40 Facts About Rebecca Long-Bailey

Rebecca Roseanne Long-Bailey is a British politician and former solicitor serving as Member of Parliament for Salford and Eccles since 2015.

Rebecca Long-Bailey worked for the law firms Pinsent Masons and Halliwells from 2003 to 2007.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was admitted as a solicitor in 2007, where she worked for Hill Dickinson specialising in commercial law, commercial property, NHS contracts and NHS estates.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was elected to the British House of Commons at the 2015 general election.

Rebecca Long-Bailey served in Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet from 2016 to 2020.

Rebecca Long-Bailey served as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2016 to 2017, deputising for Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.

Rebecca Long-Bailey then served as Shadow Business Secretary from 2017 to 2020.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was a candidate in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election, finishing second to Keir Starmer.

Rebecca Long-Bailey briefly served as Shadow Secretary of State for Education.

Rebecca Long-Bailey Roseanne Long was born on 22 September 1979 in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, to Irish parents.

Rebecca Long-Bailey's father, Jimmy Long, was a Salford docker and a trade union representative at Shell, Barton Docks, and her mother Una was a shop worker.

Rebecca Long-Bailey worked in various call centres, a furniture factory, and in postal delivery before eventually studying to become a solicitor.

Rebecca Long-Bailey studied Politics and Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, then completed "various part-time law conversion and solicitors' courses".

Rebecca Long-Bailey has worked for the law firm Pinsent Masons and in 2003, she began working in landlord and tenant law for the law firm Halliwells; she was admitted as a solicitor on 1 November 2007 and moved that year to work for Hill Dickinson, specialising in commercial law, commercial property, NHS contracts and NHS estates.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the 2015 Labour leadership election.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was appointed to Labour's National Executive Committee by Corbyn as one of three representatives of the front bench, replacing Hilary Benn.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was appointed as the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury on 27 June 2016 after resignations from the Shadow Cabinet.

On Clive Lewis's resignation from the Shadow Cabinet over Corbyn's whipping of the Article 50 vote, Rebecca Long-Bailey was appointed as the Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 9 February 2017.

In 2019, Rebecca Long-Bailey contributed to the writing of Labour's manifesto for the 2019 general election.

Rebecca Long-Bailey said that "I don't just agree with the policies, I've spent the last four years writing them".

Rebecca Long-Bailey announced that she would stand in an article for Tribune magazine on 6 January 2020.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was seen by many observers and party colleagues as the continuity candidate who would continue to take the party in the same direction as Corbyn.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was sacked by Starmer on 25 June 2020, after using Twitter to share an interview with British actress Maxine Peake in which Peake said that the practice of police officers in the United States kneeling on someone's neck was "learnt from seminars with Israeli secret services".

Rebecca Long-Bailey described Peake as an "absolute diamond", before using a second tweet to say that she did not endorse "all aspects" of the interview.

Rebecca Long-Bailey was one of six Labour rebels to vote against the successful renewal of the Coronavirus Act 2020, which continued granting the government emergency powers to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rebecca Long-Bailey argued the government act denied parliamentary scrutiny and allowed "clumsy and asymmetric authoritarianism", in reference to police powers to detain potentially infectious people.

Rebecca Long-Bailey said that she was unhappy with Labour's response to allegations of antisemitism within the party during Corbyn's leadership, commenting that "I don't think we were dealing with complaints quickly enough".

Rebecca Long-Bailey said that if she was Labour leader then she would follow the recommendations of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Rebecca Long-Bailey has spoken in favour of a Green New Deal, pledging in a speech to "fight for investment in the low-carbon industries of today and tomorrow to secure a liveable planet for future generations".

On constitutional reform, Rebecca Long-Bailey supports abolishing the House of Lords, believing that checks and balances are necessary but should not be done by "a set of completely unelected people".

Rebecca Long-Bailey suggested that it should be replaced by a senate elected by proportional representation, which would analyse legislation with respect to "our wealth, our wellbeing, and our environmental sustainability".

Rebecca Long-Bailey voted in favour of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.

In 2020, Rebecca Long-Bailey signed the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights pledge, which described certain organisations as "trans-exclusionist hate groups", and called for people who supported those groups to be expelled from the Labour Party.

Rebecca Long-Bailey has said she would support workers in all strike actions and industrial disputes, "no questions asked".

In July 2020, Rebecca Long-Bailey joined the All Party Parliamentary Group on Whistleblowing.

Rebecca Long-Bailey is opposed to the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States and was one of six sponsors of an Early Day Motion against it in July 2020.

Rebecca Long-Bailey said it was "simply staggering that income from wealth continues to be taxed at a lower rate than income from work" and wants what she sees as unfairness to end.

Rebecca Long-Bailey wants "a wealth tax on the super-rich" together with further wealth redistribution to pay for public services as well as raised windfall taxes on "the super-profits of oil and gas companies".

Rebecca Long-Bailey is married to Stephen Bailey, a marketing executive who works for a chemicals company, and has one son.

Rebecca Long-Bailey is a Roman Catholic but disagrees with many of the Church's teachings.