Jon cruddas mp biography of barack obama

What does Keir Starmer believe in? Four years after he became Labour leader, there is an increasing understanding of Starmer the man: his complicated childhood and early family life, his personal decency, his restless ambition, his ruthlessness. But “Starmerism” remains more elusive. Does the concept amount to anything at all?

During his Labour leadership campaign, when he positioned himself on the soft left of the party, Starmer outlined ten pledges based on “the moral case for socialism”, most of which have since been abandoned or revised (an act of pragmatism or betrayal, depending on political preference). His wider past can appear little more illuminating.

As Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham, noted in his recent history of the party, A Century of Labour: “There are few contributions to help reveal an essential political identity and little in the way of an intellectual paper trail.”

Starmer entered parliament in aged 52; he was never a member of what George Osborne refers to as “the guild” of professional politicians and special advisers. He was a human rights lawyer and served as director of public prosecutions from to His time running the Crown Prosecution Service gave him a more practical focus than a pamphleteering backbencher. “He almost has an allergy to ideology, he wants to be the prime minister who rolls his sleeves up and gets stuff done,” Carys Roberts, the executive director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), told me.

Unlike Ed Miliband, who as Labour leader gave speeches on themes such as “responsible capitalism” and “predistribution”, Starmer avoids abstract language and concepts. He does not approach politics as if it were an Oxford PPE seminar. He has said that “Starmerism is as much about the ‘how’ as the ‘what’” – by which he means transforming how the state operates.

There is an instructive parallel here with the former Conservative MP turned podcaster Rory Stewart, who also worked outside of Westminster – as

British politician (born )

Chuka Harrison Umunna (; born 17 October ) is a British businessman and former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Streatham from until A former member of the Labour Party, he was part of the Shadow Cabinet from to He left Labour in February , when he resigned to form The Independent Group, later Change UK, along with six other MPs. Later in , he left Change UK and, after a short time as an independent MP, joined the Liberal Democrats. In the general election, he failed to be re-elected, and did not return to the House of Commons.

Born in Lambeth to a Nigerian father and English-Irish mother, Umunna was educated at St Dunstan's College, a private school in Catford, Lewisham. He then studied law at the University of Manchester and Nottingham Trent University. A teenage member of the Liberal Democrats, he joined the Labour Party in when the party was styling itself as "New Labour". He worked as a solicitor in the City of London, first for Herbert Smith and then for Rochman Landau, while writing articles for the Compass think tank.

Umunna was selected as Labour's parliamentary candidate for Streatham in , and was elected MP in the general election. When in parliament, he aligned with the party's "Blue Labour" trend, which rejects neoliberal economics. He sat on the Treasury Select Committee until , when he joined Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. He was re-elected in the and general elections. Following Miliband's resignation, Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in ; Umunna was critical of the party leadership and resigned from the Shadow Cabinet to sit as a backbencher.

A supporter of the unsuccessful referendumcampaign to retain UK membership of the European Union, Ummuna campaigned for a referendum on the final deal with the EU. In February , he resigned from Labour and joined The Independent Group, later Change UK. He was its gr

Following the results of the latest leadership vote on Saturday 24 September , Jeremy Corbyn remains leader of the Labour Party. Yet, the &#;Blue Labour&#; strain is also far from over &#; a tendency grouped around the social thought of Maurice Glasman that emerged within the Party after the financial crash. In the aftermath of the contest, J.A. Smith reviews Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst&#;s edited volume, Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics, reflecting on how to understand this brand of Labour in the continuing age of Corbyn. 

Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics. Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst (eds). I.B. Tauris.

Blue Labour in the Age of Corbyn

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In a Newsnight interview following the launch of his leadership challenge against Jeremy Corbyn, Owen Smith spoke of ‘the way in which people have a very strong – perhaps socially conservative – sense of place’, adding that ‘Jeremy’s got a rather more metropolitan sense of that […] a set of liberal perspectives on things: nationalism and patriotism aren’t really part of his make-up’. Smith’s idiom here – if not his slightly antithetical support for a second referendum on Britain’s EU membership – gave a flavour to his candidature of ‘Blue Labour’: a tendency in the Labour Party grouped around the social thought of Maurice Glasman that emerged after the financial crash. The pro-immigration internationalist Corbyn remains, but an article by Labour MP Rachel Reeves arguing that ending the free movement of people from Europe should be Labour policy suggests that the Blue Labour strain is far from over within the Party.

As Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst’s essay collection, Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics, explains, Blue Labour began by seeking to offer an alternative to ‘the fusion of social with economic liberalisation under the joint aegis of the central bureaucratic state and the global ‘‘free market’” that, while k

There are not many MPs who can quote political philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, RH Tawney and TH Green. But Jon Cruddas is an exotic political creature, with a reputation for being able to connect with people from all walks of life, equally at ease discussing fuel bills with senior citizens or Antonio Gramsci in senior common rooms. His face is unmemorable, a bit like his Dagenham constituency: flat and featureless. He has neither the looks of a character actor, nor a leading man. Colleagues note that his accent changes depending to whom he is speaking. He is a working-class Catholic boy from Portsmouth, whose father was a sailor. He is also an intellectual with a PhD in political theory and fans in the media and academia. Some people saw him as a future Labour leader. While he announced in mid-May that he wouldn’t stand for the leadership, his ideas on how to reconnect with the traditional working class will remain influential in the coming contest.

Cruddas was the big surprise of Labour’s deputy leadership race: he scored the most votes in the first round, and ultimately came third, demonstrating support beyond the party’s leftist fringes. He is close to David Miliband, who has already launched his bid for Labour’s crown, and shares some similarities. Both worked for Tony Blair—Miliband as head of policy, Cruddas as deputy political secretary. Both went on to become MPs for de-industrialised areas. Both are animated by ideas. But while Miliband easily held his seat on 6th May, Cruddas came close to being dethroned.

Cruddas hung on in Dagenham and Rainham by 2, votes. His race, along with that of Labour MP Margaret Hodge in the neighbouring constituency of Barking, gained huge media prominence because of the involvement of the British National party. BNP leader Nick Griffin attempted to unseat Hodge, but said the real prize was the council. Yet while the BNP’s challenge fell spectacularly short—coming third against both Hodge and Cruddas a