Chuka Umunna, English lawyer and politician
Chuka Harrison Umunna (; born 17 October 1978) is a British former politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Streatham from 2010 until 2019. A former member of the Labour Party, he was part of the Shadow Cabinet from 2011 to 2015. He left Labour in February 2019, when he resigned to form The Independent Group, later Change UK, along with six other MPs. Later in 2019, he left Change UK and, after a short time as an independent MP, joined the Liberal Democrats. In the 2019 general election, he was unsuccessful in being re-elected as an MP 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 1997 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 2008, and was elected MP in the 2010 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 2011, when he joined Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. He was re-elected in the 2015 and 2017 general elections. After Miliband's resignation, Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015; Umunna was critical of the party leadership and resigned from the Shadow Cabinet to sit as a backbencher.
A supporter of the unsuccessful 2016 referendum campaign to retain UK membership of the European Union, Ummuna campaigned for a referendum on the final deal with the EU. In February 2019, he resigned from Labour and joined The Independent Group, later Change UK. He was its group spokesperson but left in June 2019 to sit as an independent MP following "disappointing" European Parliament election results showing the party had "failed to get a single MEP elected". One week later, Umunna joined the Liberal Democrats and was appointed their Treasury and Business Spokesperson by leader Vince Cable. In August 2019, he was appointed Foreign Affairs, International Development and International Trade Spokesperson by new leader Jo Swinson. He stood for Cities of London and Westminster in the 2019 general election but lost to Nickie Aiken of the Conservatives.
1978Oct, 17
Chuka Umunna
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Events on 1978
- 11Feb
Aristotle
Censorship: China lifts a ban on works by Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. - 27Apr
Watergate scandal
Former United States President Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman is released from an Arizona prison after serving 18 months for Watergate-related crimes. - 25Jul
In vitro fertilisation
Birth of Louise Joy Brown, the first human to have been born after conception by in vitro fertilisation, or IVF. - 22Oct
Pope John Paul II
Papal inauguration of Pope John Paul II. - 18Nov
Jim Jones
In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.