Back in 2006 I had a temporary admin job in the public sector, through an agency. As an older worker and following an illness, I was having difficulty finding any employment at all, in a jobs market saturated with young people.

Things went fine for probably a couple of months when a glamorous younger new manager arrived on the scene. She took an instant dislike to me, and started to bully me. I tried to turn a blind eye to it because I was struggling financially and needed to earn a living, but she made my life hell. Because she couldn’t criticise my work, she started to attack me personally. I don’t even want to repeat some of the things she said, but they were totally calculated and very personal. What she said behind my back I hate to imagine, but it got to the stage where nobody in the department of about a dozen people would even speak to me, for example when I tried to join in a conversation, one of the men said, “I was talking to [so and so] not to you.”

I should have complained to the agency but I didn’t, and eventually she got me. She accused me of saying something to her that I didn’t say, and I was forced to “consider my position.” To their credit, the agency did find me something else, but my self-confidence and self-esteem were in shreds. I felt that I must be the most wretched creature on earth. Less than two months later I had a serious nervous breakdown that put me off work for at least 6 months. In hindsight I think it was age discrimination. Possibly she felt threatened by my competence and would rather have had a biddable 18-year-old working for her. As a middle-aged woman I didn’t have the right image to feed her massive ego.

Imagine my horror then when a few years later she turns up as Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for a party who would claim to represent equality for all. Some are more equal than others evidently. However she came in for a lot of criticism in the local press for not pulling her weight in the campaign. I was only too delighted to see her fall flat on her botoxed face, and needless to say, she was not elected.

It doesn’t end there though. A couple of years ago through a social organisation I was involved in, I got talking to someone high up in her party (who although I got to know her reasonably well must remain anonymous) and told her the story. She was sympathetic, said she could believe it of this person and asked me, why didn’t I say anything at the time? Would I have been believed, would they have listened to me? I replied.

I’m very glad though that however belatedly I got to call out this monstrous bully and hypocrite. She may never know that this nobody, this person she tried to crush underfoot like an insect, came back to bite her. As a result she can, I think, forget any prospect of a political career.