NOTE: Emily Thornberry is no longer in the race as she failed to reached the required number of CLP/Labour affiliate/trade union nominations required before the Feb 14th deadline for the April ballot. But she is still one to watch for in future leadership elections in the Labour Party as to why I am still posting this.
Note: Featured photo by Richard Townshend, License.
Emily Thornberry managed to clinch the number of MP/MEP nominations she required to make it past the first requirement of the leadership election on the day of the deadline with only minutes to spare, many had speculated at her lack of support up until that point and on whether she would make it through or not. It is surprising that a senior Labour politician such as Thornberry is thus far performing worse than more junior MPs such as Jess Phillips for example.
Thornberry first became an MP in May 2005 after she was selected from an all-female shortlist to contest the seat of Islington South and Finsbury that she later won and has been elected to that seat in each election since and which makes her the longest serving MP in the leadership race, she has also held more senior positions in the party than any of the other candidates.
Before the 2005 election Thornberry had already attempted to become a Labour MP as a candidate for the Canterbury seat in the 2001 election but lost to the Conservative incumbent.
Thornberry was born in Guildford, Surrey to her parents who were both teachers, her father an academic and human rights lawyer teaching at the London School of Economics and he later became a United Nations Assistant Secretary-General. But her parents divorced while she was only 7-years-old leading to her, her brothers and her mother leaving the home and falling into poverty including moving into a council house, claiming benefits and having to survive on free school meals and food parcels. They were also unable to afford their pet cats which were put down to save more money.
She ended up failing her eleven-plus exam at the end of primary school and so attended a secondary modern school. When she reached 15, she lived with her father, after falling out with her mother, before he left suddenly when she was 17 to work at the United Nations. She went through a number of working-class jobs such as barmaid and cleaner and also re-sat her O-levels and also took A-levels where she eventually got into studying law at the University of Kent, where she also met her husband Christopher Nugee who went on to become a high court judge, Thornberry graduated herself in 1982. This led to her becoming a barrister that specialized in human rights from 1985 until she was elected as an MP in 2005.
During her time as MP she has focused her interest on matters such as health, housing, including advocating for affordable housing, environment and equality. Thornberry’s introduced her first major piece of legislation, the Housing Association Bill in 2006 during the Blair government. It was a Private Members’ Bill which aimed to improve the control of housing association tenants over their landlords.
Her first promotion came in 2009 when she became an aide in the Department of Energy and Climate change under the Gordon Brown government.
After the 2010 election Labour became the opposition and the new party leader, Ed Miliband, shortly promoted Thornberry to the shadow government as a shadow minister for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Back when Labour MPs elected Shadow Cabinet positions, Thornberry missed out by only one vote. But she was promoted to shadow care minister under the shadow health secretary where she held the government to account over failing care home Southern Cross, the Winterborne View care home abuse scandal and the pressures on care for the elderly due to cuts.
Eventually in October 2011 she was appointed as Shadow Attorney General where she also got her first taste of shadow cabinet meetings. One of her notable actions as Shadow Attorney General includes writing a letter to then Attorney General Dominic Grieve over the failures of Applied Language Solutions to supply well-trained interpreters in a timely fashion to courts, after mass protests from interpreters.
Unfortunately for Thornberry she ended up having to resign her Shadow Attorney General position on 20th November 2014 after she got into controversy during the Rochester and Strood by-election by tweeting a picture of a house there with St. George flags and a white van in the driveway saying “Image from #Rochester”. It led to accusations of snobbery, including from the home owner in question, elitism, disrespect and anti-working-class sentiment against Thornberry, who was now living a lavish life with her husband and ended up leading to Ed Miliband forcing her to resign over the controversy, which was seen as damaging to the party.
After this it may have been an end of the road for Thornberry, but Ed Miliband went on to lose the 2015 General Election and a subsequent leadership election lead to a new leader, Thornberry was one of 35 MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership, although she backed Yvette Cooper to win. Jeremy Corbyn won and appointed Thornberry as a Shadow Minister for Employment in September 2015. She begun making her way back up the ladder again and was soon apart of the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Defense Secretary in January 2016.
Some such as Kevan Jones and then Deputy Labour Leader Tom Watson didn’t believe Thornberry was the right fit for the Defense Secretary position, in an interview with Forces TV, Thornberry said that she had more experience than a lot of people may have thought, she talked about her brother-in-law in the armed forces and said that she was made an honoury lieutenant colonel when she did court marshals as a barrister and that she has a certain amount of experience from the military there, as well as there being a regiment in her constituency and so on.
During her time as defense secretary, Thornberry advocated on moving money from the Trident nuclear program towards the armed forces and also conducted a review into defense policy including the nuclear deterrent, although it was interrupted by the EU referendum. She also got into a small bit of controversy for asking what “defcon 1” meant during a private Labour discussion about nuclear deterrent.
Later in June 2016 Thornberry became Shadow Foreign Secretary after Corbyn fired Hilary Benn and she also held the Shadow Brexit Secretary role, where she accused the government of “sleepwalking” towards a no-deal brexit, Keir Starmer eventually took over the job. Thornberry has also talked of her dissatisfaction of Donald Trump and has said she would have been working on a close relationship with the US government but not necessarily Donald Trump, who she has also said she does not trust with nuclear weapons.
Further as foreign secretary Thornberry has held the government to account over supporting Saudi Arabia against the Houthis in Yemen due to alleged human rights abuses and war crimes that should first be investigated, but emphasized they were an important regional ally. She also criticized the government over the response to Jamal Khashoggi. She also said support for Bashar Al-Assad in Syria has been underestimated by the West. She also condemned the US airstrike that killed Qasem Soleimani due to it likely leading to escalating tensions in the region.
She was promoted to Shadow First Secretary of State after the 2017 General Election where she deputized for Jeremy Corbyn during Prime Minister’s Questions. Although she has criticized the Labour leader for being a bit slow on important issues, such as antisemitism, she continued to support him up until after the 2019 General Election where she gave him a 0 out of 10 on election performance, 2 out of 10 over dealing with antisemitism in Labour, although she believes that Corbyn himself is not antisemitic. She did give him a 10 out of 10 for personality and in-party support. She still remained a part of the Shadow Cabinet throughout.
Thornberry has said that Labour needs someone who is experienced and battle-hardened to lead Labour after their crushing election defeat and highlighted her time within the shadow cabinet. She also highlighted her frontline fight against climate change and Universal Credit as well as her opposition to anti-abortion laws in Northern Ireland.
It is expected that if Thornberry qualifies for the leadership ballot it would be through local constituency parties support rather than support from unions and Labour affiliate groups, which have allowed Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy to qualify for the ballot. Unfortunately for Emily Thornberry though she would be merely two CLPs off of clinching the nomination for the April ballot, eliminating her from the race.
Although she is out of this race she is still a senior figure to watch for in the future as it is very likely she will be in a position to run for the leadership of the Labour Party again.
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