Harriet Harman: I dropped my cut-glass accent for Labour
The public school-educated deputy leader of the "People's Party" has admitted for the first time that she has made her accent less posh because "I sounded like Lady Diana".
In an interview with the Standard, Harriet Harman denied that she had formal voice training but said she just lost her "Fifties cut-glass accent" to fit in with Labour Party colleagues.
Ms Harman, a former pupil at St Paul's Girls School in Hammersmith and a niece of Lord Longford, said: "I didn't consciously change it, but I agree, I lost it somehow."
By changing her voice, Ms Harman is following a path well-trodden by politicians.
Margaret Thatcher coached away her faux-posh paint-stripping stridency —itself the result of early elocution lessons — in favour of a deeper timbre.
More recently, shadow chancellor George Osborne has been coached by Harley Street speech consultant Valerie Savage to sound less clipped.
Voice experts believe that even Foreign Secretary David Miliband has been at it.
Voice coach Philippa Davies, whose clients have included Sir John Major and about 100 Labour MPs, says Ms Harman's accent "journey" is one we all take when we try to fit in.
She said: "If you took a teenage boy from Newcastle and moved him to Chelsea you would find that within a week he would have modified his accent. And certainly if it was the other way.
"But if you told that boy you could change your accent' he would say no. It's an instinctive thing."
