5. Julia Langdon

Four or five degrees of separation (from Stalin)

​​Greetings festive readers and welcome to our last What’s Left? interview of the year. For new subscribers who’ve just joined us, I’ll email you a conversation with someone left-wing each week. So far, I’ve spoken to a communist journalist, a novelty political candidate and two comedians. And the great news is that because this is such a family-intensive time of year, I’ve arranged an appropriate treat for you today: a chat with a member of my own family!

If, in gratitude, you would like to reciprocate by offering me something back, why not help my sweet newsletter grow by recommending it to a friend or family member who you think might enjoy it?

You can even buy them a gift subscription! (Listen, I don’t know how generous you are).

Otherwise, I hope you have a wonderful holiday period and I look forward to connecting with you and lots more interesting lefties next year. You can still catch me and Andrew Hunter Murray on Radio 4’s The Naked Week annd I’ll be back with my dumb podcast FeMANism with Samantha Martin in the new year. XO

Julia Langdon has been a political journalist for over fifty years, working at the Guardian, The Daily Mirror and The Sunday Telegraph. At the Mirror, she was the first woman to hold the position of political editor of a daily national newspaper in the UK. As well as writing political biographies and working as a broadcaster, she (accidentally!) became a Labour councillor in Kensington and Chelsea. A friend and colleague of my father’s, she introduced him to her cousin, my mother, and so ultimately, we can all thank her for my existence as well as that of my newsletter, What’s Left?

Welcome Julia! If you were to imagine a version of the political spectrum with zero, and 100 the most extreme left, a communist or something. Where would you put yourself?

I think I put myself at 75 but I’m surprised you put communist at 100 because I don't feel that’s incredibly left-wing.

Oh really? I didn’t realise that.

There are all sorts of sects that are much more, much more left-wing than communism.

We had a mutual friend, you and I, in Ian Aiken [journalist and political editor of the Guardian], whose parents were founding members of the Communist Party. They were idealists who moved to Moscow in the 1920s, believing that communism really was a way of life. Ian was conceived there and he had an elder brother who died in Moscow as a baby from poisoned water.

Deliberately poisoned water?

No!

Sorry. I've watched too many spy dramas.

Amy… Now, in fact, you knew the thing about six degrees of separation?

Of course.

Ian and I were talking about that once, and he held his hand out across the pub table and shook my hand. And I said, ‘What's that for?’ And he said, ‘My mother shook the hand of Stalin.’

Yikes! That actually makes you only three degrees from Stalin, which would make me only four and the readers, five. That is absolutely wild and not at all what I expected to discover when I started a left-wing newsletter. Julia, would you describe yourself as more or left now than you were when you were younger?

I still have the same politics as when I started supporting the Labour Party in the 1960s, although I do think I'm more I think I'm more practical and perhaps more pragmatic now. Because I'm older, I can see that some things are really very difficult, and I realise that government has to be a process of making compromises, which is always going to annoy the left. But I still think it's possible to achieve a left and green change in this country. I'd still call myself a socialist.

When did you start calling yourself a socialist?

When I was in school. I owe my socialism to Nye Bevan [Aneurin Bevan, the Welsh politician who spearheaded the creation of the National Health Service]. He died in about 1962. My parents were driving me home from school shortly after, and having read his obituaries, I observed conversationally that he was a great man. And my father said, ‘What do you mean? He’s only another bloody socialist!’ And I remember thinking that if the guy who started the NHS was a socialist, then I wanted to be one too. Because I realised that I wanted everybody to have an equal chance.

That’s such a lovely origin story! Are you still a member of the Labour Party today?

No, I haven't been a member since Blair, because I didn't think he was my sort of person. But I am emotionally a member of the Labour Party and I do rejoin from time to time. I joined to vote for Corbyn as leader, though I later regretted that and apologised in public in a column.

Why did you vote for Corbyn in the first place?

I thought, ‘The Labour Party needs a bloody boot up the backside, let’s have a bit of socialism.’ And so I rejoined the party and voted for him and I was completely wrong. Corbyn is a nice man, but he’s unthinking, I don’t think he’s very bright. I think he was manipulated by far more extremist left-wing people and it just happened to be his turn to stand as the left-wing candidate that year. And the reason he was selected was because a lot of people like me, historical members of the Labour Party, felt that what was needed was a bit of proper old Labour Party stuff after the mistakes that Blair had made.

I do not underestimate the fact that Blair won three elections, which I thought was terrific. But, you know, the Iraq business was a bit depressing.

That’s one way of putting it. So why did you end up publicly apologising for voting for Corbyn?

Because he was not up to it. His leadership was a disaster, and he couldn't see it. He became a creature of people who wanted revolution rather than a decent socialist government.

So would you describe yourself as a reformist rather than a revolutionary?

I'm not a revolutionary, so I suppose I am a reformist, yes. But to come completely up to the present day, I and a lot of my friends who think like me were hugely disappointed during the first few weeks of Starmer’s government. Until the budget, which was a source of quiet joy to me.

Can tell me about that?

Well, just that it was a left-wing budget of a socialist government.

If the bigwigs in Starmer’s government were reading my Substack for whatever reason, what would be your message to them at this point?

I'm afraid it's going to sound incredibly cliché, but it would be to improve equality of opportunity for everybody. That’s what they have to keep in mind at every turn.

Can you name a politician that you admire?

I admire anybody who's prepared to stand up and ask people to vote for them, to try and make the world a better place and improve life for the majority of people. I'm sorry that occasionally people get themselves into powerful positions where they profit personally. But there are some fantastic people elected at this last election, and it’s time to have a whole new generation of wonderful people.

Would you describe yourself as optimistic about the future?

Yes.

Really?

Yes!

Can you elaborate?

You have to be optimistic to be a socialist. Or maybe it’s the other way around, you have to be a socialist to be an optimist.

Of course, I'm optimistic about the future. I think we can do great things. I'm really sorry about American politics, but I'm not sorry about British politics. I think we've got a Labour government and that the world is going to go on getting better.

Now I’m going to ask for your take on a few things which I feel horribly pessimistic about. Ok, what about the rise of the far-right?

Of course I worry about that, I'm worried about all sorts of things. I think Nigel Farage is a very dangerous and duplicitous person. And I think that race stuff that happened immediately after the election was particularly worrying. I do think immigration is a subject that has not been adequately addressed and there is a selfishness in that that is regrettable. But also, the amount that is raised for people in need is very heartwarming and I think most people are fundamentally decent,

I’m loving this optimism. Can we try and apply it to the climate crisis next?

I think that nobody's paying sufficient attention to it. It doesn’t seem to get the general public steamed up, does it? I do try and shut the microwave door at night, you know.

Well that ought to do it!

I mean that I do my little bit. But no, I don’t think that people are sufficiently joining the dots and I don't know how you make them.

But because I'm an optimist, I just think, ‘Oh, it's going to be all right’. My mother — your great-aunt — used to worry about it and say occasionally, ‘What a sorry place the world is.’ But I don’t worry about things over which I have no control.

I definitely do worry about things I have no control over, but would much rather be like you. Is your optimism dispositional or do you have to consciously practice it?

I don’t know. I’m just a glass-half-full person who hopes that everything is going to be ok. I think we need to just put one foot in front of the other.

In the 19th century, there was a guy called Banting who was worried that the world was going to run out of food. That's where the word ‘Banting’ to mean ‘slimming' comes from. And then the industrial revolution happened and all the tectonic plates changed and they found new ways of growing more food.

That is not to say that there is enough food for the people who need it, because of all those poor people in Sudan at the moment. Oh, God, that's just so horrible. I weep, Amy, I weep. I’m not being an ostrich with my head in the sand. I weep for Sudan and Gaza and all the other horrors. But I only do what I can do, that’s what keeps me optimistic. I try and do what I can without persecuting myself.

Having lived, worked in and written about politics for so long, do you think that we are currently living in an unprecedentedly turbulent time? Or do you think that there are turbulent phases followed by less turbulent phases, and we're just in one of the more turbulent ones at the moment?

I do think there are turbulent times and then less turbulent times, but I don't think I have ever lived through such a turbulent time myself in terms of domestic as well as international politics. Nevertheless, if you read any history... You know, I started watching Wolf Hall from the beginning again last night and everything was absolute chaos back then.

And even more recently, in the 1970s, there was a huge amount of trade union disruption. The British government was living on a knife edge through to the late 1970s. And then in the 1980s we were living through Thatcherism. She was getting rid of industrial infrastructure without anything to replace it, plus unemployment was terrible and they closed the pits. It felt absolutely awful living through it.

This feels worse, but I reckon it'll probably all shake down in a bit.

Because you’re an optimist?

Exactly.

Ok here’s a fruity question which you don't have to answer. Have you ever dated or slept with a conservative?

Yes.

Righty-ho. Next question: I'm trying to make the left a little bit sillier and be able to take the piss of itself. Could you make up a marginalized community which you belong to and would like justice for?

People who split their infinitives. Or misuse the word ‘existential,’ which is driving me completely bonkers at the moment.

But surely you don’t belong to the community of people who do those things, you belong to the community of people who hate it when others do?

Okay, then it’s pedants. I belong to the community of pedants who care about apostrophes, split infinitives and the correct use of the word ‘existential’.

Could you recommend some left-leaning book, podcast or documentary, something for people to check out?

The ‘Ragged Trouser Philanthropist’ by Robert Tressell is an extremely famous political book published in the early 20th century. It’s about a painter trying to avoid poverty and the workhouse for himself and his daughter, a worker simply trying to be paid properly for what he does.

Ooh, I’m surprised that I’ve never heard of that, I’ll definitely be getting a copy. What’s some action that you could recommend to readers?

I love random acts of kindness. If people do it to me, fantastic, but I like doing it to other people too.

Can you tell me a random act of kindness that you’ve done for someone?

No! If I told you it would spoil the act and make me sound petty.

So you're not only announcing that you do random acts of kindness, but also that you don’t need any credit for them? That’s a higher level of kindness which I cannot relate to.

Yes. I think that if you're nice to people, they’ll be nice back and what goes around comes around.

What a beautiful note to end on, Ju. Thank you so much!

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed what you’ve heard from Julia, she has written brilliant biographies of both Mo Mowlam and Gordon Brown. And coming out next year is her new book, “Tales from the Ancient Onion Wood: A Celebration of Friendship and Wild Garlic”.

And you can still catch me on The Naked Week and FeMANism Podcast.