Unlikely political friendships through the years

Cross-party friendships are a common, but rarely publicised, phenomenon

Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness
Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and the DUP’s Ian Paisley formed an unlikely political friendship after the two parties came to a power-sharing agreement in 2007
(Image credit: Paul Faith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A former Conservative minister threw her support behind Labour leader Keir Starmer this week after quitting her own party and branding it ridden with “ideology and self-obsession”.

Claire Perry O’Neill, who was a Tory MP from 2010 to 2019 and served as a member of Theresa May’s cabinet as well as briefly under Boris Johnson, said in an article for The Times that she had quit the Conservative Party earlier this month, before lavishing praise on the Labour leader.

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 Sorcha Bradley is a writer at The Week and a regular on “The Week Unwrapped” podcast. She worked at The Week magazine for a year and a half before taking up her current role with the digital team, where she mostly covers UK current affairs and politics. Before joining The Week, Sorcha worked at slow-news start-up Tortoise Media. She has also written for Sky News, The Sunday Times, the London Evening Standard and Grazia magazine, among other publications. She has a master’s in newspaper journalism from City, University of London, where she specialised in political journalism.