British Labour MP Catherine West’s House of Commons question to then-prime minister Boris Johnson catapulted her into the public spotlight.
Catherine West, born in Victoria and raised in Sydney, is the British shadow minister for Asia and the Pacific. I spoke to her on Thursday.girl in the 80s, in the heart of the north shore, where the ALP are oft’ regarded as class enemies, to being a leading light among British Labour parliamentarians, possibly in line to be a cabinet minister after the next election.) That doesn’t tell the whole story of my beginnings.
: It started because through those refugees I met David Lammy, who was the then newly elected MP for Tottenham. He gave me a job as his constituency secretary, dealing with all the people who came to see him about housing and benefits and all that kind of thing. And so I did that, also getting involved in local politics for 12 years, including being the council leader. So I took us from 10 Labour councillors out of 48 in my borough when I started, to 47 out of 48 by the time I left in 2014.