Labour MPs compete over who had the toughest upbringing as if they were in Monty Python’s famed ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch, a Cabinet minister admitted yesterday.
Darren Jones said his colleagues try to ‘out-poor each other’ because most politicians are now middle-class.
He joked they claim to have ‘lived in a pothole’ or ‘had to lick the road’ in a reference to the Python skit in which a quartet of well-off, middle-aged men make increasingly unlikely boasts about the hardships they endured as children.
By contrast Mr Jones, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, said he had a ‘great time’ growing up on a council estate in Bristol even though his family did not always have enough money for electricity.
Although he did not single out any of his colleagues, Labour’s former deputy leader Angela Rayner has been praised for reaching the top of politics after growing up in poverty and leaving school with no qualifications having become pregnant at 15.
One of the contenders to succeed her, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, has often told how a neighbour paid for her to have a winter coat, while Sir Keir Starmer has said his family had their phone cut off over unpaid bills.
In an interview at the Labour conference yesterday, Mr Jones was asked if he had to go without as a child given that his father was a security guard and his mother worked in a hospital.
He replied: ‘Yeah, for sure.’
Monty Python stars Michael Palin, John Cleese, Eric Idle and Terry Jones perform the famous Four Yorkshiremen sketch
Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria attend the 2025 Labour Party Annual Conference
Angela Rayner has been praised for reaching the top of politics after growing up in poverty, while Bridget Phillipson has often told how a neighbour paid for her to have a winter coat
But he went on: ‘I’m very conscious in the Labour Party, not least because most politicians are pretty middle-class these days, we try to out-poor each other.
‘You know, like that sketch, ‘I had to lick the road, I lived in a pothole’ or whatever.
‘It’s pretty relevant to the Labour Party.’
