At six foot three inches, Parmjit Dhanda is a towering presence
in his poky Westminster office. Where do you want to sit? Shall
we go for coffee? What do you want to talk about? Progress? Well, they didn’t appoint me vice chair on account of my looks,’ laughs the man whom Elle magazine once listed as one of the world’s most eligible bachelors.
One of the youngest MPs, elected to Gloucester two years ago at the age of 29, Dhanda has already begun to make
a name for himself in the Westminster village. He is now planning to assist the Progress chair, David Lammy, in taking the organisation forward.
Dhanda’s background is working class. His father, who came to Britain from Punjab in the late sixties, worked as a lorry driver, his mother a cleaner. Brought up in west London, Dhanda studied electrical engineering at Nottingham University. A Labour party member since the age of seventeen, he worked as a party organiser in Basingstoke between 1996 and 1998, served as a councillor in Hillingdon for six years from 1996 and stood unsuccessfully as a European parliamentary candidate in 1999. In the two years before becoming an MP, he put in a stint at the communications trade union Connect.
He was originally the rank outsider in the Gloucester CLP selection process and up against several well-known local party members, including the leader of the city council. Once nominated, Dhanda then had to convince a primarily white constituency, who had elected his predecessor Tess Kingham with a majority of a single vote in 1997, that a young Sikh, hailing from west London, was the one to serve them.
Yet the main problem the future MP faced was not prejudice on the streets, but in the local press. ‘Gloucester has not reached the sufficiently advanced state of consciousness to accept a foreigner as their local MP,’ went one comment piece calling on Dhanda to stand down as Labour candidate. It was an astonishing attack that belonged to bygone era.
I think it was naivety, and people not knowing better,’ Dhanda says generously. In many ways he sees his election in 2001 as testament to how much Britain has changed under New Labour. Less than a decade earlier, the Tories had fielded John Taylor, a black barrister, in nearby Cheltenham, where the furious reaction to his candidature has since become the stuff of notoriety. ‘If ever it’s been important to win a seat to demonstrate that we’re changing the country, this was it,’ he says. ‘If you can win a seat you held with an overall majority of one in 1997, with someone who isn’t white in a white constituency – it’s symbolic, it’s quite heartening to see.’
Asked about his political ambitions, Dhanda is genuinely reticent. ‘I’m very happy doing what I’m doing. If you’d have told me as recently as three or four years ago that I’d be doing what I’m doing, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.’ If many other MPs made such a statement, the show of modesty would almost certainly come across as contrived, but there is no such edge with Dhanda. When I suggest that he is one of Labour’s ‘bright young things’ he responds by saying that ‘history is littered with the entrails of the latest bright young thing.’ When he says that he loves being an MP (‘It’s a way of life’) and
is proud to represent the Labour party and Gloucester, he is the epitome of sincerity. Nevertheless, one can’t help
but think that higher office awaits him, and maybe soon.
Although Dhanda was never in any doubt as to the level of responsibility that goes with being an MP, particularly with one of the country’s largest constituencies, it was not until the September 11 attacks, three months into the job, that he fully realised how important the role actually was. ‘Local communities looked to me to articulate for them what was going on,’ the MP remembers. ‘I was taken aback – finding myself in that strange position of responsibility.’
In March, he made headlines by unexpectedly backing the rebel amendment stating that there was no moral case for war in Iraq. It was the first time Dhanda had voted against the government. ‘It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life,’ he claims. ‘That night, when it was all over, I went home and cried my eyes out, because it had been mentally and physically exhausting. It’s not something I did with any spring in my step whatsoever: I’m Labour party through and through.’
The role of Progress within the Labour party is ‘hugely important, particularly when we’re in office,’ he says. ‘It’s crucial for party members, members of parliament, the NEC, basically everybody involved in the decision-making process to be able to have their say and be able to articulate their views. It’s also important as a way of bringing people together and debating our differences as well. You can’t expect everybody to have the same views in politics – it would be a very boring world if you did.
‘Progress is not just about ideas, it’s about engagement. And some of the most important work it has done in recent years is its events: not only getting people involved from around the country, but moving location also.’
A division bell rings and our time is up. As Dhanda’s researcher leads me through the labyrinthine maze of corridors, lifts and bridges and out via Portcullis House, he tells me that theirs is probably the furthest away from the chamber of all MPs’ offices. ‘Maybe it’s a reflection of our ranking,’ he jokes. If it is, they won’t be staying there long.