My family is just like most other families - we rise and fall on good and bad government policy. Politics affects us all.
In every single place I have campaigned in and every single place I have lived, people want some fairly basic things. They want to believe that they are safe, they want to know that their children will be educated and that if they are ill, they will be made better.
I refuse to believe this rhetoric that the Labour party can't get under one big umbrella with a common enemy - sometimes a common enemy is an absolutely delightful unifier.
Ken Livingstone appears incapable of contrition. That is why he must be thrown out of the Labour party. He is so certain he is right about everything, he won't come close to change.
I've carried witty banners against laws that would curtail my freedoms.
The desire to look strong and decisive, instead of looking human, is the fatal flaw of so many politicians, and I will never understand why the favoured path of the political class is akin to a child with chocolate smeared on their face insisting that they didn't eat the edible Christmas tree ornaments while their parents slept.
I'm stunned at the amount of young women who get in touch with me every single day, trying to become somebody like me. As a teenager, I would never have done that. And I was someone who was interested in politics. But I wouldn't have emailed the local MP.
To be honest, I've always been forthright.
It might be easy to brush away the febrile atmosphere online as a nasty byproduct of free expression: it's less easy when it happens to you.
I don't think Jeremy Corbyn hates women - I don't think Jeremy hates anyone. Spend even one minute with him and you would want to take him down to the pub and sink a pint of mild with the man. However, in the hard left of British politics lurks a gruesome misogyny.
Any MP who deals with immigration a huge amount, which I do, is going to worry about giving powers to the executive to change immigration law without scrutiny.
We've all got to discover the courage to ask the difficult questions about the future of our party and the future of the working-class communities who need a Labour government.
I'm a believer in forgiveness. I have worked with people who have been in gangs and now dedicate their lives to helping inner city kids. I've run offender services with teachings of responsibility, empathy and understanding of the victims at their heart. I've seen people change.
I had pneumonia when I was 18 months old and I was given penicillin, which I was allergic to, and since then my teeth have been yellow.
The ability to say 'I was wrong' or to own up to your mistakes is very powerful. I teach my children that admitting fault is the quickest way to stop the problem, move on and get on with whatever it is you should be doing.
The fact that I stick up for women doesn't mean that I think all men are rapists. But that's lost somewhere in translation. Obviously I don't think that. I married one! I gave birth to two of them.
My paternal grandma was a raving Thatcherite, one who had a xenophobic turn of phrase for most proceedings.
When you're left on the floor of a hospital gasping for breath, or you can't get your kid a school place, the simplest things are your idea of radical.
My favourite film is probably 'Star Wars'. I do love 'Starship Troopers', it is a great film but it's not a film I watch over and over again. Whereas 'Star Wars' I've watched over and over again all my life, and it's a film I can tolerate watching with my children.
