The Game Changers

Tracey Crouch: Breaking Barriers in Sport and Politics

• Sue Anstiss • Season 19 • Episode 1

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"Women’s sport has come so far, but there’s still a long way to go in terms of investment and opportunity."

In this fascinating episode of The Game Changers, host Sue Anstiss sits down with Dame Tracey Crouch, an influential figure in both sports and politics. 

Tracey shares her personal journey from growing up as a passionate sports enthusiast to serving as the UK's Minister for Sport. Her political career was defined by her commitment to grassroots sport, governance reform and championing women’s participation in sport.

Tracey also opens up about her decision to step away from politics, her ongoing work in the private sector, and how her personal battle with breast cancer re-shaped her outlook on life and leadership. 

Throughout the conversation, Tracey provides unique insights into the intersection of sports and policy, the challenges facing women’s sport and the steps needed to create systemic change in the industry.

 

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Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.

Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers

Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media

A Fearless Women production

Sue Anstiss:

Hello and welcome to the Game Changers. I'm Sue Anstis, and this is the podcast where you'll hear from trailblazing women in sport who are knocking down barriers and challenging the status quo for women and girls everywhere. What can we learn from their journeys as we explore key issues around equality in sport and beyond? I'd like to start with a big thank you to our partners, sport England, who support the Game Changers through a National Lottery Award. My guest today is Dame Tracey Crouch. Tracey was elected as the Conservative MP for Chatham and Aylesford in 2010, before being appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Sport, tourism and Heritage in 2015, and then Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Sport, tourism and Heritage in 2015, and then Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Sport and Civil Society from 2017 to 2018.

Sue Anstiss:

Tracey's made headlines a number of times in her career. She was the first serving Conservative MP to take maternity leave and also talked very openly about her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment during the Covid pandemic. In 2018, tracey resigned from her role as sports minister over delays in the crackdown on maximum stakes for fixed odds betting machines, saying the delay was unjustifiable and could cost lives. Politicians come and go, but principals stay with us forever, she said at the time. Principles stay with us forever, she said at the time.

Sue Anstiss:

In 2021, tracey was appointed to chair a review of English football in response to long-standing issues over the financial sustainability of the men's game. The main recommendation of the review was for an independent regulator for English football, which very much put Tracey back in the public eye. Tracey chose not to stand for re-election as an MP at the 2024 general election and has gone on to become Managing Director of Sport at Hanover Communications. Tracy is also a qualified FA coach and manages a youth girls football team. Tracy, I'd love to start, if I can, by understanding how sport played a part in your own life growing up.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

It's always been hugely important. I was one of those sporty kids, into everything, I did everything. I lived on an estate with boys it was just myself and my sister that were the girls on the estate. So if you didn't want to play sport, you just didn't get to play and I just carried on. Really, I could always hold my own, you know, in the uh, in the football games on the streets or the cricket games or American football. You know beer mixing, whatever it was. You know I was there and, um, yeah, just it. It forms such an important part of my youth. I didn't really have the network or the infrastructure around me as a kid to to do anything in a structured way, so I didn't start playing competitive football until I was at university and it's just stayed with me ever since.

Sue Anstiss:

And what sort of an athlete were you? Were you good?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Yeah, I was At primary school. I was a sports captain. I was house sports captain. At secondary school I went to an all-girls school. So obviously traditional sports like netball, hockey, athletics, tennis, you know not football, gymnastics, all that sort of stuff I was in school netball team. But yeah, I was okay. I played for the first team at university in football and then just kind of stopped really playing properly. And then that's when I started coaching the girls, because I turned 30 and I felt like I was the oldest person on the pitch, um at football and I was losing. I was falling out of love with it. Really, it was just it's not fun when you're being beasted by 16 year olds. And so that's when I took my coaching badge and I coached girls 10 years. I don't coach anymore, but I did do some coaching at my son's primary school with girls for about two years, which I really enjoyed.

Sue Anstiss:

I was going to ask you about that. It's almost like banded on to all of your bio, isn't it? And she's also an FA qualifier coaching a youth team. It's like attached to you forever. I believe you're playing a bit again now. I saw that you kind of started playing. How is that going?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Yeah, it's veterans football. I'm enjoying it most of the time. It's perhaps not as casual or as recreational as I thought, it might be a bit more competitive, but yeah, I'm enjoying it. I turned out as well for the um for the seconds a couple of weeks ago in a cup game which we won. I got 45 minutes of 11 aside. The vets is seven aside, so different uh, and I was playing when I was in parliament. I was captain of the women's parliamentary football team, so that was five aside. So I feel like I've been playing all the disciplines recently so but you know it's fun really enjoying it.

Sue Anstiss:

I remember being at an event, I think at the house of commons.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

You came along in your kit, I think you'd literally come from playing a game to one of the meetings fantastic, I used to love voting in my football kit because it used to sort of kind of really, you know, raise a few eyebrows. You were probably breaking some sort of parliamentary rule, which I kind of quite liked, and certainly pushing those boundaries anyway.

Sue Anstiss:

And tell us a little bit about coaching, your experience of coaching. Obviously, we're doing a lot more in that space now to try and encourage more women to come through and coach at all levels. But what did you enjoy about it at the time?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

I coached girls and I didn't have any kind of blood relationship with the team. Quite often in youth sport, you know it is somebody's parent that is involved. So I really enjoyed just being an outsider, coming in and doing it because I wanted to do it and not because I had to do it in order for the team to exist, and I learned actually quite a lot from it. I was not just the stuff of learning how to coach girls, you know, and skills and drills and all that sort of stuff, but actually I learned how to engage with people about sport in different ways and I stayed with my team from they're effectively eight and nine when I started and all the way up to when they were 18. And I see them now on social media and their mums themselves or they are, you know, fulfilling their professional dreams.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

I actually, when I was coaching the key stage two girls at my son's school, we were in a tournament and one of the girls that was in my football team was a teacher at a school coaching girls in that tournament. They absolutely thrashed us as well, so she took great joy in that. But um, uh, but so it was really nice. It was a really nice journey and I have nothing but really fond memories, apart from perhaps the really cold fingers that I used to get putting up the nets on a winter's morning.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Um, but it was. It was nice. I yeah, it was. It was a fun time and it really added to me as a human being. You know I got so much out of it. But it also, from a political perspective, gave me a real insight into some of the challenges of grassroots football and in particular, the challenges of girls in grassroots football how they would get second dibs on pitch allocation, how the facilities weren't appropriate for girls. You know how you'd turn up on a recreational field and you'd see boys weeing in bushes. But you can't do that as an 11, 12 year old girl.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

You can, but it's not the nicest thing to do, and so you know. It really opened my eyes to a lot of the challenges, but ultimately I got a huge amount from it.

Sue Anstiss:

Yeah, it's excellent to hear, isn't it? And I think you're the first career politician I've spoken to on the podcast. So was being a politician an ambition for you from a young age? Is it something you felt you might do?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

So I always say no to that answer. And then you talk to any of my girlfriends at school and they say, yeah, no, absolutely. We all knew she was going to be an MP. But I don't really recall being one of those really nerdy kind of you know people that sat there and thought that I was going to save the world. I always felt like I was an accidental politician. I studied law at university and so, you know, genuinely thought I was going to go off and be a lawyer, but I kind of fell into politics at a level and then changed my degree halfway through to be law and politics and then just fell into parliament and then sort of kind of stayed hanging around Westminster for the rest of my life. So I didn't think I ever wanted to be a career politician, turns out that's kind of what it was, well, up until recently and is that a fairly typical route in to kind of come in and work within parliament and then people progress to becoming politicians?

Sue Anstiss:

do you think yes and no?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

to be honest with you, there's lots of different routes in. You don't have to work in Parliament to be a politician. In fact, 2010 intake, of which I was part of under David Cameron, there were lots of people who had never even set foot in Parliament before. There'll be a lot of people that are now sitting in Parliament who would never been in parliament before because of the way that they won their seats. A lot of people win their seats by accident and don't necessarily have that experience that others do, but I think it's important to have a mate's bag. I think it's important to have people who have experience of working in parliament and those that don't, and you just help each other muddle along um throughout your career, however long that is, and one of the things about politics, unless you're in a very, very safe seat, um, your, your career can be shorter than you think it's going to be absolutely that is.

Sue Anstiss:

That is always a shocking piece, isn't it, of overnight year, your job changes, as it were. You were made parliamentary under secretary for sport and tourism and heritage in 2015, so was that, at the time, a post that you very much wanted? You talked to kind of your love of sport and that side, but I guess it's a broader role than that, isn't it?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

yeah, it's um. I wouldn't have accepted any other job in government and actually even the proposal was a surprise, because I had spent my first five years in Parliament being, as I like to term it, independent, minded the whips and the prime minister might call it other things but I hadn't always supported the government as loyally as I think they might have hoped. So my appointment was unexpected and when David Cameron rang me up, I was genuinely very surprised and, in a way that I think is something that happens more with women than with men, asked him if he was sure and whether or not he actually genuinely had the confidence in me to be able to do the job, and once he told me very clearly that he thought I was going to be a round peg in a round hole, I accepted, and that was the start of my three and three and a half years, let's say, of ministerial career.

Sue Anstiss:

And at the time, as you came in, what were the biggest challenges would you say that sport was facing then in 2015? I think?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

it had lost its direction slightly. One of the first things we got started on was a sports strategy. The active lives survey had showed that there'd been a bit of a flat line in terms of participation, and so we wanted to have a look to see how we could change that, if there were any kind of ways to, to give it a bit of a kick, give it a bit of boost. But there are lots of different things that just weren't quite working. Governance was one of those aspects. So the the sports strategy brought in a new governance code which changed the way that women were represented on national governing bodies. But there are also other challenges within that, and so really the the sports strategy kind of set out the direction for me and then my successors. For some time actually it took I think it was only recently that it was updated. So it was a it was a really important piece of work to get focused on straight away.

Sue Anstiss:

And was that something when you came in? Is that something you as a new minister kind of recognized, because obviously there have been others before you and things had just continued on? Was that, is that something that you drove personally, that you felt there needed to be more of a change in strategy?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

I'd spoken about it when I was on the back benches and I'd been on the DCMS select committee where we had looked at some of these issues.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

But I also think that there was an appetite within civil service as well, and you know, I know that some of the narrative recently has been about the civil service being some sort of beast that operates behind the scenes. But sometimes if you get the right minister connecting with the right members of the civil service, you can really sort of drive significant change. And I think I just happened to be in a really lucky position where I had great civil servants who shared an appetite for doing something quite spectacular in in the field, and we did. And whether it was to do with integrity in sport, whether it was to do with participation, whether it was to do with PE, which doesn't sit within DCMS but requires really close working with DFE, whether it's to do with governance, you know some of these things are not the sexiest of issues, but they mean so much to sport and to the future of sport and so we just had that, that connection, and it just worked really well.

Sue Anstiss:

I remember, actually, the first time I heard you speak at an event when you were sports minister I think it might have been a sport recreation alliance conference at the Oval and I came home and I was absolutely raving about you because you were so incredibly authentic and I felt like you really cared and you understood sport and you weren't in the nicest possible way, you weren't just reading the notes that civil servants had given to you, which I've been lucky enough to be at lots of events and heard lots of ministers, and that is sometimes the case and it didn't feel like that. I think it's interesting. You're saying I'm almost not toeing the party line. I and was not toeing the party line. I think you might have been the first Tory MP. I came home and thought I'd really like her.

Sue Anstiss:

It was a weird experience, I should say. So I guess that's interesting, isn't it? In terms of politics, do you feel you've always been a Conservative? That was kind of where you were. Was there any chance that that might not have been the case in terms of your coming?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

into politics? No, not really because of my age and my background and everything else. So I was studying politics when John Major became prime minister and John Major was a huge inspiration to me and I'm sure you don't often hear that, because actually in conservative circles you always hear about Maggie Thatcher and everything else. But I was too young for Maggie Thatcher. She was there in my consciousness but actually I was too young to sort of kind of really understand her ideology and what that meant and everything else. But for me John Major was there. He was from a single parent family, which I was from a single parent family. He was at a grammar school. I was at a grammar school. He had ambitions to do things and very much set out his store, his ideology about meritocracy, about working hard, about opportunity, and all of that just sang to me.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

And at the time the Labour Party were in a different place. They've been led by Neil Kinnock and there was by Paddy Ashdown and it just didn't really it didn't click. Had I been five years later, that person could have been Tony Blair, and actually there isn't much difference between the two. And so you know, I sort of kind of made my connections and started working from a voluntary perspective in the grassroots of the Conservative Party, and although I'm very much in the centre of the Conservative Party and more of the left of the conservative party, and although I'm very much in the center of the conservative party and more of the left of the conservative party, it's just, you know, a bit like a football team.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

I kind of got my tribe and I stick with my tribe and and that's it, and then we're ups and downs in that, in that long-term relationship with the conservative party, but ultimately I'd never be anything else up other than that. But I'm a sort of kind of, you know, a friendly, um, not a critic. I'm a sort of kind of I can be critical of my party and yet still love it dearly, um, and you know so. But then on the issues, you know, in Westminster I always worked on cross-party issues, whether that be sport, whether that was gambling, whether that's the issue of loneliness. You know the charity sector, animal welfare, the environment. You know, I just didn't see them in this sort of kind of tribal political party aspect and as a result I've managed to maintain relationships with members from all parties throughout my career and, and even now, yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?

Sue Anstiss:

last week we were at that Sky Sports salon event and you were in the room and Lisa Nandy was in the room and she gave a bit of a talk with a microphone. I thought I mean it could have been. You've said the things that she was saying were all the things that you could have said had that, had the microphone come. So it's interesting, isn't it? It doesn't need to be polarised one against another. We can all be working in the same direction, as you say, in a cross-party fashion.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Sport is one of those briefs where there's very little politics, parliamentary politics in sport. I've always there's more politics in sport than there is in Westminster. I've always there's more politics in sport than there is in Westminster. And actually, you know, lisa spoke really well last week and you know I texted her afterwards to say that I thought she was absolutely spot on and actually I thought so. She came across as very authentic, she didn't make it political, she didn't need to. You know, gave me some heart. That women's and girls' sport may somewhere be on the agenda. We haven't seen it yet, but maybe it will be there and I think that's an important thing for her and for Stephanie Peacock, her sports minister, to reflect on as they go forward.

Sue Anstiss:

And I was going to ask you and clearly you did some amazing things in your role as minister. But I've been in sport for over 30 years and I do get frustrated that repeatedly I almost don't see governments using sport and physical activity as a tool perhaps to tackle some of those wider societal issues around poverty, inequality, mental health touching on it, and I know it's hard, it's a huge beast to kind of turn around, isn't it? But but why do you think that is? And I guess, guess what would you like to see change there if it could?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

So I would say that they do, but they don't do it enough and they certainly don't PR it. So I can't tell you how many cross-government committees I've sat on where I don't know. A minister from the Home Office or the minister from Justice has turned around and said Tracy, we need more sport money for this. And you sit there and say, well, actually, minister, minister, you are already getting that. You're already paying for whoever to go into your prisons and to support them, using sport to help with rehabilitation or reintegration, or the home office. You know, your police and crime commissioners are engaged with sporting organizations to tackle gang crime or theft or things like that. In the health department, they have a huge physical health budget, of which you would see some of it in terms of rehab or prehab. So it is being used. It's just not done in a connected way and perhaps it's not being well thought through from a strategy perspective and it's certainly not PR'd enough. I would say that there's definitely things happening that we just don't know about, but we should know about. There is definitely room for massive improvement.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

My proposal to the Boris Johnson government, which was light but never activated, was that I think that we need a restructured Whitehall. We need a department for wellbeing, and the department for wellbeing basically brings together all the bits of other departments that do some kind of physical activity. Really focus on that, because at the moment they're often not the priority issues. So if you take, for example, environment DEFRA, they have all the access to nature, canals and waterways. They all sit in there. They don't put a real focus on that.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

School sports sits within DfE. Dfe is all about national curriculum and standards. They don't necessarily do much on school sport. So it's like how can you bring all those bits that are in other departments together under one roof? And I always said that if I ran my fantasy department, the primary mission would be to reduce the department of health's budget, because actually this would all be about prevention as well. So you improve people's well-being, you reduce their chances of of going into hospital or reduce their diseases and everything else, so actually you end up reducing the the budget department health sadly never happened no, and and it has.

Sue Anstiss:

It's interesting, isn't it? Because I've talked to sue campbell, to tanny, so, and others have said this historically, in terms of active transportation and all those different departments, how do you get them all to so? So why is that never? Why has that never been a priority? Why is that not? Is it too complicated, is it I?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

think there's an element of complicated. I think also some people would just they people always worry about what the daily mail is going to say about it and that it would be some kind of you know, people would take the mickey and mock it. And you know, sadly, I think there is an element of truth in that. But if you look at other countries around the world, you know they have very similar departments. The UAE, for example, you know, has a well-being department. I remember, as loneliness minister, I met the minister for happiness. You know it's just like, oh, I want to be the minister for happiness and, by the way, the number one way to do that is to get people more physically moving.

Sue Anstiss:

Um, but I I think there is a complex sort of kind of aspect to it and you and I have obviously crossed paths a lot too in the space of women's sport. So how are you feeling now about the place where professional women's sport is in terms of funding and equality? That's a big question, but yeah.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

How long have we got to answer? Uh, no, um. So I think we have come on leaps and bounds, right. I mean, let's be clear the last two decades we've seen transformation of women's sport into something that isn't just being talked about and it is happening. Do we have much further to go? Absolutely of course we do. But I do think that we should pause and reflect on how far we've come and we can celebrate where we've got to without sort of kind of taking our eye off the ball as to where we've got to still go.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

And I think we sometimes we're so busy trying to get to where we're going that we haven't kind of recognized the journey we've been on. And it has been challenging. You know, and I love the fact that we we still celebrate pioneers of sports that you know, without them we wouldn't have, for example, today's lionesses. And we've got some really exciting things coming up in the calendar this year for women's sport and I just hope that yet again it it gives us another opportunity, just give it that true nudge along a little bit further, whatever those challenges might be and there are still enormous challenges the commercial aspect of it is a huge challenge and sometimes it's really easy to jump up and down and be cross with people for not investing, but what are they investing in? And why should they be investing in something that isn't yet making them wealthier? You know, let's be clear, lots of people don't invest for charitable reasons. What is the purpose of it? And so I think that there is still a lot to do.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

I don't know how we fill all those gaps. I don't know how we answer all those problems or challenges. I don't know what more we can do to get people, to get girls active. I don't know how we stress yet again to secondary schools, for example, that they have to offer a diversity of the PE curriculum to get girls moving. I don't know how we continue to overcome challenges around facilities. I don't know how we make it clear that it's okay for a girl to be in a sport, and we see it all the time. I was reading a story over the weekend about two young girls who've been criticized for looking like boys because they play football. It's like how do we overcome these challenges and these barriers and I just don't know. I don't know the answer to it all, and I wish I did. I wish I had sort of kind of time to sit down and think about them all. But then you know it's hard, it's really hard.

Sue Anstiss:

And obviously you are a massive football fan. You've done a lot within the world of football. Do you ever get concerned that, with the ongoing growth and the investment and profile in women's football, that other women's sports, that wider women's sport, might be missing out at all?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

No and yes if that makes sense, because ultimately, at the end of the day, you know football as a sport, men or women, just football as a sport is huge, arguably the biggest sport in the world, and therefore it is as a consequence of it being a hugely popular sport that women's sport is going to grow on a trajectory that is different to other sports. How do other sports find their voice, their space in that world is really difficult, but that's the same for sport, regardless of whether it's in male or female. And you know, I find it very interesting when you see surveys around Gen Z and what they're watching and how they're engaging the sport and how they're getting into sport. It's like, how do we make sure we're getting the next generation into all sorts of sports? And I love football, don't get me wrong. I mean, I thoroughly enjoy watching the sport, even though I'm a Spurs season ticket holder and it's not the nicest thing to be watching at the moment. But I love watching the sport. But I also love watching other sports.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

I also recognize that football is not everybody's sport, but what we have to do is we have to give people the ability to see a whole variety of sports and and enjoy them for what they are and not try and just constantly round football down people's throats.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

And that's why our media landscape is so important. That's why, when I was minister, I was talking to those in charge of what was a far more traditional media um platform sort of back then only 2015, so you know, a decade ago, still much more traditional. Getting women's rugby results into the back pages was a. That was one of my pet missions. You know I was sitting there saying I can read right down to grassroots level in men's rugby, but I can't see what Bristol or Harlequins or whoever was doing in the women's rugby, and actually that became a bit of a mission for me. So I just think we just need to carry on the conversation about it. But I don't worry about women's football crowding out other women's sport, because it's just how do you get other sport in a very crowded football space?

Sue Anstiss:

yeah, it's more of a football conversation, isn't it as well too? Um, I was going to go back to when you were a minister. You were the first conservative minister to take maternity leave and I know at the time you said it wasn't really a big deal because other mps had had maternity leave and obviously thousands of professional women take maternity leave all the time. But how important was it for you that you were so public about that maternity leave discussion and, and I guess also, how did you find that balance of being a young mother and being a politician?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

God wasn't that young Sue. I was 40 when I had Freddie, A new mother. A new mother, yeah, I said you know what I was. I was always really desperately keen to just take it all in my stride and not really see myself as anything special, because I never quite understood the fascination as to why MPs going on maternity leave was such a big deal when there are people taking maternity leave from really challenging jobs all the time. And also my income was secure, and that isn't the case for every woman taking maternity leave. So I always found it slightly bizarre this fascination by it all and I just got on in the same way that everybody else does.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

In terms of maternity leave, I had a fantastic ministerial team. I had cover for three months anyway from another MP, but I had a great private office who would sneak questions to me on WhatsApp if they knew that I'd want to be involved. And yeah, I took my three months and I was back in time for the Rio Olympics. So it was fine. Everything just worked perfectly.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

But it doesn't stop, you know, as your kids grow up, you know other things pop up. I mean, while we've been on this call, you know recording this podcast, Freddie's dentist has rang me three times. So you know it just doesn't stop. Do you need to take it? No, no, no, it's fine, they're calling me back anyway, but it's, you know, you're just a working mother. I'm really lucky to have a husband who's very supportive, who has always enjoyed being pretty much the primary carer Monday to Thursday. I get home and rewrite all the rules on a Thursday and we still do that. You know, when I gave up working in Parliament, everyone would say, well, you must be looking forward to having Tracy home at you know more? And he was like I hope not, Don't feel well what the consequence of that would be. So yes, it is what it is and I just muddle on like every other woman.

Sue Anstiss:

And Sally, you were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 and shared much of that journey very openly. So I guess, firstly, how are things today for you?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

As far as I know, all well. So you never know what's going on underneath, but look after myself and just hope it just carries on, you know not being there?

Sue Anstiss:

Yeah, and how was it for you having something so personal for you and the family to to be made so public? And I know I've I've kind of looked back and seen some of the interviews that you gave at time, and obviously it was during Covid as well too. Wasn't it so a time when people were very concerned about going to the doctors etc? But were you pleased to be able to use it in that way, so publicly, to help others?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I was using my local NHS hospital. So part of my reason for going public was that I'd been spotted in oncology a couple of times and, unfortunately, the way of the world as a politician is that someone would buy that information and pay someone a lot of money for that. So I thought actually it was better for me to own the narrative, to own the story, which is why we decided to go public.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

But as a consequence of that, I know that other people went and got checked and I know that other people found lumps and, as it happened, I also became a bit of a chemo buddy to people.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Actually, a guy who was going through breast cancer saw me on BBC Southeast doing an interview completely bored from my chemo, and he too was on exactly the same cycle as I was in his chemotherapy, albeit at a different hospital.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

So we ended up becoming quite good buddies and other people got in touch with me afterwards to say they'd just been diagnosed and and I didn't mind and, and you know being able to give people some, you know, share parts of my journey, because everybody's journey is different, but share my experience and how I got through it, some things that happened some things that didn't happen and yeah, it's been. It's been interesting, I found, when I was in Westminster quite often people would from the breast cancer world, would want to talk to me a lot and I found on a couple occasions that was quite triggering. So I did have to have honest conversations with myself about how involved I wanted to be in some of the issues and step back on a couple of occasions. But I think if you know yourself well and you won't know the sort of things that drive anxieties and, in particular, health anxieties, you can do that. You can kind of dip in and dip back out again, and that's what I continue to do and after 14 years.

Sue Anstiss:

You stood down as an MP in the general election in 2024, saying it was entirely for personal and positive reasons. So was it a very difficult decision to make at the time? No, I love it.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

No, not really. I'm sort of one of those people that once I've made a decision, I'm very much at peace with that, in the same way that when I decided to leave government, I never regretted it at all because I made the decision. Made the decision, I genuinely had felt like I'd had a wonderful 14 and a half years in parliament, that I'd achieved a lot. I achieved almost not everything, but almost everything that I'd wanted to. To that point in time, I found my breast cancer journey a really enlightening experience, along with climbing Kilimanjaro. Actually, I think the one thing I'd say to anyone who is thinking about climbing Kilimanjaro it will change your life and it will change your outlook on life. And I did it with some uh some girlfriends another one who was who went through breast cancer at the same time as me.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

That and, and the cancer journey and my son growing up and all sorts of different things, just all culminated in a, in a decision to just go and do something else. I turned 50 in July and I'm actually not somebody who's frightened of turning 50. In fact, I'm very much looking forward to it, if only because then I go up of age grade in park run, um but um, and I'm like fully embracing it. So it was just I. I have the next parts of my professional life to to get on with. I was never going to be a politician for life did you know that?

Sue Anstiss:

did you always know that you weren't going to be well? I thought you might be PM one day. I thought you'd be a marvelous prime minister gosh, don't.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Honestly, I remember having this conversation so I've never wanted to be prime minister and I had a lovely friend of mine came into westminster in the middle of boris johnson's sort of kind of tribulations so yeah, and she said exactly the same thing.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

So, like you know, I, I think you should be promised. I was like I don't want to be prime minister. I said trouble is you've got imposter syndrome. And I was like I don't have imposter syndrome. She said no, no, you do. You do I, you know you need to go see my life coach. And so I was, you know, dispatched off to see the life coach and after three hours of doing quadrants and color-coded this, that and everything else, she was like no, you don't have imposter syndrome, you just don't want to be prime minister. And I didn't.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

And actually part of part of the problem with politics and this you know this is going to sound arrogant and I don't mean it to be arrogant because I'm, that's not who I am but part of the problem in politics is sometimes things happen by mistake, and I could see what was going to happen at the general election. You know, long before I took my decision to leave, I would have probably won my seat. And then you find yourself in opposition and either, before you know it, you're either standing for leader or you're in the shadow cabinet, with potential that next time you then stand for leader, and then one day you end up being prime minister and I was like I just don't want to be prime minister, so I didn't want to be this accidental kind of prime minister. So I was just like, no, it's better to just leave all together. And then I can't even accidentally turn up one day in Downing Street.

Sue Anstiss:

Might you ever go back. Is that done now? It's done.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

And actually, no, it's like the way I see it is. You know, I had a 14-year relationship with Westminster. I have some very fond memories. There were times I absolutely loved it. There were times I didn't love it so much, but I moved on. I moved on from it. You know I broke up with it and therefore I'm not going to go back to it and so, no, that's my time in Parliament done.

Sue Anstiss:

And what advice would you give to any young woman who's considering entering politics today?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

So it's. I mean, it's an incredible career. It's a credible opportunity for someone who is passionate, who's driven to try and make a difference, as long as you understand what the boundaries are. So I think the most disappointed politicians I ever met are those that have gone in and said that they want to change the world, because you can't change the world right, but you can change the world of individuals. So, by the way, probably only three out of 10, you would get a successful outcome from, but if you help those three out of those 10, you change their lives. And that was what making a difference was about making a difference to individuals, it's making a difference in the community.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

And then if you are lucky enough to be in a position where you can change a particular law or you can change policy direction or, in my case, you know bring in entirely different, you know new strategies or governance codes then you've done, you've achieved a lot. But there's also enormous frustrations with being a politician, in that you can't win every fight. Sometimes, even if it's the most sensible thing, you're still up against people who don't agree with you, and so it can be frustrating as well. And then the atmosphere in Westminster has changed since I got elected, know a lot more viral campaigns. There is no such thing as a personal life. Everything you do is done in public, so it can be enormously challenging, but ultimately under date. If you're going for the right reasons, you will get an enormous amount out of it.

Sue Anstiss:

You've since been appointed managing director at Hanover for the sports department or sports division. Is that what? That? What's your formal title there? Managing?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Director of Hanover Sports, so I deal with all the sports clients and aiming to grow the business. Just in case anyone's listening and has a RFP ready to send over, We'll put a little link in the show notes here.

Sue Anstiss:

I must admit I was surprised at the time when I saw the news and then I discovered kind of researching. You'd had these big roles in communications in the past, before you become an MP anyway. So how have you found that role and does it feel very different coming back out of politics, or is it like going back to your old life, pre-politics?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

It's a bit of both. You know I was at a slightly lower level when I was in consultancy before and communications before, so it's nice to be at a more senior level. But you know I am learning a lot about society that moved on in those 14 years that I was inside. I do keep on saying Inside, I do, I mean because it's an institution, right. So I do keep saying to people that this is like a reintegration back into society. But yeah, it's fun, it's really fun, so I'm enjoying it.

Sue Anstiss:

I'm a very positive person. What do you miss? Is there anything you miss around the you know anything significant that you miss around your days as an MP?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

I miss my friends, I miss the ability to change things. Yeah, so all sorts of you know those sorts of things.

Sue Anstiss:

But you're enjoying lots of not being an.

Dame Tracey Crouch:

MP too I feel Exactly.

Sue Anstiss:

And in 2024, you were made a Dame in the Special Honours for your contribution to parliamentary and public service. Is that anything you would ever have envisaged when you were a young student studying politics at university?

Dame Tracey Crouch:

Not at all. Never mind the university bit. I mean you're kicking a football around the streets of Hyde and Kent, you know, I'm just like yeah, I mean I was, honestly, I was a feral child. So the idea that now somehow I'm a Dame Dame trace, you know, you just don't think anything of it. But no, I mean it was a great honor, it was a real privilege and, um, you know, I still sometimes, you know, think what on earth did I get it for? But then I also have to sometimes just recognize that I did do some positive things as well, and maybe that is actually what it's about.

Sue Anstiss:

Thank you so much to Tracy for such an honest and open conversation. It's clear to see why she had the success she did, and we wish her well for the future. If you'd like to hear from more trailblazers, there are over 200 episodes of the Game Changers that are free to listen to on all podcast platforms or from our website at fearlesswomencouk. Previous guests include elite athletes, coaches, entrepreneurs, broadcasters, scientists, journalists and CEOs all women who are changing the game in sport. As well as listening to all the podcasts on the website, you can also find out more about the Women's Sport Collective, a free, inclusive community for all women working in sport. We now have over 10,000 members from across the world, so please do come and join us.

Sue Anstiss:

The whole of my book Game On the Unstoppable Rise of Women's Sport is also free to listen to on the podcast. Each episode of Series 13 is me reading a chapter of the book. Thank you once again to Sport England for backing the Game Changers and the Women's Sport Collective with a National Lottery Award, and also thanks to Sam Walker at what Goes On Media, who does such a brilliant job as our executive producer. And a final thank you to my lovely colleague at Fearless Women, kate Hannan. You can find the Game Changers on our podcast platform, so please follow us now and make sure you don't miss out on future episodes. Come and say hello on social media, where you'll find me on LinkedIn and Instagram at Sue Anstis, the Game Changers Fearless women in sport.

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Sue Anstiss

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Sam Walker

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