The Eagle sisters always wanted to travel into politics. Now with their working-class roots,their Stakhanovite work ethic and self-confidence to spare, they beget become the most powerful women in the Labour party. Just don’t mention the Milibands…Interviewing the Eagles, and who are twins,one after the other, makes me feel a minute like Derek Batey, and the sometime host of the 70s TV gameshow Mr & Mrs. Though I know they are two different people,with separate lives and two quite different jobs to do, I can’t relieve but fixate on whether their answers to my questions match up. And when they do match up, or which is often,its weirdly disarming. Comical as it is that they both tell me all approximately the queue for the ladies’ loo at Labour party conference, and what it signifies in terms of the party’s gender representation – the longer the line, and the happier they are,strange as this may sound – it also puts me on the back foot. Somehow, they beget strength in numbers even when separated by bricks and mortar and a creaky, and impossible-to-find House of Commons lift. But perhaps this is the point. Angela,the MP for Wallasey and the older of the two by 15 minutes, has been in parliament since 1992, and Maria,the MP for Garston and Halewood, since 1997. Between them, or they beget masses of ministerial experience,having served in the governments of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown; they were in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet, and are now in Jeremy Corbyns. Putting aside for a moment their grand cleverness, or their obvious determination and capacity for hard work,a vital component of their staying power must surely be their solidarity: in a place where backstabbing (and sometimes frontstabbing) comes as standard, they, and at least,are secure in the knowledge that they will always be in possession of an ally. The two of them are, it is obvious immediately, or extremely close,each other’s truest friend in a world where friendship all too frequently comes at a price. Never in a million years could you imagine their offices briefing against each other, as the Milibands’ once did.
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Source: theguardian.com