41 Facts About Dawn Butler

Dawn Petula Butler was born on 3 November 1969 and is a British Labour Party politician who has been a Member of Parliament for Brent Central since 2015.

Dawn Butler served in Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government as Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office and Minister for Young Citizens and Youth Engagement from 2009 to 2010.

Dawn Butler lost her seat at the 2010 general election to Sarah Teather.

Dawn Butler returned to Parliament as the MP for Brent Central at the 2015 general election.

Dawn Butler returned as Shadow Minister for Black and Minority Ethnic Communities in June 2017, before being promoted to the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities in August 2017.

Dawn Butler stood in the 2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election and came last, in fifth place.

Dawn Butler was removed from the Shadow Cabinet by new Labour leader Keir Starmer in 2020 and returned to the backbenches.

Dawn Butler was born in Forest Gate in East London, to Jamaican immigrant parents Milo and Ambrozene Dawn Butler; she has one sister and four brothers.

Dawn Butler was educated at Tom Hood School in Leytonstone and Waltham Forest College, both in London.

Dawn Butler worked as an officer of the GMB Union, including time as a national race and equality officer.

Dawn Butler first sought selection to be a Labour parliamentary candidate in Hackney South and Shoreditch, where she featured on an all-women shortlist but was unsuccessful.

Dawn Butler put herself forward for selection for West Ham in 2005 but was not selected.

Dawn Butler was the third black woman to become a British MP after Diane Abbott and Oona King.

In 2006, Dawn Butler voted against investigations into the Iraq War.

Dawn Butler subsequently voted against investigations a further six times up until 2016.

Dawn Butler was appointed to the Select Committee on the Modernisation of the House of Commons shortly after her election, and served on standing committees.

Dawn Butler was promoted to Assistant Whip on 12 September 2008.

Dawn Butler was named female MP of the year at the 2009 Women in Public Life awards.

Dawn Butler later said that Conservative MPs "tried to belittle me at that moment in history", specifying that one Tory MP "took great delight in telling me that 'upskilling' was not in the English dictionary".

Dawn Butler was selected as the Labour candidate in Brent Central but lost to Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat candidate, who had been the MP for Brent East which had been abolished at the general election.

In 2013, Dawn Butler was selected as the Labour candidate for Brent Central at the general election in 2015.

Dawn Butler was returned to parliament with a majority of more than 19,000 votes.

Dawn Butler is a former chair of the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party.

Dawn Butler supported Andy Burnham in the 2015 Labour Leadership Election.

In February 2017, Dawn Butler resigned from Corbyn's frontbench before the vote on the second reading in the House of Commons of European Union Bill 2017 which triggered Article 50.

In March 2017, Dawn Butler used British Sign Language to ask a question in the House of Commons about giving this language legal recognition.

Dawn Butler was reappointed as Shadow Minister for Black and Minority Ethnic Communities in June 2017.

Dawn Butler became the first candidate to declare candidacy in the 2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election.

Dawn Butler has been described as one of Corbyn's "closest allies" and often sat by his side on the opposition frontbench in Parliament.

Dawn Butler ultimately received 50,255 of first preference ballots, the least of the five candidates, eliminating her from the contest and seeing her second preference votes redistributed to the remaining candidates, with Angela Rayner ultimately winning the contest.

In July 2020, Dawn Butler was forced to close her constituency office due to increased costs of maintaining premises, and alleged escalating racist threats towards her and her staff, which increased following an article she wrote defending Black Lives Matter protests in the UK.

Dawn Butler accused the Metropolitan Police of racial profiling after she was in a car in Hackney which was stopped by police on 9 August 2020, as they wrongly believed the car was registered in North Yorkshire, saying "there's people who have been coming into the area".

Dawn Butler then said that this experience shows the Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist.

On 22 July 2021, Dawn Butler was ordered to leave the House of Commons by Acting Deputy Speaker Judith Cummins, after she made comments calling the Prime Minister Boris Johnson a liar.

In January 2009, Dawn Butler received an endorsement from US President Barack Obama.

Dawn Butler initially denied that her office had written it but later corrected herself and clarified that the endorsement had been written by her staff with the consent of Obama's aides, then signed by Obama when they met.

In March 2009, Dawn Butler was criticised for claiming the second home allowance, despite her main home in Stratford being the same distance from Parliament as her Brent South home, however her office stressed that she moved into the Wembley house after being elected in 2005 to allow her to serve her constituents.

Dawn Butler was taking part in a debate about reactions to updates to the Gender Recognition Act 2004 which were proposed by the governing Conservative Party.

Dawn Butler later said that she was referring to gender neutrality, where people can identify as non-binary.

In September 2020, Dawn Butler was criticised after she praised, in a tweet later deleted, Extinction Rebellion protestors who blocked the printworks of several major newspapers.

Dawn Butler was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2021 and underwent a mastectomy.