“He still calls me ‘Miss’": The Josh Fenton-Glynn and Allison Gardner interview
Josh Fenton-Glynn and Allison Gardner
7 min read
During the election, Josh Fenton-Glynn realised fellow Labour candidate Allison Gardner was his old science teacher. Now MPs, they speak to Sophie Church about their time at school and ambitions for Parliament
Imagine turning up for the first day of a new job to find a former teacher is a colleague – that was Josh Fenton-Glynn’s experience of arriving at Westminster after the election. And while some teachers may fade from memory, it’s unlikely that anyone taught by Allison Gardner would forget her in a hurry.
Speaking to The House, the two Labour MPs, former teacher and pupil, speak about their rare bond, the need for ‘safe spaces’ and Gardner’s striking teaching style.
“I am a bit of a performer,” the new MP for Stoke-on-Trent South concedes when her former pupil, now Calder Valley MP, recalls her “fun” science lessons when he was a Year 9 pupil.
“I do remember once, and I don’t think it was your class, but I was going through what it was like to give birth. I remember lying on the table in labs with my legs up in the air going, ‘Ahhh! If you imagine anything like [horror film character] Freddy Krueger trying to claw his way out, that’s childbirth! Don’t get pregnant!’”
He still calls me ‘Miss’ just out of sheer devilment
The pair realised their connection after they became candidates. Fenton-Glynn, who had run for Parliament three times previously, was asked to offer some sage words on the process to Gardner, standing for the first time. Their roles reversed, Fenton-Glynn realised Gardner – “Mrs Gardner” as he once knew her – was his Year 9 science teacher.
Gardner’s teaching tactics rubbed off on Calder Valley’s new MP. He now speaks of personal experiences with constituents, or throws in jokes “to make sure people are listening”. Turning to Gardner, now 58, he recalls: “You’d also do a joke about your husband being cross with you and driving away to Holy Island.”
Teachers usually struggle to remember the more conscientious pupils, Gardner says. But for some reason, she remembers Fenton-Glynn.
“This is going to sound insulting – I don’t mean to – but it’s quite amazing that I remember him because he was not a naughty kid. You normally remember the really extrovert ones, the disruptive ones, and he was just a solid kid. That is a compliment!”
On leaving school, Fenton-Glynn worked for Oxfam, Child Poverty Action Group and the General Medical Council. He served as a cabinet member for adult health and social care on his local council before running for Parliament.
While social policy is “his area”, he says Gardner gave him an understanding of science that has stayed with him all his life.
“The best teachers and the best politicians are storytellers, because you’re not imparting individual bits of information and saying, ‘This is how it works, look at the diagram’. You’re telling a story about why it works, and that’s what people take away,” he says. “Allison was a storyteller, which is why she’s a good politician and why she was a good teacher.”
After more than 25 years spent teaching, she was elected to Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council. In 2018, she founded Women in AI, which brings women together to promote ethical use of AI. She later took up the post of senior scientific research fellow at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, and also lectured at Keele University, where she led a data science degree apprenticeship programme.
But teaching is her proudest achievement. “I still say that teaching is the best job in the world,” she says. “I know I’m an MP now. I’ve been a university lecturer. I’ve worked for the NHS and digital regulation services. I’ve had some good jobs, but teaching young people, particularly teenagers, as you see them come in as children, and you see the adults that they can be, and you see them change, that is the most rewarding, honourable thing you can ever do.”
Unsurprisingly, Gardner was delighted at the Education Secretary’s announcement that single-word Ofsted ratings would be scrapped, branding them a “load of rubbish” for schools.
Fenton-Glynn adds that one-word ratings should also be scrapped for social services. “It’s right that CQC [the Care Quality Commission] get their act together, but you don’t get your act together by just oversimplifying how you judge authorities,” he says.
Are there any other areas the two would like to work on?
For Fenton-Glynn, violence against women, and health and social care will be his priority areas. “Race and gender in medicine are both things [I’d like to work on]. If you look at the difference between, for example, Black women giving birth saying they have pain, compared to white women, and how quickly they’re supported and medicated, it’s huge.”
While Gardner has many interests, she is limiting the amount she takes on. “One MP explained to me one thing that she was told, that coming into being an MP is like having a flock of birds flying around you all carrying a problem or something that needs working on,” she says. “You cannot do all of them. So you have to go, ‘Right, I’ll pluck that one out, pluck that one out, pluck that one out’ and then focus on those.”
With a background in AI, Gardner is interested in how technology can improve the NHS. However, she warns Labour against introducing AI before basic IT systems improve.
“I’m personally keen on again – sorry to keep going on about it – walking before we can run and getting some of the real basics right. Because basic IT systems don’t work, let alone the AI and transformative stuff like that.”
She adds jokingly: “Please make me minister for digital health – it doesn’t exist, but let me be it!”
But sitting on a 627 majority, Gardner says her parliamentary career will be “transient”. “I’m conscious my parliamentary career is a small part of my entire life. My partner is who I want to go into my 80s, 90s – and just to spite him – hundreds with. That has to be protected.”
Adjusting to parliamentary life has taken its toll, especially for Gardner’s partner. “It’s challenging, and he – bless his heart – is not political, and finds it hard. We spoke last night, and he was saying, ‘Have you got your staff yet? Are they answering your emails?’ Because people are going up to him in the constituency, going, ‘I emailed her, and she hasn’t answered her emails’. So he’s getting flack and getting anxiety about it.”
“The amount that you become public property is quite something,” agrees Fenton-Glynn. He recalls returning from an 18-hour drive with his wife and children, to be met by a constituent insistent on discussing planning as he – with kids screaming – unloaded the car.
“There’s always that thing where you’re never quite off duty,” he says. “I make a regular joke about trying to make myself as un-divorcable as possible.”
“We’re here to do a job of service, we’re really keen on it, and we’re very honoured,” adds Gardner. “I’m very, very aware of the trust people have put on me. But we’re ordinary people, and it has its ordinary challenges.”
With a new-found friendship, the teacher and pupil are already great supports to one another in Parliament. Fenton-Glynn carries Gardner’s bag for her as we walk to his office. Gardner jokes that Parliament is a “bit like Year 7”, where as a politician she trusts no-one, “apart from Josh”.
Gardner, who is neurodivergent, is “very big into safe spaces”. If she has a bad day, she knows she can come to Josh, “and it would go no further”.
“I do need a kettle, but there’s a cup of tea here any time you need,” he says, smiling.
“This is the connection we have. It’s been quite special, actually,” she says, though adds: “He still calls me ‘Miss’ just out of sheer devilment.”
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