My parents always had an open house. Anybody in the street going through difficulties – they could be grieving for a partner, or having trouble with their toddler – would come to ours for help.

I fell into politics almost by accident. It was only six weeks before the 1997 election when Ruth Kelly and Lorna Fitzsimons told me to give it a go. Suddenly I was out campaigning. I had to go out and buy a handbag.

Kicking a rugby ball in a skirt and heels isn’t easy. I once turned up at a Castleford Tigers match expecting to do a speech and they asked me to kick off! I remember being so proud of thwacking the ball down the pitch that I forgot I was supposed to run off afterwards because the game had started.

Having ME felt like a flu that wouldn’t go away. I was 24 and spent a year just watching daytime TV. You learn to manage your energy well.

When you’re young you think you can cram in everything. But when I became sick that wasn’t possible and I started to notice other people who had to move through life more slowly, too – a woman with a buggy, an old man crossing the road with a stick. It taught me to be more patient.

Politics is more like The Thick Of It than you imagine. I had to visit a teenage pregnancy centre in Doncaster once and the car wouldn’t start. The rental firm we used sent a stretch limousine for me! I was so embarrassed about turning up in it that I made the driver pull over on a dual carriageway and I walked the final bit of the journey along the hard shoulder.

You can’t disown the achievements of New Labour. We saw lives change. The wait for a hip operation came down from two years to two months. If you ignore what’s been achieved then you stop people believing in the power of politics to change things.

Tony Blair made mistakes, but I don’t accept the hatred. One of the things I’ve been doing recently is trying to stop the politics of hatred, and that includes from the Left.

When Ed [Balls, her husband] was practising piano it drove me up the wall. At one point he was doing marathon training every Saturday for four hours and playing piano first thing every morning. And I’d be running around trying to find the kids’ plimsolls while he did it.

There are Sure Start centres lying empty because of the Tories. During the 2017 election campaign I went to one in Lancashire. There were all these beautiful facilities for kids not being used. It’s incredibly frustrating.

I’d like to take the credit for Ed being on Strictly. The year before he went on I mentioned it as a throwaway comment on Woman’s Hour – “Who knows, he may end up on Strictly.” I think that planted the seed in their minds.

The Labour party are more united behind Jeremy Corbyn than people make out. After the second leadership election we all really pulled together. I think that’s why we did better than expected in the general election.

Our youngest child thought Strictly was really embarrassing. Our line was: your parents are supposed to embarrass you, it’s just that your dad is overachieving.