PUBLISHED: 01:25, 14 October 2024 | UPDATED: 12:12, 15 October 2024
Despite facing calls to quit after nearly sinking a £1billion port investment, the Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has no regrets about her now notorious 'rogue operator' remark about P&O Ferries.
The youngest woman to ever serve in a British Cabinet, Haigh, 37, has told friends she has nothing to apologise for.
One source said: 'The row over P&O has done wonders for her reputation in the Labour movement and she knows it. She's standing up for what she believes in.'
Her private defiance will infuriate Downing Street, which ordered a succession of ministers to disown her remarks in a desperate bid to placate P&O's owner DP World.
But it came as no surprise to see support for the embattled Transport Secretary from Left-wing trade union leaders at the weekend.
Since 2019 she's received £24,000 from the unions, including £10,000 in the summer from Unite, the union which led the protests against the sackings at P&O in 2022. They will have been delighted by her inflammatory remarks.
Haigh, a former Unite union official, was also the toast of the union barons in August when she agreed an extraordinary inflation-busting 14.25 per cent pay deal with train drivers' union Aslef.
Some drivers' pay soared past £80,000 for a four-day week with no strings attached. The optics were terrible, with the deal coming only two weeks after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced she was cancelling the winter fuel allowance for 10 million pensioners.
Haigh's parliamentary private secretary Liam Conlon, the son of the ousted No 10 chief of staff Sue Gray, is another MP who has been heavily backed by the unions. He was given a total of £28,000 for his general election campaign, including £4,000 from Aslef.
Unions are in Haigh's blood, as her grandfather and uncle were senior officials in the movement.
When Starmer banned Labour frontbenchers from going on picket lines in support of train drivers and NHS workers, Haigh was privately deeply unhappy.
Elected in 2015, the youngest Labour MP in that year's intake at 27, she was one of 35 Labour MPs who nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the party leadership, a decision she later regretted. She never campaigned for Corbyn, instead working for the more centrist Andy Burnham, who is now the Mayor of Greater Manchester.
When frontbenchers began resigning in protest at Corbyn's leadership in 2016, she backed the shadow cabinet minister Owen Smith when he launched a doomed challenge for the leadership.
Despite her dissent, Haigh retained her shadow ministerial role under Corbyn and went on to become shadow policing minister after the 2017 general election.
She was ideally cast for the role given her previous experience as a special constable for the Metropolitan Police, when she patrolled the streets of Brixton in south London.
In 2019, she supported Lisa Nandy rather than Starmer in the leadership contest. Nandy is now Culture Secretary and Haigh – known as 'Lou' to family and friends – has flourished too. Until now.
Transport is a big brief, with the Government committed to renationalising the railways and taking bus services back under town hall control, as well as developing the HS2 high-speed rail link and Northern Powerhouse Rail.
Haigh, who took four attempts to pass her driving test, is also accelerating Labour's war on motorists. She's pledged 'absolute support' to local councils who want to introduce Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and 20mph zones, despite polls showing they are hugely unpopular.
The only privately educated member of the Cabinet, she attended independent Sheffield High School, where fees are £20,000 a year.
Those schooldays were often unhappy, as she was bullied, she says, for being 'ginger and overweight', though she has now turned her hairstyle into one of her most conspicuous characteristics. She uses a £1.99 hair dye and it's currently red.
While she never talks about her personal life, she did have a brief fling with the TV host and Strictly star Nick Knowles after they met at a police awards dinner in 2018.
And as she is ambitious, more battles with No 10 loom, possibly over HS2.
Haigh's champions in the North, such as Andy Burnham, may want her to rally to their cause if the Government wobbles on its spending commitments.
'Lou has had lots of private messages of support in the last few days,' says one friend. 'I suspect Andy Burnham was behind one of them.'
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