Call him a tech bro’, a hustler or even – hiss! – a Starmerite. But my word, I’m keen on my MP – and recently promoted business secretary – Peter Kyle, the Honourable Member for Hove and Portslade.
That doesn’t mean I voted for him last time; I wasn’t going to assist Robbie the Robot into power. I voted Reform, being acquainted with the candidate Martin Hess and finding him both clever and good company. I did vote for Kyle the first time, and became acquainted slightly with him, too; as they say of the 1960s, if you can remember the Peter Kyle Election Victory Night Party of 2015, you weren’t there. All I remember is screaming and shouting and singing and celebrating with what seemed like every gay man in Brighton and Hove. It was a riot!
It says a lot about how much I liked Kyle that I voted for him when Labour was led by Jeremy Corbyn, as did many Jewish friends in our constituency. We knew he was one of the few MPs in the rabidly pro-Palestinian constituency of Hove to give Israel a fair hearing. And sure enough, a year after he won, he wrote a lengthy and devastating email to the local party in which he disclosed that he supported the Parliamentary Labour Party’s motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn. It’s worth reading for its style and sincerity, but one paragraph was particularly prescient:
I was utterly devastated to debate Nigel Farage recently in Kent and see people who identified as former Labour voters, mostly the semi and un-skilled workers we exist to serve, cheering his every word and booing the very mention of our great party. I am sure you are wincing at the thought of this so please believe me when I say it was heartbreaking to experience.
By 2024, I was one of these former lifelong Labour voters who voted for Reform. The day of the election – having not put my X in the box marked Labour for the first time in my life – I was sitting outside my local, the Blind Busker in Hove, with other Reform reprobates, when Mr Kyle walked by and waved to me.
‘Good morning, Julie!’
‘Good morning, dear sir – I didn’t vote for you!’ I called back cheekily. ‘I’ve gone over to Reform!’
‘I’ll soldier on!’ he twinkled, waved again and went on his way.
My fellow Reform-voting friend sighed; ‘You can’t help liking him, can you? Tosser.’
In a profession of unlikeable types, it’s true that Kyle is one of the few politicians you can imagine having a drink with; a thing he has in common with Farage, who he pointed out the very real threat from so early, when most smug politicos were dismissing Reform as a joke. Perhaps because he lacks the sense of entitlement of so many of his profession generally and party especially – all those Red Princes and ponces parachuted into safe seats. He is of working-class origin, but because of his smoothness, and because he has chosen not to use it as a battering ram, he doesn’t get the Brownie points which until so recently gave his new Hove neighbour Angela Rayner so much velocity.
He wrote beautifully of Anita Roddick when she died (having opened her first Body Shop in Brighton in 1976) which tells us of his own early life, having left school ‘without any usable qualifications’:
As an 18 year-old in 1989 I started in one of the lowest paid jobs in the company, keying invoices on the purchase ledger. As an acute dyslexic I struggled but desperately wanted to do well in a company I loved, so I often went in quietly on Sundays to make sure I stayed on top of things. One Sunday I was the only person in the head office in Littlehampton until I saw Anita drive up and walk in. She came over and asked why on earth I was at work on a Sunday; she asked about my life and opinions. From that day on I had an invisible hand pushing me forward and always keeping me out of my comfort zone. She packed me off to speak to schools, care homes, and community groups whenever she couldn’t do it herself. Imagine sending the most junior person from a company as a replacement for the CEO? Who does that? One day she came up to me and asked how I was doing, I said I was terrified the whole time because of all the public speaking. She told me that one day I would thank her for it because I would lose my fear of speaking in front of people and be free to think about what I was going to say instead.
Kyle was a late starter, getting into the University of Sussex at 25 on his third go, bagging a degree in geography, international development, and environmental studies, and later a doctorate in community development. This prolonged student-hood sound like a classic way to avoid getting a proper job, an accusation often thrown at politicians – but Kyle then became an aid worker in Eastern Europe in the wake of the Bosnian and Kosovan wars, and helped establish an orphanage in Romania. Those are definitely proper jobs; he didn’t become an MP until he was 45, ten years ago. He’s moved fast since then, smooth as a silk submarine, but offending the right people all across the spectrum. In 2015, he voted in favour of the UK bombing the Islamic State in Syria, making him a target of left-wing nutters who sent him photos of dead babies. In 2016, he challenged Mike Ashley, the Sports Direct boss, over allegedly bad working practices in his warehouses, being accused in turn of making ‘defamatory comments’ against him. Yes, he was wrong about Brexit, but some of my best friends…
He’s been a great friend to British Jews, that most loyal and abandoned of our immigrant communities, and was appointed a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel in 2020. The year before that, speaking of the growth of anti-Semitism in the party, he went after Corbyn in a meeting of Labour MPs; he also endorsed the report by the EHRC which stated that the Labour party was guilty of breaches of the Equality Act with relation to anti-Semitism. Kyle’s office, on the next block from mine, is often mobbed by the crazy pals of Palestine; I had great fun being wheeled through them recently, hoping to nick as many gender-fluid toes as possible.
In 2023, Kyle attended and spoke at the March Against Antisemitism in London. I was there too and was delighted to hear two ladies in the coach on the way home to Hove discussing how good his speech was: ‘Better than the Chief Rabbi’s!’ Lots of my neighbours are Jewish ladies of a certain age who may not approve of Labour but who won’t hear a word against PK. In a political landscape where pandering to the growing Muslim vote is cringy and occasionally downright dangerous (think of the late lamented Mrs Rayner’s backdoor blasphemy bill) he is a breath of fresh air.
Speaking of Rayner, there was hostility to her purchase of a Hove flat which was totally apart from the more demonstrative behaviour of the angry graffiti artists. With a flat in London and a house in her constituency, it seemed extraordinary that she would buy a home here unless there was some nefarious business going on, perhaps involving the practice known as the ‘chicken-run’. As the Telegraph put it: ‘Angela Rayner has been accused of plotting a “chicken run” to a safer seat on the south coast after polls showed she was likely to lose to Nigel Farage’s party.’
Of course Peter, decent cove that he is, stood by his new neighbour. His statement to our excellent local reporter Ramy Abou-Setta, however, made me laugh, with its mix of fastidiousness and snark: ‘I’m really disappointed that a heritage wall has been defaced over this issue. There are many, many ways people can express their anger and disappointment in Angela Rayner, including reporting her to the Commissioner for Standards.’
In an age when ‘Forgive and forget’ has come to mean ‘Forgive the criminal and forget the victim’, I find it original and affecting that in 2021 when he became shadow minister for victims and youth justice, Kyle presented a bill to parliament including the aims of ensuring victims are read their rights at the same time as perpetrator, creating a register for people who run departments in the justice system which routinely ignore victims’ rights and giving victims of persistent anti-social behaviour the same rights as victims of crimes.
His posts since then have been various – minister for schools, Northern Ireland, science and technology – and since last week a big juicy one, secretary of state for business and trade. His private life is pleasingly private. He was in a relationship with Vlastimil Tiser, until Tiser’s death in 2012. His mother died of cancer six days later. Peter Kyle kept on soldiering on, and he will keep doing so. Who knows how far? If he carries on like this, I might even have to vote for him again.
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