Maria Eagle’s new House of Commons office is appropriately located. Directly opposite lies the Ministry of Defence, the department she now shadows. “That’s the office we want,” she says, gesturing towards the neoclassical edifice.
In her first full-length interview since accepting the post, Eagle concedes that she was “a bit surprised” to receive the job. The former minister (she served for nine years in government and has been on the Labour front bench for 14) voted for Trident renewal in 2007 and remains a supporter of the UK’s nuclear weapons system, a stance antithetical to that of Jeremy Corbyn. “And that’s why I made sure I said to him, ‘Jeremy, you do realise that I believe in multilateral disarmament and that I’m pro-Trident, don’t you?’ ” Eagle tells me. “And he said ‘Yes, he did realise that’, still offered me the job, and I thought on that basis: ‘OK, he knows that, he’s not going to be surprised by my views.’ ”
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