1. Emily Thornberry served as Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales from 2021 until the 2024 UK general election, and previously from 2011 to 2014.
61 Facts About Emily Thornberry
1. 2.
The daughter of a teacher and a diplomat, Emily Thornberry was born in Guildford, Surrey, and attended a local secondary modern school.
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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.
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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.
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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, but did not receive a ministerial position in Starmer's post-election government formed in July 2024.
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Emily Thornberry was born on 27 July 1960 in Guildford, Surrey.
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Emily Thornberry's parents were Sallie Thornberry, a teacher, and Cedric Thornberry, a professor of international law at the London School of Economics, and later a United Nations Assistant Secretary-General.
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When Emily Thornberry was seven, her parents divorced and she had to leave their home with her mother and two brothers.
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Emily Thornberry failed the eleven-plus exam, so attended a secondary modern school.
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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.
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Emily Thornberry worked as a cleaner and a barmaid in London alongside resitting her O-Levels and taking her A-Levels.
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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.
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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.
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Emily Thornberry was selected as the Labour candidate for Islington South and Finsbury for the 2005 general election through an all-women shortlist of prospective candidates.
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Emily Thornberry made her maiden speech in the House of Commons on 24 May 2005.
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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.
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Emily Thornberry was found not to have broken the Parliamentary code of conduct.
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Emily Thornberry has spoken on the need for more affordable housing, particularly in Islington.
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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, with many of the ideas from this bill were taken up by the Cave Review.
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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.
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In 2006, Emily Thornberry won the ePolitix Award for Environment Champion of the Year after being nominated by WWF.
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In May 2008, Emily Thornberry supported a change in the law to allow single women and lesbian couples to seek in vitro fertilisation treatment.
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Emily Thornberry was promoted to Shadow Minister for the Department of Energy and Climate Change soon after the general election.
26.
Emily Thornberry missed out on a place in Labour's shadow cabinet, then elected by Labour MPs, by one vote.
27.
Emily Thornberry was instead promoted to the role of shadow care minister under the shadow health secretary John Healey.
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In June 2011 Emily Thornberry criticised the coalition government's lack of action over failing care home operator Southern Cross, calling for action and that the government put in place a plan B should the operator fail.
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Emily Thornberry criticised the government over the Winterbourne View care home abuse scandal, calling for an investigation into the affair.
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In July 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.
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Emily Thornberry was appointed shadow attorney general in October 2011, which allowed her to attend shadow cabinet meetings.
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Emily Thornberry called for action by Dominic Grieve over Applied Language Solutions' failure to provide interpreters for court proceedings.
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Emily Thornberry resigned her shadow cabinet position on 20 November 2014, shortly after polls closed in the Rochester and Strood by-election.
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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.
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Emily Thornberry was promoted to shadow defence secretary in January 2016, replacing Maria Eagle.
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Emily Thornberry advocated spending money on the army rather than on the UK's Trident nuclear programme.
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Emily Thornberry was promoted to Shadow Foreign Secretary in June 2016 after Corbyn fired Hilary Benn.
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Emily Thornberry held the role of Shadow Brexit Secretary concurrently until Keir Starmer took on the role later that year.
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Emily Thornberry said that "while Saudi Arabia will remain a valued strategic, security and economic ally in the years to come, our support for their forces in Yemen must be suspended until the alleged violations of international humanitarian law in that conflict have been fully and independently investigated".
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In May 2018 Emily Thornberry said support in Syria for the country's president, Bashar al-Assad, had been "underestimated" in the West.
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In October 2018 Emily Thornberry criticised Theresa May's government's response to Jamal Khashoggi's disappearance as "too little, too late".
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Emily Thornberry was eventually eliminated from the leadership election after failing to achieve enough nominations from constituency parties or affiliated groups.
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Emily Thornberry said that she shed no tears over the death, but was fearful of escalating tensions in the region.
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Emily Thornberry was replaced as Shadow Foreign Secretary by Lisa Nandy upon the election of Keir Starmer as Leader of the Labour Party.
45.
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.
46.
In late December 2020, Emily Thornberry voted for the European Union Act 2020, in line with the Labour Chief Whip.
47.
Emily Thornberry was re-selected as the Labour candidate for Islington South and Finsbury at the 2024 general election in February 2022.
48.
Emily Thornberry was not appointed Attorney General for England and Wales as expected as she had held the position of Shadow Attorney General for six years under Starmer and Ed Miliband.
49.
Emily Thornberry was elected Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee by vote in the House of Commons on 11 September 2024.
50.
In July 2024, Emily Thornberry was one of five politicians to cover for James O'Brien's radio show on LBC, as part of the station's "Guest Week".
51.
Emily Thornberry's constituency is in the London Borough of Islington, which has disproportionately high house prices and private sector rents.
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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.
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Emily Thornberry has called for a greater degree of control over private sector rents and more support for social house-building.
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Emily Thornberry has frequently campaigned for a greater commitment to affordable and social housing.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In March 2015, Emily Thornberry launched a campaign for a new Equal Pay Act.
59.
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.
60.
The Labour Party opposed selection and Emily Thornberry was criticised over the matter as a result.
61.
Emily Thornberry was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2025 New Year Honours for political and public service.