trying between local authorities different tiers of local authorities and also local services the nhs and etc so that that is that is a factor which you know you could you could really improve i'm hoping ai helps well yeah i mean how do you think ai will change work and skills and what courses have you been looking at as well well ethics is the ones i've been looking at AI and ethics because I think that's the more difficult aspect of it you know will AI make it easier to do uh your basic accounts or basic contracts or basic uh or you know things that are not too specific will there be a way of being able to get these things much much quicker yes um can it help with research can it do research really quickly for you yes yeah um can you uh check some of the things you've done and some of the logic of some of the things that you have put together and look for some themes and patterns.

1:01:39It's even smart enough to do some of that. Although, as I said to you the other day, I actually asked it how many conservative MPs had a majority of over 10 ,000 and it came back with completely the wrong answer. Which I don't understand because that's numbers and facts. It's really bad. So, you know, there are certain things that basically, you know, blow your mind in terms of what it comes up with and blow your mind in terms of how it got it so wrong but it really is on a track to being able to be a massive you know tool to help people take get rid of a lot of a lot of um a lot of the sort of paperwork a lot of the research behind a lot of jobs which will change the nature of a lot of jobs um and and you know the the big question is what jobs then do people do with their free time what is the what is the you know does that mean that teaching becomes a more attractive profession because you know you are just teaching then and and you know ai is not going to do that instead of you you know inspire that that little kid in front of you who's you know looking up to you as though you're the only person in the world um you know that's a very special relationship and i still say to everybody you know no matter where you go in the world you ask anybody who's the teacher that made a difference to your life and every person will answer a mr somebody or a mrs somebody yeah everybody and that nobody will be able to do as well as the teachers so you know you do have to then get the balance of how it makes their their enjoyment of their job better that's what i really hope happens um and what's going to be your job of the future right because you've had a career that has already been 40 years and with the new working world and advancements etc you should probably only be two-thirds of the way through right maybe not even that far so what does the last third look like well the one thing i haven't had ever is a gap year so i have been so i decided to treat myself to that for two reasons the first is i haven't had had the chance before um and lots of people have this around when they're 18 or perhaps when they finish university um so so that's the first thing i'm going to do and there's two reasons i'm doing that the first is i think politics is is so full-on and it was such a such a wild ride you know in seven years i literally went from just you know just starting to to being in the cabinet and actually spent four and a half years as a minister three weeks after being made a minister covid started i mean It was just incredibly, you know, fast moving, let's just say, with making decisions, you know, in very difficult circumstances.

1:04:26So I think that's the first thing. And of course, we've also had a change of government. So you do need to kind of let politics wash away from you a little bit and decompress. So that's the first thing. So I am going on holiday literally all the time. um so i'm going to basically things i've had a very international career so you know i get invited to lots of do you want to come walk in here with me do you want to come here with me do you want to go that and i've always had to say no no no no no because i'd get accused of you know being away well that was something you couldn't do as an mp right you're away and and that's that's you're not allowed to have a holiday even though i did because i don't agree with that but then also who you go with might be on a front page of something.

1:05:09So now I can just say yes, yes, yes. So I said yes to everything. After that, I want to get my Spanish back up because I did speak pretty good Spanish, but again, haven't had any time to really focus on that. So I want to get that back up to speed. New upgrade my own understanding of AI and ethics is probably where I'll head there. and then I'm really open it's very unusual because usually when I was looking for new jobs it would be um and I don't I don't have to do anything actually if I wanted to but I think I will because I just feel I've got so much experience and so much that and energy that I do need to do something but usually in the business world it would be in the sort of business space in the political world it would be you know maybe go into a think tank and things like that and that's not what what I'm looking for is for things that where I can use all of that business experience and that political insight because that's very differentiating that's something that not lots of people have I haven't worked out what that will be but it's probably more um non-exec than exec just because I want to also value my free time because my husband's doing his PhD you know he's kind of got a bit more free time he's still doing some board stuff but what's his phd in it's it's war studies at king's college and it's a historical naval figure um that he's writing his phd about and then he wants to go and write a book it's a guy called sir roger keys who was uh also was a conservative um um a member of parliament and is very famous and is there at very critical um moments in our country's history but has kind of been forgotten so he that's what he's doing his on so as we've got a bit more time we've worked for 80 years between us so i want to get that balance right to be able to you know to to see friends and family i mean you know our youngest lives in new york now so we've got to get that balance right um but non-exec i think is probably more so uh than exec but of course everybody wants you to do exec yeah so i put this into chat gpt oh did you did it come up with the answer would you like to yeah and also it came up with some percentages let me go oh wow okay let me grab the laptop um i've been doing this a lot i haven't done this i haven't thought to do this myself actually it's interesting yeah so um if it says singer then it's wrong no so i um i put it in with uh because obviously do lots of research on it now and so on and particularly for like obviously knew lots about your politics and lots that's public but actually the the sort of business stuff it was really good on so yeah it the corporate But stateswoman hybrid, most likely.

1:07:5460 % probability it gave this to you. Keegan leverages her crossover credentials in business and politics to land a few key non-exec directorships. Think Rolls-Royce, Pearson or a large apprenticeship provider like Babcock. Okay. She's tapped to chair a new National Skills Council or something similar, possibly appointed by a future Conservative government. and then in 2030 she emerges as go-to voice on education and workforce policy etc etc and then it goes on to that now the second path 25 probability it gave this was roll mp again after a few years out the party reboots keegan is persuaded to stand again either in chichester or a safer southern seat she's still in her 50s so could do it so I thought that was quite interesting as well and then the private sector queen maker wild card just 15 % of probability that you goes full startup and goes to found her own startup company so I don't know what you make of those actually pretty pretty not bad and all things I've thought of myself I've thought of starting my own business before I went down this political route and in the end I thought it just didn't work at my stage in life my age so I did invest actually in a venture capital fund which then invested in 19 sort of very young businesses so I kind of scratched that itch that that way I am curious and literally could go in in pretty much any direction I think I've probably proven my flexibility my ability to move countries to move industries to move complete fields and to survive um you know the brutal game of politics in a way I mean obviously I lost the seat at the last election but I probably had had a you know very good seven years um in in as an MP and as a government minister so yeah I'm really open and and in the meantime having fun but really open to to what that's going to be and very excited to see what it will be.

1:10:11And it will be, it could be as random as any of those things. A few quick fires to finish off. I think you mentioned this during the interview actually, but what was the first thing you did for money, first job? Well, babysitting actually was the first thing I did for money. I mentioned my huge Catholic family, well, I might not say they're Catholic, but huge family. So I had lots of cousins younger. So the very first thing was probably about the age of 11, 12, when you could then, I was babysitting my younger cousins. And then I worked as a Saturday girl in St. John's Market in a shop selling clothes and shoes.

1:10:45What's the best holiday you've had in the last year? Oh, God, I've had so many. I've been following your Instagram. Actually, you know what? The one that's probably surprised me the most is I went on a cruise on the Queen Mary. And I was not expecting to enjoy it because my husband wanted to go. we cruised back from New York and uh and I we had a ball I really enjoyed it um but you know everything I got back from Barbados last Friday that was great um what car do you drive I have a mini which I had from when I lived in Spain that was my kind of when I came home car so I've still got the same one it's many years old done hardly any miles and a BMW would you ever go electric yes in fact we're looking at um upgrading the mini to electric okay um at the right time a quick thanks to octopus energy for supporting this episode now a lot of people know about octopus for their home energy products i have recommended people switch them for years but what you might not know is that they are now rolling out more products across home and businesses from solar panels ev chargers heat pumps so if you're thinking of upgrading your home or business and you are a Jimmy's Jobs listener, you can ping Jimmy at octopus.energy and get the very latest deals and insights.

1:12:05And if you're already on the journey with Octopus, leave us a comment or a message. I'd love to hear how it's going with their wider products. All right, back to the episode. Do you have solar panels? No, and we have a grade two listed building, so I don't think it's very energy efficient and they wouldn't allow us to have solar panels. Fair enough. We're in the process at the moment, so it's quite interesting. what would be a dream job like if you could be the best at the world in anything sports astronaut I always loved singing and dancing I was never any good at it but yeah if I could you know suddenly morph into Beyonce then yeah strictly yeah I'm not sure I'm not sure although I do think Ed Balls did brilliantly I'd hope to do better than that.

1:12:58I mean, literally, I'm from Liverpool. I danced in nightclubs, right? So, you know, I think I could dance. But yeah, I love all of that thing. But I honestly think being education secretary was pretty much up there in being able to bring all the things you've learned in life to try and help people to get on and have a better life and better opportunities in life. That was a really cool job. Did you ever think or want to be prime minister at all? No. And people say to me how, you know, that very few people, most people want to be prime minister. There's several things. The first is I just didn't think, timing's everything in life.

1:13:45And, you know, particularly as I got in after the Brexit debate and referendum, I just didn't think I would have enough colleagues that would back someone like me. I'm a moderate conservative. I'm never going to pretend to be anything other than what I am. And I just didn't think that I would be the right person at the right time. Other times before or after, maybe I would be the right person at the right time. But I wasn't that my time. I didn't think they were going through a very difficult time or a very different time. So that was the first thing. But the second thing, and this is a personal thing.

1:14:18I hate the idea of being followed by security for the rest of your life. I like being me. I like being anonymous. I like going with mates and sitting on a beach and doing whatever. I like to not be well known, really. So that's something that I think is a personal thing that I'd find difficult. Now, you weren't the first and not the last to potentially tread the route from Liverpool to Real Madrid. Ah, yes, I did. I did. I did. What advice would you have for a certain footballer that may be making the same trip about settling in Madrid? I mean, I loved Madrid. You cannot not love Madrid. Madrid's a city that takes you a little bit of time to get used to.

1:15:06Like Barcelona, you can kind of see what it's got to offer straight away. Madrid, it takes a bit more time. But the people, the nightlife, I mean, you're a footballer, probably you can't do a lot of this stuff. But, you know, the nightlife, the dancing, the I mean, all this sort of traditional Spanish things that you can do. It is a city that on every corner has got a vibrancy about it. And it's still got a lot of independent bars, independent restaurants, independent shops. And, you know, it's it's still got it's still retained a lot of its character. I love it. I love it. It's one of my favorite cities still.

1:15:39one of the reasons that you obviously I started the interview by saying you particularly sort of stuck in my memory um was you giving that great business speech but then I went and looked you up as well and saw that you were from a coal mining family and a catholic as well so it really sort of like stuck with with me um you represented uh the British government at the last pope's funeral just talk us through what's that like it's obviously very sort of topical with everything that's been happening. Yeah, I mean, I was actually on holiday and it was over the Christmas and they asked, you know, if I could represent.

1:16:16So the first thing I had to do was find the right outfit because I had to go to a shop and buy, you know, all the black stuff because I didn't have that with me, which is something they always tell you as a minister and as a cabinet minister, always make sure you've got... But anyway, I hadn't followed that advice. But obviously it's a huge honour and privilege to be able to represent your country. I have been so lucky that I've been to the Vatican a couple of times. I met Pope Francis, had a private audience with him. Then I was lucky enough to go to Pope Benedict's funeral as well. And I actually probably could have gone to this one, but I wasn't here.

1:16:55But there is something so special, if you're Catholic, about the Vatican and about the Pope. and, you know, I'm very much, well, I don't know if I'll ever get to meet the new Pope, but I'm very much looking forward to see what he's going to do and how he's going to take forward his mandate. What was the sort of sheer scale and size of it? I mean, it's one of those, you know, things that, as you were saying earlier, growing up, you know, sort of in Liverpool, et cetera, like you must have slight pinch me sort of moment being there. Unbelievable. I mean, you know, from where I come from, You know, people go to Lourdes, they go to the Vatican.

1:17:35I mean, my mum and her sister have just been and they'll be right at the back, queuing with thousands and thousands of people. And there I am at the front in a seat, you know, sitting next to the prime ministers and ministers from, you know, all the other countries around the world. I'm being, you know, literally very, very close to the Pope. So it is something that is a dream come true for most Catholics. And I also actually took a picture of my nephew who was very ill at the time to get that blessed by the Pope, and they got a picture of that, a shot. So that's a picture that we all have on our walls now, my mum and dad.

1:18:17Everybody has a picture of that because luckily my nephew's now a lot better. Brilliant. Well, that's a lovely way to finish. Dillian, thanks very much for coming on Jimmy's Job as a Feature. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you.

1:18:54I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-CONTACTS. The Viore Core Short moves with you. With everyday versatility and classic athletic fit. It's the one short for everything your day brings. Invest in your happiness and get 20 % off your first purchase at viore.com slash 420. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash K-O-R-E-2-0. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Hello. Look what TJ Maxx dragged in. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu.

1:19:44We are digital. We are downloadable. We are streamable. The fashion event of the year is certified fresh. Pull yourself together. We have work to do. Critics say it's smart and witty and the perfect sequel. That's all. Get runway ready for The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Disney Plus and Hulu. Rated PG-13.