Camden council leader Georgia Gould: 'Dad gave me strong values'

When Georgia Gould applied to be leader of Camden council she was asked what equipped her for the job. “I said tenacious optimism,” she says in appropriately cheery tones. It worked. Gould, who is 31 and wears oversized gold hoop earrings and a green silk shirt, is delighted that Camden’s Labour MPs were re-elected. “When they called out Tulip Siddiq’s result I nearly fell over,” she says. The MP for Hampstead and Kilburn was predicted to lose her seat but won with an increased majority of 15,560, while Keir Starmer also upped his share of the vote.

“The country gave Theresa May a firm rebuttal,” says Gould. “In Camden there was a resounding dismissal of Tory isolationism and a vote to protect public services. Young people were let down and they came out to vote in unprecedented numbers.”

From the roof terrace of Camden’s HQ in Pancras Square, Gould’s territory stretches out in front of her. She gestures at the Google building — Gould is teaming up with the company along with Facebook and the Wellcome Trust for a project to create opportunities for young people led by the borough’s STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths) commission. In a time of cuts, Gould says, “it’s all about partnerships”. Then there’s the Eurostar terminal. “Camden is the gateway to Europe and voted remain. We want to keep the most open and strong relationship with Europe.”

Gould grew up in Camden, in “a tribal Labour household”. Her mother is Gail Rebuck, Chair of Penguin Random House UK and a Labour peer. Her father Philip Gould died in 2011 aged 61 from oesophageal cancer. He was strategy and polling adviser to the Labour Party from 1987 to 2005, and an architect of New Labour. The Blairs and Alastair Campbell’s family are friends, though Gould laughs off the “Blair’s babies” label.

Rebuck has “mellowed to the whole idea of me going into politics. I think she wanted me to be a doctor. She’d like me to take more time off.” Gould and her father discussed politics “a lot”. “We fought a lot, agreed a lot. He gave me a strong set of values.”

“My dad’s favourite quote was by Leonard Cohen: ‘There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in’. I love it because it’s about accepting the world in all its broken mess but also seeing the beauty of it. He used to say ‘have faith and try to change the world’, always thinking there was another way to solve things and to never give up.”

The first election she can recall is 1992. She was five. “My dad locked himself in a room and didn’t come out. His dad passed away around the same time, it was a horrible time.” Then came 1997, with “huge optimism”. She and her sister [Grace, 27] were at Downing Street when Blair moved in, “waving flags and wearing Things Can Only Get Better T-shirts. I’ve always been keen,” she laughs.

“I don’t know what my dad would have made of today’s politics,” she continues. “But I know that I am day in day out talking to old people, young people, tenants, businesses about the challenges we face so I have to try and think about how we bring the future together here.”

The Grenfell fire has highlighted the importance of councils’ housing policies. In the immediate aftermath, Camden initiated extra tower-block inspections and an independent safety review. Today it was found that the cladding on the Chalcots Estate, while very different to that on Grenfell, including fire-resistant rock wool insulation designed to prevent the spread of fire and fire-resistant sealant between floors, was not to the standard commissioned. They are taking legal advice and are preparing to remove the external cladding. Gould said: “We weren’t prepared to take anything for granted and were first in the queue to test the cladding. It’s vital for all of London’s residents who live in high-rise buildings that we learn from investigations. We are determined to ensure our housing is not only safe, but of high quality.”

Gould backed Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper in the leadership contest over Jeremy Corbyn. She admits he “ran a great general election campaign which connected with people who had never engaged politically” and won’t be drawn on fractures in Labour. “It is about more than any individual, it’s about wanting a progressive country.”

There were times when she was “disappointed” by Labour, notably when an anti-Semitic strand came to the fore last year. Gould is Jewish and her grandparents were upset. “People of their generation shouldn’t have to hear that. Labour has to stand up against all racism. Tulip and Keir have taken a firm stance, as has Sadiq Khan.”

What’s the appeal of Momentum? There’s a pause. “When talking to young people, there’s a sense of being part of something. They have good use of tech and a strong sense of tackling some of the problems we face.”

The hardest moment of the election was not discussing policy: “When I was canvassing, a man answered the door with a snake. I did a runner and potentially lost that vote. I’ve had older men who forget to come out fully clothed.”

Gould’s work is influenced by a book she wrote in 2015, Wasted: How Misunderstanding Young Britain Threatens Our Future. The idea came from her school days. “Camden is the most mixed community in the country. I went to Camden School for Girls, one of the best comprehensives in the country but too often it was only the girls with parents who went to university that went on to higher education. I wanted to do something about it.”

The young people she spoke to for her book “didn’t see politics tribally but they were engaged — that gives me hope”. She is younger than most councillors. “Their average age is 60 and the majority are men. We need to bring a wider group of people into politics. Sometimes it’s an issue for me. People say ‘what do you know, you’re a young woman?’ But my school taught me a feminist ethos where you don’t let it put you off.”

She has seen the legacy of cuts to services. “In Camden the people who end up offending were ones who experienced trauma. A police officer told me he stopped a boy carrying a knife and a few days later met the same boy on a domestic violence call-out. Glass was everywhere, things were being thrown and the boy was hiding under the table seeing the police as there to save him.”

Could Tony Blair make a comeback? Gould worked for his Faith Foundation before becoming a councillor. “I don’t think so. He has a lot of other positive work to be getting on with.”

Most evenings Gould goes to events in the borough. “I work too much. I’ve developed the concept of a meeting crawl where you go to three in a row.” Her friends join her campaigning, “it’s the only way they will see me. I’m silent on our WhatsApp group — recently they forgot I was there and started discussing when they’d last seen me.”

She lives in the borough, in a flat that she apologetically owns, “I’m incredibly lucky”, and shares with a friend from Oxford University. Being a councillor is “terrible for your dating life” and she is currently single.

But she does makes time to go to watch QPR — her father used to take her, “that was the start of my mother’s despair at my life’s choices” — and to see her grandparents every week, who always have a bagel and ginger beer for her.

Her favourite places in London are ones associated with her father. “When I want time to think I go to the secret rose garden in Regent’s Park. I used to go with my dad, he has a bench there. He is buried at Highgate cemetery so I often walk around Hampstead Heath and visit him there. When my dad knew he was terminally ill we picked it together. I remember him walking around the cemetery saying ‘I want my grave to be massive, I want you to see it when you walk in’. He designed it and we got our thumb prints on his memorial so he feels very present there for me.”

“He had this amazing, open approach to dying. He talked about being in the death zone and it being some of the best moments of his life. He felt things more poignantly than any other moment, the tenor of relationships was stronger.”

For Gould, “there’s nowhere more exciting to be than local government”. She cites the borough motto, “not for oneself but for all”, written on the side of the building and says she has always been straight laced: “My biggest rebellion is keeping Labour values alive in Conservative times.”

Follow Susannah Butter on Twitter: @susannahbutter