Eleanor's Interview: Martha Lane Fox on Men Behaving Badly, Elon, Boris and dinosaurs - and becoming a mum at 45

The youngest Baroness in the Lords talks to Noon Founder Eleanor Mills about AI (we don't need to be scared) and the importance of working hard and being kind in all things

Dear Queenagers,

This is my version of my interview with Martha Lane Fox (that’s me with her in her sitting room) which appeared in yesterday’s Telegraph. They did a headline about her constant pain from her injuries which I knew she would not like - I am more interested in her critique of the uber male culture which persists at the top levels of business and government and what we should do about it… Hope you enjoy it, would love to know what you think!

It’s swelteringly hot when I arrive at Baroness Martha Lane Fox’s mighty Little Venice town-house. Behind the heavy iron gate, a fountain tinkles in the front garden, lavender smells sweet and the gravel has a manorial crunch. Inside the white stucco façade the chatelaine is all smiles, “It’s a Monday and I’ve got make-up on specially for you and the photographer!” she says as we set off down the white marble stairs to the bright lilac kitchen to get fizzy water.

“You must come and meet my tortoise, Tuna,” she laughs. Tuna gets regular backrubs with a toothbrush, “his shell has thousands of nerve-endings,” Martha says, stroking enthusiastically, while swearing that he can purr with pleasure. “Tuna was my 50^th birthday present in March. She’s heaven. It’s been a great year; Tuna and NOT being in hospital.”

It is easy to forget while swotting up on Lane Fox’s prodigious achievements – founding Lastminute.com in the first internet boom, becoming the youngest Baroness in the House of Lords, serving on prestigious global boards from Twitter to Marks and Spencer, creating the Gov.UK system and last autumn becoming President of the British Chambers of Commerce (the reason for our chat) – that she has done all of this while in constant, debilitating pain.

“Last year was horrid, I was in hospital most of the time having endless multiple operations, sepsis, infections… this year my ambition was just: don’t go to hospital. It’s the summer solstice and I haven’t been in yet… “.

Her life-changing injuries were sustained back in the nineties, when after selling LastMinute.com for £577million, aged only 31 – she was known then as Fast Lane Foxy, the blonde, brainy poster-girl for the dot.com boom -  she took off for Morocco for a celebratory jaunt. Near Essaouira, the jeep her then boyfriend, Chris Gorrill Barnes (now her husband) was driving, skidded off the road. Martha flew through the windscreen, landed on a rock broke 25 bones including her pelvis (smashed in six places) had mega internal bleeding and a stroke. . She was air-lifted home “thank god for private medical care” she says, nearly died in the plane - had emergency surgery and was hospitalized for two years as doctors tried to piece her broken body back together with nearly thirty operations.

Ever since, her life has been punctuated with pain; every step is an effort as she has no feeling in her feet or legs and moves them by will, walking on two sticks. There are other indignities too but you would never suspect them from her elegant façade. She has recently had a series of tooth infections. “My accident really is the gift that keeps on giving I didn’t realise I’d fractured my jaw, too, apparently 20 years on that causes ruptures in the teeth!” She smiles, ever the stoic. But I can’t help noticing that while we talk she shifts around constantly (staying still for too long means she stiffens up). Every morning she has a strict routine of two hours of physio and exercises to keep her on the road. “Yes I am in pain all the time but weirdly that’s not the worst of it I’ve just got used to being uncomfortable in my body. It’s been 20 years. It’s frustrating because I am so inconsistent with what I can do in terms of strength and energy.”

She’ll hate me writing all of that. I have never met anyone so uncomplaining about their physical discomfort, or so aware of her own privilege, she constantly makes light of her situation to point out how others suffer far worse.  But it is important to share the physical stuff because it has so dictated her life choices since. “I have a very portfolio kind of work life because I can’t commit to full time anywhere…  I just have to say no to almost everything: parties, speeches. All logistics are challenging.”

I point out that she still manages to pack in way more than the rest of us! As President of the British Chambers of Commerce she travels all over the country talking to entrepreneurs. The BCC has just established a new Business Council, with five remits – she is concentrating particularly on their efforts to boost trade and improve people culture. It has been suggested that this new council – founding partners include BP, IHG Group and other big hitters – is a replacement for the troubled CBI [hit by the exiting of its chief over a current groping allegation and the bringing to light of separate historic accusations of rape which has led to it haemorrhaging members]. “The point of the new Business council is to help inform the manifesto for the next election,” she says firmly. “There are 83 charters globally and five key work streams. Britain, in the world, has been a laughing stock recently. We’re aiming to get things back on track. Business likes certainty not ambiguity and there is currently big uncertainty around inflation, the cost of living, wages, the election. Currently only one in ten British businesses trade internationally and that hasn’t moved much in a decade. If we could double that it would be a big boost for the economy.”

So is the Business Council anti-Brexit (the CBI as the voice of big business always wanted closer ties with Europe)? “We are neither pro being in or out but representing members and coming up with concrete suggestions to help trade by simplifying taxes, or providing better resources,” she says. Her passion is re-skilling. “There are a million empty jobs in Britain, companies are having issues finding people, keeping people, training people. I meet business owners who are curbing expansion plans because they can’t find the staff. We need an expansion of short-term visas to combat wage inflation particularly in hospitality.”

At this point her cat, Coley (there is another cat called Pollock, they are all names after fish because her husband who used to be a TV producer has just set up a fund to help ocean sustainability)  jumps on her lap. She has the largest, greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. Martha kisses Coley rapturously, stroking with such vigour that clouds of hair fly off the cat, illuminated by a sunbeam coming through the huge window.  Looking out I spot her seven-year-old twins Milo and Felix playing football on the back lawn. “I’m such a mum,” she says fondly. “Of course most of my contemporaries have kids at uni not at primary school, but Natalie Massanet [58, founder of Net A Porter who also became a mum LATE]  has a little one… there’s more of us than you think.” Because of her injuries Martha became a mother via a surrogate at 45, how is it going? “It’s fantastic being a mum at this point in my life, I’m happy and confident in myself which is a bonus for the boys and I have no career angst. I say No to all invitations, so I am always around”. She talks of the “double standard” women feel around work and childcare: “during the pandemic, I was on a really important call and Milo came into the room and I literally pushed him against the book case because I was trying to be serious and then of course he yelled and I had to turn off my camera and there was a huge kerfuffle. Whereas Chris [her husband] was on big calls with investors and the boys would come in and he’d introduce them and they’d chat. He didn’t feel the same pressure to be professional that I did.”

 Where is she on the work from home debate? “Well businesses who offer flexibility will have a competitive advantage in terms of attracting talent. But in the early years it is important for teams to be together, for young people particularly to go into the office. I met Brent [Hoberman, with whom she set up LastMinute.com] by going into the office. I worked on telecoms which is how I found out about the internet . Young people must learn how to be at work.  Of course that’s different if you are commuting miles and have small kids… “ This is classic Martha, always thinking through all the angles, HER FATHER IS THE OXFORD DON AND GARDEN WRITER ROBIN LANE FOX, SO SHE WAS RAISED TO BE RIGOUROUS AND HAVE sympathy for the underdog.

What kind of a parent is she? “Well,  I believe in rules! Working hard and getting good at things matters.  Persistence and application. Work Hard, Ask Brilliant Questions and Be Nice.”

 What about screen time for the kids - is she strict (some silicon valley executives ban all electronics).  “Well we watch TV on the ipad, they do Squeeballs and they are allowed an hour on screens on a weekend morning…” So she can have a lie-in? She laughs: “Quite. But when it comes to screens it depends on what they are doing on them…that’s true of everything about the internet really, It’s made the world both better and worse. And let’s not forget half the world are still not online…” That jump from her kids to the trials of the global South is typical of our conversation.

But back to business. How about the one million over 50s who left the work force during the pandemic and want to get back to work but get knocked out by ageist algorithms; why aren’t they being offered digital reskilling “I agree that we need a change in the way we re-skill under-represented groups, whether that’s about age, or ethnicity or disability. We need to break down barriers.” She sighs. “Not much knocks my general hopefulness but the fact that in the wake of the pandemic we went back to 1980s levels of employment for women in the US, and that for every woman made a director two women leave, and that less than 1% of venture capital funding is going to female founders really does it. You know that in the STEM sector the latest McKinsey report - which looks at how many years it will take to get to gender parity in different sectors - found that in tech that will NEVER happen. That the current levels of women in that sector are going backwards!” She sighs. “That really matters because tech wields so much power and with AI it will wield even more power in the future. Women have to be part of that.”

Ah – AI, are the killer robots are coming? “No! No-one sensible thinks that is happening. But for any leader it is a dereliction of duty not to try AI; it is so easy, get it to write a business plan for you. If Brent and I had had AI we’d have built a very different, smaller company!” She recommends Perplexity AI, “an open-sourced system unlike Chat GPT which is trained only on its closed garden of information which stops in 2021. Play around with it, ask it questions. Or try the visually generative Ai such as Midjourney which makes pictures.” Does she fear  it? “No I think to fear it is to anthropomorphise it, really AI is just amassing all of what humanity already knows and learning from it, off us really.” Will it free humans to do less boring stuff? “No, it won’t solve the human crisis of who cares for us; we will always need humans for that. As we saw in the pandemic,  it is carers, nurses, supermarket workers who are super important.” Again that eye for those at the sharp end.  

What about Elon Musk, she was on the Twitter board during the whole time the IronMan was trying to buy it? She sniffs. “He’s disbanded the board…”  Friendly Martha is gone, she radiates disapproval. “I loved being on that board, I chaired the Transaction Committee, the Governance Committee, it was a lot. I love Twitter because it is Open Source; I learnt so much there. Pre Musk, Twitter had issues, sure, but we were crunching through them and then…” she tails off. What was Musk like? “Personally to me he was always clear and straight…. To other directors, less so.  I do find it depressing that Elon Musk can be personally so unpleasant and use his power to denigrate. And yet, still the tech bros go and worship at the altar. To some people when I said I’d talked to Elon they honestly thought that was the most exciting thing they had ever heard. I just couldn’t understand it, I suppose he’s made rockets and big bets and stuff.. “ He’s been very successful, I counter. There is a rare pause: “Define success! Yes he’s got a brain that can encompass amazing inventions, electric vehicles.. but for me success is also about how you are as a person. And on that basis he is not successful in the basics of being a person. He wasn’t interested in upholding the law.. He didn’t pay attention to the law.. I was thinking about this last week when I looked at the front page of the FT which had Boris being a liar at the top and Crispin Odey [the hedgefunder who recently was forced to resign from the company he founded for sexual harassment going back decades] and I just thought Men Behaving Badly. Again.”

How do we stop that? “Well I hear Elon wasn’t very loved by his father..” Or Boris for that matter.. But we can’t fix that, I counter. There is a silence, broken only by Foley purring.

“When I get downcast I remember this quote from Martin Luther King: ‘If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. Whatever you do just keep moving forwards. So for obvious reasons” she gestures to her legs, “that quote is a go-to for me.”

We return to the British Chambers of Commerce – isn’t the timing of this new Business Council she is leading for it a ploy to set up a rival to the CBI?  She shakes her head. “Seriously Eleanor nobody is gloating on the CBI’s misfortunes. I sit on many boards and am involved  with governance and everywhere there is concern about culture. I don’t think business was being served by the CBI. I suppose the timing of our new Business Council is parallel and surely it is good that we get more representative voices from business to government to make policy for the future?”

What about the blokey culture that the CBI scandal has unveiled? Another sigh. “I think we conflate casual workplace laziness, older men not keeping up with commentariat and that is annoying but it is different in degree from rape and the serious allegations as at the CBI. I can give you thousands of examples of dinosaur culture in my own career. Thousands, including in the last few weeks! I was just chairing a board where one member kept calling me ‘dear’; I was the only woman. It was patronising.” What did she do?  “I called him ‘darling’ back, but I don’t think he noticed. Or I was at a security conference talking about the internet, sat next to a General and I said, ‘it’s a shame I am the only woman in this room of a hundred people’ - and he said: ‘Well, security’s not a girly subject.” She raises her eyes to heaven. “Or how about this one,  I was in the Lords, it was after lunch and I was wearing a demure black dress [Marks and Spencer, she is on their board]. A lord came up to me and said: ‘Nursie, nursie can I lie down so you can take my temperature before the debate..” I thought, here we go again. It’s not that any one of those things is appalling but if you are faced with loads of them a week it gets boring and also, if it is like that for me, and I am powerful, then what is it like for say a female contract cleaner working late at night, who feels genuinely frightened, that’s what matters.”

We discuss how our hopes that such dinosaur attitudes would die out are also proving untrue. How the tech bro culture – business conducted at swingers clubs, sexual harassment scandals at Uber and Vice, low representation of women – is exacerbating the problem in this generation. “That’s exactly right, we’ve got to separate the more marginal stuff from the really serious stuff like rape. I just wish we weren’t having to still talk about this.”

I ask her who she thinks will win the next election. She shakes her head. “I sit in the lords as a cross bencher, I have no view.” Can Labour win? “It’s hard to call,” she says. Given how far Labour is supposed to be ahead in the polls that is not a ringing endorsement from UK PLC. It’s not in the bag for Starmer yet, not from Lane Fox’s vantage point anyway.

Towards the end of our time together I rib her gently about having been one of the great and good since her 20s: boards, the Lords, she is a paid up denizen of the corridors of power.  She reminded me that she applied to be a People’s Peer (two are accepted a year and she had to be interviewed); she wasn’t a crony appointment. “When I came out of hospital aged 35 I knew I had to have a portfolio life because of my injuries. I love doing this cross between commercial and public policy work, I love working in central government on digital services. That is where I want to go on contributing.”

Listening back to the tape, I am struck by her thoughtfulness, how she answers questions with questions, probing for truth rather than offering a bombastic view.  I’m sure it makes her a great board member. Kind but rigorous, mild but forensic. I’ve been lucky enough to meet Prime ministers and CEOs, celebrities and achievers in my thirty years as an interviewer. And what has shown me is that whatever it looks like from the outside, no-one has a gilded life. Everyone is carrying something. Lane Fox has had success informed by suffering - and it has made her wise. She is a national treasure.

Eleanor Mills is the Founder of Noon.org.uk – empowering women in midlife

This interview first appeared in the Telegraph yesterday.

Lots of love

Eleanor

Do tell me what you think in the comments below