When the Labour MP for North West Durham said she did not want to ‘hang out’ with Tory women, there was an outcry

Few MPs have made as much of an impression in their inaugural months in parliament with one offhand remark as Labour’s Laura Pidcock, when she said she did not intend to “hang out” with Tory women.

The comment prompted dozens of opinion pieces and interventions on the floor of the House of Commons, far beyond what Pidcock, the MP for North West Durham, expected.

Many said she did not understand the way Westminster works to get things done. That, Pidcock said, is precisely what she wants to challenge. “I think the thing about friendships is about trying to control me, to put me in line, to tell me ‘Listen you, that’s how this place works, don’t you think you can be different.’”

“It’s painted me as if I’m deeply ideological – and no one else is? There are some of the most ideological people in the government, in the cabinet,” she said.

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“But they are the norm, they are the status quo? And I’m somehow militant and weird and awful? Their ideology is as pronounced as mine. It’s actually nothing to do with me, it’s about socialism, being working class, being a woman.”

For Pidcock, 30, the personal has always been political. She was raised by working-class parents who campaigned in anti-apartheid movements and debated Thatcherism over the dinner table. “I wasn’t conscious as a child that it was a political upbringing. I was brought up to see things through a class-based lens,” she said.

Among her classmates, however, Pidcock said she was privileged. “I had parents who would sit and read with us, or help us with our homework. Friends would be struggling though because their parents were doing night shifts.”

There is a key ideological difference here, she said, between those who recognise the privileges in their upbringing, however incremental, and those who believe achievement is down to individuals. Mostly, that split is along party lines.

“Quite often, people want to attribute their success to their endeavours. And any criticism, any pointing out of people’s background, means that you are saying you don’t deserve it,” she said. “That’s not the case. I’m sure there are loads of Tory MPs who have worked very hard to get here, but their journey was less interrupted.”

One of the things that weighs heavily on her mind as a new MP is the perception of politicians and how her behaviour within Westminster might look to her constituents.

“It’s massive for me, trying to counter that image,” she said. “When people are like ‘There aren’t many people in the chamber’, to be fair, it’s because they don’t know what goes on outside, the select committee, the preparation.”

On her Twitter and Facebook accounts, she posts regular detailed explanations of her votes and speeches, directly addressing her constituents. “I never want to be tokenistic. But if I pick up that there’s something people aren’t understanding, it’s not their fault,” she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pidcock: ‘I sit on a select committee with Tories. I’m very friendly with Conservatives because they are humans.’ Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

The outward perception of politicians, she said, is the key motivator to whether she drinks in subsidised bars with Conservative MPs. “My constituents, who are really suffering at the moment, on low pay, locked out [of] the housing market, on universal credit, if they find out I’m pallying [sic] up to all the people creating that, who’s representing them? What do they think about me and how they can trust me within this system?”

However, Pidcock said she was taken aback at how her comments were interpreted as deliberate rudeness. “It is ridiculous they think they are making any attempt to be friends with me either,” she said. “I am very friendly, I sit on a justice select committee with Tories, I ask them to sign letters, EDMs [early day motions]; I’m very friendly with Conservatives because they are humans.”

Universal credit, which rolls out in Pidcock’s constituency this month, has dominated her first term in parliament. It is an issue many Conservatives have also expressed growing concern about, including the six-week wait for funds for new claimants. After considerable lobbying by a group of Tory MPs, the wait was reduced in the November budget to five weeks and advance payments were made more readily available.

Pidcock said, however, that she found it hard to give Conservative MPs much credit for the changes, especially given their abstentions in Labour-led debates highlighting problems with universal credit. “Those Tories have not voted on it, they have not put their money where their mouth is. That’s a difficult thing to swallow,” she said.

“But who am I? I’ve not been put in a position where I feel morally torn between the party whip and my own morals. I’m sure that will come at some point, but I don’t know what that feels like. But I find it hard to imagine, if you morally object to something, you don’t follow it through with a vote.”

More than two-thirds of her time, Pidcock said, is acting almost as an emergency service for constituents receiving benefits, supporting up to 100 people at a time. The heavy workload has risen with what she called “the collapse of all other advice and support agencies, the stress, the strain, the overloading” of services.

“I’m going to be really honest with you, right, I find it difficult just seeing the MP’s office as a charitable service,” she said. “I’m a politician. I was elected on a set of principles. I want structural change, I don’t want piecemeal change.

“It is a really important political point that the role of an MP’s office has fundamentally changed in the past 20 to 30 years. I can’t really imagine someone like Winston Churchill or his staff supporting people like this. I know the system was completely different then, but now it’s literally asking people, have you got food, have you got electricity, can you live through this week? We’ve got to physically help people.

“For fundamental change, we need a different government. In the short term, we’ll get that person an energy voucher.”