As a teenager, the shadow culture secretary was always up for a party. Now she is expected to have a view on everything from the legacy of colonialism to the future of the licence fee. How is she handling the never-ending controversy?
Lucy Powell has already made herself at home by the time I arrive at Hallé St Peter’s, the new rehearsal rooms opened by one of Manchester’s great orchestras just before the pandemic hit. As well she might: the shadow culture secretary and MP for Manchester Central is on her own patch, and when I suggest we meet “somewhere cultural”, she has a whole list of suggestions from Hope Mill theatre, a fantastic fringe producing venue, to Home, the lovely arts complex in Tony Wilson Place.
It turns out she was at sixth-form college with the chap who runs Hallé St Peter’s, Martin Glynn. Later, I interrogate him: so what was she like at school? “A good sort!” he says. She was on the student council, and did stuff like demand better provision of tampons on campus – there were Catholic Xaverian brothers on the staff, he tells me, and they hadn’t quite caught up with the fact that it was a mixed sixth-form college, not a 1950s boys’ grammar. “She’s always been a doer.”
