The bright new face of the centre: a meeting with Layla Moran

Top of the class: MP Layla Moran
Elliott Franks
WEST END FINAL

Get our award-winning daily news email featuring exclusive stories, opinion and expert analysis

I would like to be emailed about offers, event and updates from Evening Standard. Read our privacy notice.

Layla Moran has only been a Lib Dem MP for a year but she was the talk of this week’s party conference. Her speech calling for a more radical education policy was packed out and mugs with her face on it sold out. She bought one as a joke for her mother, along with a toy tiger.

“This is a moment of renewal for the Liberal Democrats,” grins the 36-year-old former teacher, who has glittery nail varnish and is growing out her “Brexit bob”. She got it after the referendum when she “felt depressed”: “I was going to get a tattoo but thought I’d regret that so instead I cut my hair short”.

“Someone here asked me if I would change our logo,” she says. “At the moment it’s a dove but I think now we are a phoenix rising from the ashes. When people say they want a party that’s radically liberal but at the centre of politics that’s us. Half the party is new since 2015 and we have the youngest members – the coalition was difficult but now is the time to join because you can have a huge influence.”

You don’t even have to be a Lib Dem. Anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller’s speech galvanised conference. Despite not being a party member, she could have a big impact if departing head of the party Vince Cable’s proposition to open up the leadership elections to non-members is enacted. Miller says she doesn’t want to lead but the members think they know better. “Women always say no when they mean yes,” one older, male delegate says. “I haven’t seen dignity like Gina’s since Ming Campbell.”

Winning votes from the Tories is a focus of conference but expectations are tempered. At a fringe workshop about winning a young woman says “we have to redefine success – it doesn’t have to be winning elections, it can be saving a local post office” and I overhear naysayers heading for a drink on the beach because “I feel duty bound to go to the session about fighting the Tories but it sounds so wearing.”

Moran knows all about beating the opposition. Last year she won the seat of Oxford West and Abingdon, which had been a Tory stronghold for seven years. The Greens stepped down to help her win.

She’s this country’s first British-Palestinian MP - her mother is from Jerusalem - but she wades into the Israel/Palestine debate sparingly “because it’s so emotive”. She made an exception for John McDonnell on Politics Live earlier this month though. “I had to mansplain anti-Semitism to him,” she says. Moran was upset about posters saying that Israel is a racist state. “The people who put it up were called London Palestine Action. As a Palestinian they don’t speak for me, and they are blatantly racist signs. You don’t say a whole country is racist. McDonnell said he’s ‘on a journey’.” She does a droney impression of him. “I was like ‘really?’ You’re 60 something years old, come on. If you haven’t realised by now that this is anti-Semitism no wonder there’s a problem in the Labour Party.”

“I’ve been attacked by people who say you’re not a real Palestinian and your mum’s not a real Palestinian for raising you that way. But when I see someone who is ‘on a journey about being anti-Semitic’ I’m sorry but I’m intervening. Calling out anti-Semitism doesn’t make me any less Palestinian. There’s a nuance in the argument that has been lost and Corbyn not saying antisemitism is wrong has fuelled the problem. Some responsibility does lie at his door.”

She compares it to Brexit and the inability of many to “have a respectful conversation with someone who thinks differently”.

Moran is campaigning for a second referendum and quips that we should join new Lib Dem supporter Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers outside where he is holding forth on EU tariffs in a shirt monogrammed with his intials, buying half pints for anyone who will listen.

“People are only just beginning to realise what they voted for,” says Moran. “Even Chequers is a harder Brexit than many expected. We have people who have joined the Lib Dems because it has moved harder than Norway’s exit from the EU. The range of options on offer at that point were so wide that it’s only fair people get another say. There’s a democratic deficit that needs to be filled. You delete a file from your computer and you’re asked twice if you are sure. If you’re going to delete membership from the EU it’s only fair to ask again.”

What if people vote leave for a second time? “Fine. What we need to avoid is that one side gets it narrowly. I sleep well at night because I am fighting for what I think is right. I don’t know how moderate conservatives or Remain Labour MPs sleep unless they are making the case for what’s happening with Brexit.”

Moran’s father, the diplomat James Moran, recently left the Labour party because he doesn’t like where Corbyn is taking it. “I made him join the Lib Dems.”

He and her mother were politically engaged but Moran came late to party politics. “In my twenties I was more interested in dating and drinking and getting a job.” She voted Lib Dem because they were good on science and she studied Physics at Imperial “but didn’t give it much thought.”

It was her master’s degree in comparative education that inspired her. “I focussed on educational inequality and it was clear from the research how bad academisation was going to be – we were already getting results from Sweden about how they were going to reverse these policies. All the research pointed one way and the policy was pushing in another so where is the disconnect? That got me political. Why rant in the pub when what you need to do is rant at the decision makers? I’m a geek so I compared which party had the closest policy to what the research was saying and settled on the Lib Dems. I realise this is unusual.”

Moran lives near her constituency and recently bought her first house, with her younger sister who works for Oxfam and “help from the bank of mum and dad”. She has “a nice boyfriend” who is “in a very different world to politics”.

Vince Cable offered to mentor her. They share a maverick streak: “We were the only two MPs to support moving Parliament from Westminster and we’re the youngest and the oldest”. When she was heckled at her first Prime Minister’s Questions, he told her to keep going. Her radical suggestions centre around education – she wants more teacher led assessment instead of exams, which she says don’t translate to the real world and exacerbate anxiety.

Was she good at exams? “I was great. But that not the point. If you put a barrier in front of children at any age all it does is stifle social mobility. Only three per cent of kids on free school meals go to grammar schools, that’s compared to 14 per cent in the surrounding area.”

She’d like her party to come up with more “exciting, liberal policies”. “Since coalition we’ve stopped doing that. When we lost badly in 2015 we were sad and hid under the duvet a bit and we didn’t develop policies that are clear about what it means to be a liberal democrat.” Would a different leader have changed this? “I think that passes the buck.”

Would she like to lead the party? “It’s too soon. I was elected last summer. It depends when Vince steps down. But I’m 36, I’m not going to close the door. Even if I did it in 10 years I’d still be a young leader.”

She played to the younger crowd at the Lib Dem conference disco with a 90s dance set. “I put on Everybody Dance Now. It was great. It’s important that MPs are normal people.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in