Ex-MP Therese Coffey on losing Suffolk seat and mother's death
Baroness Coffey has spoken of the trauma of losing her Commons seat in July's general election and just hours later finding out her mother had only a month to live. The former Conservative MP for Suffolk Coastal had held her seat since 2010 and lost it to Labour's Jenny Riddell-Carpenter in the 2024 vote that saw her party lose power.Coffey said after some "time out" she was now ready to apply her "political antennae" to her new role in the House of Lords. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch put Coffey forward for a life peerage at the end of last year and she took her seat in the Lords in January.
The baroness says Suffolk feel like "home" and that some people were "surprised" when she decided to stay in the county after losing her seat and then her mother. "My mother got ill during the election campaign and went into hospital. I visited every day... and then, when I went to tell her I had lost, within an hour we had the diagnosis that she would pass away within a month. So it was quite a traumatic time in that regard," she said. She added not being an MP anymore meant she was able to spend those last few weeks with her mother, which was a "privilege".
Applying 'peer pressure'
There has had to be adjustments for her in her new role in Parliament's upper house."I would say about 90% of the time is spent scrutinising legislation and it is much harder to scrutinise the government. So I have had come to that understanding," she said. Baroness Coffey also wants to use her position to deal with some "unfinished business" from her time as an MP in Suffolk.She said she was considering tabling an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill due before the Lords shortly and was looking forward to using some of her experiences in Suffolk and as a minister in order to apply some of what she punningly calls "peer pressure".She said wanted to prevent buildings designated as community assets being demolished, and cited the loss of the sports hall and Angel Theatre in Rendlesham as motivations.
Therese Coffey spent nine years as a minister, starting in the Whips' Office in 2014 , holding a number of cabinet roles and also a short, and not uncontroversial spell, as deputy prime minister to Liz Truss.On being a minster, she said: "That is just constant pressure, which varies. I spent three years at Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) initially before going off to join the cabinet and running Work and Pensions during Covid. "So I think it's fair to say it is relentless and... I got ill several years ago. I was just run down. Because it was never ending."Baroness Coffey had a serious brain infection which put her in hospital.In November 2023, she resigned from the government front bench.
'It is why I wear a scarf'
During her time in government, as well as attracting political criticism, Coffey has also been portrayed in the media as someone who likes a few drinks and having a good time. A picture of her taken at a party smoking a cigar with a drink stain down the front of her top, looking intoxicated, is regularly republished. She said: "It was taken a Spectator summer party on a particularly hot day and I just knew then it was a bad photo. Funnily enough a lot of the national journalists seemed to think it was great and showed I was 'down'. "I knew it was a disaster. But I cannot do anything about it, so I don't worry about it. "It's the reason I started wearing scarves. To try and make sure that any future spills, as it were, which do happen from time to time to everybody, do not show. "
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