The baroness met us in a parliamentary canteen in jeans and an electric-pink tank top, appropriate for the youngest member of the House of Lords. It wasn’t only her age and her outfit that made her stand out: Sayeeda Warsi is the first Muslim member of any Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet. As we chatted about where denim was acceptable (the peers’ tea rooms, just about; the debating chamber, no; campaigning on women’s rights in Punjab, definitely not) we wondered aloud: never mind the jeans, had she worn a face veil?

Yes, it turns out, in Pakistan, and she liked it. “It was really an empowering moment. I know that sounds crazy . . . it made me feel very safe, very secure, in control.”

This triggered our interest, and a stream of questions about veils in Britain, about her “libertarian” view that choice of dress should be up to an individual and, within reason, her employer, not the State: “It is not right for men to be telling women what to wear, and what not to wear.”

Then it happened. She suddenly broke off and asked whether we were going to spend the entire time talking about the veil, because “it gets really boring”. This was our first taste of the plain-speaking Lady Warsi, and she may have a point, but as our conversation continued she prickled whenever we pursued topics relating to her religion. Was this our problem, we wondered, or hers?

Baroness Warsi is, at 36, already a prominent figure, having hit the news again before Christmas as the peer who helped to release the teddy-bear-naming British teacher in Sudan. Yet there are other community activists – white, black, Jewish, Christian – whom David Cameron could have promoted to the House of Lords and given the job of Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion but he didn’t, he chose her. Part of the reason was that she is a young Muslim woman and he hopes that that gives her the access and insight to help to ease tensions with British Muslims. Her boss may also have thought that it would win some publicity and help to change the face of the Conservative Party. Either way, the fact that she is a Muslim is not irrelevant. It is essential. In our view, anyway. She would rather we shut up about it.

So, is she observant, we wondered? Does she attend mosque? “I find this an unusual question because people don’t ask it of other people.”

But they do. They asked Tony Blair about his faith repeatedly and Ruth Kelly, the Cabinet minister whose Catholicism causes her problems voting on certain “moral” issues, whose personal beliefs have been dissected on front pages for years. “I think faith is a very personal thing and the level of observance is very personal to you.”

Fair enough, but did it influence her political views? When she stood as a candidate in Dewsbury three years ago she protested against the scrapping of Section 28, which prevented schools from teaching children about homosexuality. Her campaign was not about homosexuality, she insisted to us, her problem was with sex education generally. Last year she stated that she wanted sex education to be stopped; now, she would not go that far, but she worried that “there is only so much that you can withdraw from and also there is only so much choice in terms of the syllabus”.

She wants the subject to be taught in a more measured way. When we said we were not clear what that meant in practice, she retorted: “Not the answer you were looking for?” Nope, we just didn’t understand it.

“There is no policy decision,” she said eventually, “where my opinion is purely as a result of my faith . . . I don’t sit here and say, ‘Well because I’m a Muslim that’s why I think like that’.”

Was she by any chance fed up with being pigeonholed as a Muslim; that she feared that people would fail to see beyond that? “I am not fed up by it, actually,” she said, before making it quite clear that she was. “I talk about it but that is because I think you guys are not imaginative enough. If you want to have a single-dimensional approach to somebody then that is a matter for you, isn’t it? I know what I am.

“I think this particular interview, I’m not fed up about the fact that you are focusing in on religion, I just think we are probably going over stuff that is already in the public domain and this is not going to make an interesting interview for you if you are going to talk about stuff that has already been talked about.”

On the one hand the frankness is appealing; on the other it sounds defensive. Or are we offensive? By now we were all wondering. We have spoken to Shahid Malik, the first Muslim minister, about his religion without difficulty; we have interviewed another minister, Ben Bradshaw, at length about the politics of gay adoption and his difficulties as a homosexual and an Anglican, despite it being of no relevance to his brief. We ask almost every politician about their choice for their children’s education.

Yet with Lady Warsi, such matters were apparently off limits. So we never got around to asking, for instance, her views on faith schools, for fear of causing more offence, which is a shame, because the opinion of a spokeswoman for community cohesion, a Muslim, and a mother, on whether faith schools are divisive or not, would be interesting to hear. Maybe next time.

Instead we diverted to what seemed like a safe subject: her working week. She spends three to four days in the House of Lords, the rest of her time in Dewsbury. Who looks after her ten-year-old daughter when she is in London? She hesitated.

“Family,” interrupted her PR minder, loudly and firmly, adding that the baroness would not talk about that.

We had hit another patch of eggshells.

When standing for election, Lady Warsi hailed her arranged marriage as a blessing that enabled her to concentrate on her career in her twenties, without worrying about finding a husband. Now? “Well, I am divorced.” She, understandably, did not want to talk about that, either.

What she did want to talk about was “tea for two”, an idea born in Dewsbury whereby people of different backgrounds invite each other for a cuppa in their own homes. “So I said, why don’t we start off by having tea at my house, the House of Lords, at the tea room? So I’m inviting them for tea!”

She also wanted to talk about a charity football match, and “social action”, and how removing responsibility from parents for packed lunches is dangerous, and the State should stop taking control, and neighbours should help one another more, and people should drive one another’s kids to school, as her mum did. “My mum just said, ‘Well I’m going, I’ll take them’, and that level of community responsibility, neighbourhood spirit – I think it might sound terribly old-fashioned and twee – that is what it meant to my parents to be British. We’ve lost that.” She talks at the speed of a Magimix and it tumbles out in such free form that it is hard to engage. Maybe she was rushing so we would not ask about praying again.

Did she get annoyed if people sniped that hers was a token appointment? “You get criticism that it is a tokenistic thing,” she said. “I don’t ever worry about it. My expertise is criminal justice . . . that is real life. You are at the sharp end of issues around drugs, around family breakdown, about societal breakdown. I just think, well, you know, why are people hung up about the length of my veil and how many times a day I pray? You know, let’s get this into context, there is a bigger picture here and there is a bigger cause.”

She likes the Lords – “It is a terribly gentle place. It is a very civilised place and it is a hugely knowledgeable place” – and she has no time for complaints of racism at Westminster (Mr Malik told us he came across it frequently). “It depends on you as a person. Is your nature one of natural victimhood or one of natural optimism?”

She gave up her hopes of becoming an MP when she accepted a peerage. Would she be tempted to renounce her title and try again? “I don’t know whether you can if it is a life peerage. I think you can if it is hereditary. In fact I was talking to somebody about this last night . . .”

A regret, there, that she may have given up a chance at higher office? “You have got to focus on where you are now and what the job is in hand. You can’t focus on about where you could have been and what could have been,” she said. “As the daughter of a migrant mill worker from Yorkshire, working-class girl, to be given the opportunity to be setting the agenda on a certain issue in the Shadow Cabinet with a view to forming the next government, well that is a huge privilege and I don’t think I could even start to think about where I could have been. I mean, I am so humbled by where I am that, to think about anything else I think would be, yeah.”

Does the lady protest just a little too much?

Baroness Warsi

Born Dewsbury, March 28, 1971, second of five sisters. Her father, a mill worker, founded a bed manufacturing firm

Family Divorced with one daughter, aged 10

Educated Birkdale High School; Dewsbury College; Leeds University

Career Solicitor in practice of John Whitfield, former Tory MP for Dewsbury. Set up George Warsi solicitors in Dewsbury with her husband

Politics Joined the Conservative Party in her early twenties. Spotted by Oliver Letwin when she made a speech on the conference fringe in 2003. Party vice-chairwoman, 2005-07, with responsibility for cities; contested Dewsbury at 2005 general election; given peerage in 2007 and as Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion became the first Muslim member of any Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet

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