The New Tory MP Who Nearly Didn't Vote In The Leadership Contest
8 min read
The new youngest Conservative MP, Shivani Raja, talks to Harriet Symonds about her unlikely journey to Parliament, why she almost didn’t vote in the leadership election, and her crush on David Cameron. Photography by Elio Zhang
Shivani Raja, an enigma to many of her new colleagues, has found a somewhat surprising mentor in 71-year-old Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.
“Every time I see him, he has the nicest smile, and it just makes me warm,” says the Conservative Party’s youngest MP.
Her mentor has sat in Parliament for the past three decades while Raja, 30, confesses she doesn’t dwell much on the past, especially when it comes to the last government. “There’s too much of the past to hash out. A lot has happened in our 14 years, so I haven’t attempted to dig that up.”
“Fourteen years ago, I was 16 years old, so I’m not really keen on discussing too much of what’s happened because I was just a teenager for half of that,” she adds.
I never really related to politicians. I just thought they were from another planet
She only joined the party in July last year: “My husband wanted to drag me to conference, but you have to be a member to go.”
Standing for Parliament first came up one evening in March, when Raja and her husband were returning home from an event. “I said I should apply, as a joke, and he didn’t laugh back. He said, ‘If you want to do it, I’ll fully support you, but it’s a lifelong commitment’.”
“I took the weekend to think about it and thought, do you know what? I have nothing to lose,” she recalls.
But knowing no one in the party, let alone any politicians in Westminster, she admits: “I never really related to politicians. I just thought they were from another planet.
“I’m such an introvert and I’m quite timid and shy, so I’m going through a big personal development journey, as well as a professional journey and a political journey all at the same time, and that is sometimes quite taxing.”
In what was considered a ‘no hope’ seat, there was “no support” from CCHQ. But Raja snuck through to victory with the help of a split vote between Claudia Webbe and Keith Vaz – both former Labour MPs standing as independents – alongside Labour’s endorsed candidate. “I always knew we could win, and that’s why I did it,” Raja says.
Leicester East is now blue for the first time in nearly four decades. “There was always this very cosy relationship with not a lot of transparency.”
“I grew up in Vaz-land,” she jokes about her constituency’s disgraced former MP. “So it was completely different to the rest of the country. I never really quite understood what an MP does.”
Since becoming an MP herself, Raja has been thrust headfirst into a crucial leadership election for her party. “For me, the most important thing over the next five years is that we inspire a whole new generation of people.” Raja backed James Cleverly early on, but he narrowly missed out on reaching the final two.
Now undecided between the final two contenders, Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, she says: “Part of me was thinking of abstaining, but this is a democratic right. I am going to not waste my vote.”
She describes herself as a “compassionate Conservative” and voted for Remain in the Brexit referendum. “I was at university at the time and went on a few Erasmus programmes. I saw this incredible opportunity and thought surely everyone deserves this so voted Remain based on that.”
“I didn’t want students to miss out and not be able to travel flexibly, or as much as they could, around Europe,” she says, adding: “I would like to see Erasmus return.”
On leaving the ECHR she is less certain. “I don’t know. Do I think we need to make a decision right now? No. But is it something that we should be discussing and exploring? Yes, why not?
“Realistically, it’s not going to happen, right, but it will be good to start talking about it a little bit more, especially for me, because I don’t understand that much about the ECHR.”
To help figure out her political leanings, who would she pick between Margaret Thatcher or David Cameron? “David Cameron,” she says without missing a beat.
“My family had always voted Labour. I’m a daughter of immigrants, so when they came into the country Labour was the working man’s party.”
It was David Cameron that convinced her father to switch to Conservative from Labour. Raja joined him, casting her first-ever vote in a general election. “I don’t know if it was because I had a little crush on him,” she admits.
“He’s very charming, isn’t he? Every time I see him I get fangirl moments, he’s just so charismatic and so charming.”
I think the party has maybe neglected [young people] a little bit
Attending Leicester’s De Montfort University, Raja graduated with a degree in pharmaceutical science, going on to develop make-up products for global brands including Boots, Superdrug and the Body Shop. “It was every girl’s dream,” she says.
At 22, Raja took part in the Miss India-UK beauty pageant but insists she “never wanted to be a beauty queen”.
“It’s so embarrassing,” she confesses. “You know that saying, that when something is on the internet it never gets deleted? It’s so true.” She reached the semi-finals before pulling out to go travelling in Cuba to learn Spanish and salsa dancing.
In 2021 she met her husband Utkarsh at the Navratri Hindu festival in Leicester. “My drape on my Indian sari got stuck on his shirt,” she says, recalling the moment they first met. “It was a real movie moment. Three months later we got engaged and then a year later got married.”
After they married, she decided to leave the pharmaceutical cosmetics industry and join his family business in property construction and hospitality. “Growing up, my parents were also in the property industry, so I had a vague idea about it and watched countless episodes of Homes Under the Hammer so I thought I was well-fitted for it.”
Since being elected to Parliament, her husband has been a constant support, and the pair are often seen together on the estate. “He’s really brave. I’ve got to give it to him, I don’t think he’s being totally honest about how hard he’s finding it. He always has a smile on his face and will always say yes to anything and everything I need from him.”
“We’re both trying to figure it out, because we’ve only been married a year and a half, so none of us could have predicted we’d be in a long-distance relationship after marriage,” she adds.
At 30 Raja is much younger than the average Conservative Party member – 63 years old – but says this is one of the reasons that first motivated her to get involved with politics. “My friends and I are all in our 30s, running successful businesses, all highly intelligent people. If this group is feeling so disconnected from politics, then what does that tell you about the rest of the younger population in this country?
“The decisions and the debates and the deliberations which are had in the chamber are going to affect my generation the most, right? We should be the ones that are most involved in the discussions.”
At the last election the Conservative Party was criticised for failing to offer anything to young people. “When I speak to some of my other colleagues about young people, they’re talking about people in their 40s and I’m saying, ‘No, I’m talking about the 18-year-olds, the 16-year-olds, the 20-year-olds. I think the party has maybe neglected them a little bit,” she admits.
Raja hopes that young people will be inspired to get involved with politics after seeing her do it. “I’ve had so many young people come up to me saying they’ve taken an interest in politics and that they would like to become members of the Conservative Party. It’s really, really great.”
There should be more political education in schools too, she says. “There needs to be more education to make people understand capitalism, socialism, communism, all of these different ways of governance in an apolitical way.”
With the Budget fast approaching, small businesses face uncertainty about what lies ahead. “Business owners are truly bracing themselves for the Budget,” says Raja.
“Labour is trying to protect workers’ rights, but at the same time crippling the very businesses that are employing them. It just feels like a very disjointed policy. That’s not even mentioning that it was one of their manifesto pledges they will probably break.”
As a small business owner herself, Raja says she is acutely aware of the consequences that policies like a National Insurance hike will mean for workers: “If I was an employer, the money that I’d have to pay on National Insurance would be taken out of someone’s pay rise just to make ends meet.”
“It’s all of the people that are the backbone of our community and our economy, and putting taxes on them is just going to stifle the economy, not boost it,” she explains.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have issued several warnings that the budget will be “painful” to cover the £22bn black hole left by the last government. “Why would anybody want to invest in the UK when all they’re hearing about is discredited and fabricated fiscal black holes? You’re not creating a pro-business environment or enticing investors.”
Will it be worse than Liz Truss’s car crash mini-budget? “I don’t know because I wasn’t really following Liz’s budget, to be honest.”
Though she may not have taken note of the fallout then, as an MP she will be laser focused on “growing the economy by boosting businesses, creating more jobs, and empowering local business owners”.
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