There are many things which spark off a political career, but for Gary Porter – later Lord Porter, the chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA) – it all began in the 1970s, when he was, by his own admission, a bolshie school kid, organising a playground strike in defence of a fellow pupil.
Perhaps it is not the most obvious place to start for a Conservative peer, but the rest of his career has been equally unconventional, as he told the first Public Intelligence/MJ podcast.