Emily Thornberry has served as Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2016 to 2020, Shadow First Secretary of State from 2017 to 2020 and Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade from 2020 to 2021.
55 Facts About Emily Thornberry
2.
The daughter of a teacher and a diplomat, Thornberry was born in Guildford, Surrey, and attended a local secondary modern school.
3.
Emily Thornberry was first elected to Parliament in 2005 and served as Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales in Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet from 2011 until she resigned in 2014 after sending a tweet mocking a house with England flags.
4.
Emily Thornberry was a candidate to succeed Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party in the 2020 leadership election but was eliminated from the race after failing to obtain the number of nominations needed.
5.
Emily Thornberry was appointed to Keir Starmer's shadow cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade and Shadow President of the Board of Trade in April 2020.
6.
Emily Thornberry was appointed Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales in November 2021.
7.
Emily Thornberry was born in Guildford, Surrey on 27 July 1960.
8.
Emily Thornberry's parents were Sallie Thornberry, a teacher, and Cedric Thornberry, at the time teaching international law at the London School of Economics, and later a United Nations Assistant Secretary-General.
9.
When Emily Thornberry was seven, her parents divorced and she had to leave their home with her mother and two brothers.
10.
Emily Thornberry failed the eleven-plus exam, so attended a secondary modern school.
11.
Emily Thornberry left to live with her father when she was fifteen until he left without warning to work for the United Nations when she was seventeen.
12.
Emily Thornberry worked as a cleaner and a barmaid in London alongside resitting her O-Levels and taking her A-Levels.
13.
Emily Thornberry went on to study law at the University of Kent in Canterbury, graduating in 1982, and afterwards led the students' union as an elected full-time officer.
14.
Emily Thornberry was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn and practised as a barrister specialising in human rights law from 1985 to 2005 under Michael Mansfield at Tooks Chambers.
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Emily Thornberry joined the Transport and General Workers' Union in 1985.
16.
At the 2001 general election, Emily Thornberry stood as the Labour candidate in Canterbury, but was defeated by the Conservative incumbent, Julian Brazier.
17.
Emily Thornberry was elected to Parliament with a majority of 484, narrowly beating the Liberal Democrats.
18.
Emily Thornberry made her maiden speech in the House of Commons on 24 May 2005.
19.
In 2006, Emily Thornberry was criticised by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Philip Mawer for adding a quote from herself into a news release by the Electoral Commission.
20.
Emily Thornberry was found not to have broken the Parliamentary code of conduct.
21.
Emily Thornberry has spoken on the need for more affordable housing, particularly in Islington.
22.
In 2006, Emily Thornberry introduced the Housing Association Bill, a Private member's bill which sought to improve the control of housing association tenants over their landlords.
23.
On environmental matters, Emily Thornberry worked with Friends of the Earth and World Wide Fund for Nature to campaign for a Climate Change Bill and a Marine Bill.
24.
In 2006, Emily Thornberry won the ePolitix Award for Environment Champion of the Year after being nominated by WWF.
25.
In 2008, Emily Thornberry supported a change in the law to allow single women and lesbian couples to seek in vitro fertilisation treatment.
26.
In May 2010, Emily Thornberry was returned as MP for Islington South and Finsbury with an increased majority, in a seat identified as the Liberal Democrats' top target in England for the 2010 general election.
27.
Emily Thornberry was promoted to Shadow Minister for the Department of Energy and Climate Change in May 2010.
28.
Emily Thornberry missed out on a place in Labour's shadow cabinet, then elected by Labour MPs, by one vote.
29.
Emily Thornberry was instead promoted to the role of shadow care minister under the shadow health secretary John Healey.
30.
Emily Thornberry criticised the government over the Winterbourne View care home abuse scandal, calling for an investigation into the affair.
31.
Emily Thornberry was appointed shadow attorney general in October 2011, in which capacity she attended shadow cabinet meetings.
32.
Emily Thornberry called for action by Dominic Grieve over Applied Language Solutions' failure to provide interpreters for court proceedings, and called on the attorney general to ensure that allegations of bribery involving Bernie Ecclestone were properly investigated.
33.
In 2011, Emily Thornberry challenged prime minister David Cameron over his false claims about wages at Islington Council, campaigning against government measures which Emily Thornberry claimed to have exacerbated child poverty in Islington, and answering over 1,000 enquiries a month from constituents.
34.
Emily Thornberry resigned her shadow cabinet position on 20 November 2014, shortly after polls closed in the Rochester and Strood by-election.
35.
Emily Thornberry was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015, though she later stated that she would be supporting Yvette Cooper.
36.
Emily Thornberry was promoted to shadow defence secretary in January 2016, replacing Maria Eagle.
37.
Emily Thornberry advocated spending money on the army rather than on the UK's Trident nuclear programme.
38.
Emily Thornberry was promoted to Shadow Foreign Secretary in June 2016 after Corbyn fired Hilary Benn.
39.
Emily Thornberry held the role of Shadow Brexit Secretary concurrently until Keir Starmer took on the role later that year.
40.
In October 2018 Emily Thornberry criticised Theresa May's government's response to Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance as "too little, too late".
41.
Emily Thornberry was eventually eliminated from the leadership election after failing to achieve enough nominations from constituency parties or affiliated groups.
42.
Emily Thornberry said that she shed no tears over the death, but was fearful of escalating tensions in the region.
43.
Emily Thornberry was replaced as Shadow Foreign Secretary by Lisa Nandy upon the election of Keir Starmer as Leader of the Labour Party.
44.
Emily Thornberry herself was not sacked from the Official Opposition frontbench, but instead moved to a different frontbench role, becoming the new Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade.
45.
In late December 2020, Emily Thornberry voted for the European Union Act 2020, in line with the Labour Chief Whip.
46.
Emily Thornberry's constituency falls within the London Borough of Islington, one of the most deprived areas of the country with disproportionately high house prices and private sector rents.
47.
Emily Thornberry has supported measures by Islington Council to free up under-occupied homes by supporting tenants to downsize and to stop foreign investors from buying new homes and leaving them empty.
48.
Emily Thornberry has called for a greater degree of control over private sector rents and more support for social house-building.
49.
Emily Thornberry has frequently campaigned for a greater commitment to affordable and social housing.
50.
Emily Thornberry was criticised when the local Islington Tribune newspaper discovered that her husband had bought a former social house which was being rented out to her aides.
51.
In 2014 Emily Thornberry clashed with Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, over the proposed redevelopments of the Mount Pleasant Mail Centre, the sorting office run by the Royal Mail, and the Clerkenwell Fire Station, both in her constituency.
52.
Emily Thornberry arranged a public meeting to discuss options for a memorial, attended by around 800 people, and settled on the idea of a statue as an appropriate memorial, pointing out that there were very few statues of female politicians and activists in Parliament.
53.
In March 2015, Emily Thornberry launched a campaign for a new Equal Pay Act.
54.
Nugee later became Queen's Counsel, then a High Court Judge, when he was knighted, at which point Emily Thornberry became entitled to be styled Lady Nugee, but does not use the title.
55.
The Labour Party opposed selection and Emily Thornberry was criticised over the matter as a result.