A woman of influence

摘要

When I arrived to meet Milton Keynes South MP, Dr Phyllis Starkey, at her Westminster office, she had just survived an interrogation on Iranian television. But the former leader of Oxford City Council and former chair of the Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) was not being quizzed on local government. It was in her other capacity as former chair of the British-Iranian All-Party Parliamentary Group. Not many MPs can, in a moment, move from the Middle East to local government - one extreme to another - but then, Dr Starkey is no ordinary parliamentarian.