This afternoon, Jo Swinson will be speaking at the “Aye Write” book festival in Glasgow.

Ahead of that, she gave a long interview to the Sunday Herald. Here are some of the highlights:

She talked about how the author of the book she had requested as a prize at school had got in touch with her:

When Jo Swinson was a teenager, studying at Douglas Academy in Milngavie, she was awarded the Senior Dux prize for achievement, and was given a trophy plus a book of her choice. What she opted for, as she describes in her book Equal Power: And How You Can Make It Happen, was a popular title by Kate White, a journalist who would later go on to edit Cosmopolitan. It was called Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead But Gutsy Girls Do.

Swinson croons her enthusiasm when I mention the book. Recently, she tells me, she gave it a mention in a World Book Day article and as a result the author got in touch with her. “I’m just so over the moon about this,” says Swinson. “I got this email from her last week, out of the blue, saying I’m so touched that this book made such an impact. She said she’d like to meet up for a coffee. I’m so beside myself with excitement that I’ll have to try not to be a dreadful fan girl.”

She also explained why she had not gone for the Lib Dem leadership last year.

“I looked at it through the lens of every different part of my life and in none of it did it makes sense. And the bottom line is that I didn’t want to do it. It sounds very simple but I’ve learned to trust my gut instinct. Doing something like that because other people want you to is not right. The level of responsibility for leading a political party is absolutely massive.”

That said, she says, she does not rule it out for the future. “I’m 38 years old. I genuinely don’t feel like I’m in any rush. I’m still one of the younger MPs in parliament. And you know there’s plenty on my plate, working as deputy leader with Vince Cable. He’s a great man to work with and I’m very involved in the decision making about the future strategy.”

In an increasingly polarised world, Jo talked about the need to create empathy and humility in order to the equally shared power she describes in her book:

I think there’s a level of humility that we need with regard to all these issues. I think on both sides of these movements we need people who have got privilege to be prepared to listen and to try to understand when they are getting it wrong.”

This means for her that we have to acknowledge that there are things we don’t appreciate enough about other people’s experiences. “I think that is sometimes difficult in our very divided social media age. It’s that basic issue of listening to other people’s experiences, recognising that people are individuals. I’m not going to suggest for a minute that I understand trans people as fully as I would like to. But I can get that there’s stuff that I don’t ‘get’.”

You can read the whole interview here and buy Jo’s book, Equal Power and how you can make it happen, here.

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