Angela Pober: ‘There are very few MPs that have my background’

Cllr Angela Pober’s title in her working life is “transformation director”.

The 49-year-old’s CV offers a broad spread of commercial experience, from management of 26 Walkers crisps factories worldwide (she says she can make “the best fried potato snack anywhere”) to a troubleshooter for struggling pubs.

She also has three degrees, including a PhD in “governance of UK pensions”.

After seeing off a sitting Liberal Democrat in West Hampstead at May’s Camden Council election, the Labour councillor now has her eye on parliament, having already attempted selection in several constituencies across the UK previously.

She is one of five candidates vying for selection as Labour parliamentary candidate for Holborn and St Pancras to replace outgoing MP Frank Dobson at a final hustings tomorrow.

“There are very few people that have the business and economic background that I have,” she says. “This is quite hard-nosed, detailed understanding of how to run things.

“If you think that is not what is needed to run a country then great, I think it is.”

Cllr Pober, who lives in Bloomsbury and runs her own business assisting not-for-profit organisations, first became active in the Labour Party a decade ago after discovering the hardships faced by Polish immigrants in her hometown of Slough.

Having fled the Communist regime, which imprisoned her father in a Siberian Gulag for a year, Cllr Pober’s parents eventually settled in the UK and ultimately Slough.

“I met a lot of people who used to come to my parents’ house who would say they were working but their employer hadn’t paid them for several months,” says Cllr Pober.

“It brought home to me that we have the levers but they are not always effective. It pushed me into politics.”