Nadia Whittome
Nadia Whittome | |
|---|---|
 Whittome in 2019 | |
| Member of Parliament for Nottingham East | |
| Assumed office 12 December 2019 | |
| Preceded by | Chris Leslie |
| Majority | 17,393 (43.4%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 29 August 1996 Nottingham, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Labour |
| Other associations | Socialist Campaign Group |
| Website | Official website |
Nadia Edith Whittome[1] (born 29 August 1996)[2] is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Nottingham East since the 2019 general election. She was elected at the age of 23, and became the Baby of the House as the youngest MP. She is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, a parliamentary group of Labour MPs.
Early life[]
Whittome was born on 29 August 1996 in Nottingham, England.[3][4] Her Punjabi Sikh father emigrated to the UK from Banga, India at the age of 21. He first worked in factories and as a miner before giving immigration advice and running a shop.[5] Her mother is an Anglo-Indian Catholic solicitor and former member of the Labour Party, who left in protest at the amendment of Clause IV of the constitution in 1995.[6] Whittome grew up in a single-parent household, with a brother.[5][7] Whittome attended a private school in Nottingham, between the ages of 7 and 11[8] and later attended West Bridgford School, an academy school.[9] She also attended Bilborough Sixth Form College, sitting two A Levels. Whittome has lived in The Meadows, Top Valley, and West Bridgford areas of Nottinghamshire.[10]
Whittome says she became interested in politics in 2013 due to the effects of the "Bedroom tax" and austerity on her local community.[7][11] She worked in the constituency office of the Member of Parliament (MP) for North West Durham Pat Glass, Shadow Minister of State for Europe, during the 2016 European Union referendum campaign. She completed an access course at Nottingham college,[6] and law at Nottingham University for two years, before dropping out for financial reasons.[12] She contested the 2017 Nottinghamshire County Council election as the Labour candidate for the West Bridgford West ward, coming second.[1][9]
After university, she was employed as a hate crime project worker and a carer.[6][5][13]
Prior to her election, she was a national committee member of the pro-Remain organisations Another Europe is Possible and Labour for a Socialist Europe.[14][15][16]
Parliamentary career[]
Whittome was selected as the Labour candidate for Nottingham East on 28 October 2019.[12] She was elected as the MP for the constituency in the December general election with a majority of 17,393 (43.4%).[17] At the age of 23, she was the youngest MP in the House of Commons, and therefore gained the unofficial title of Baby of the House.[7][18] The seat had been won by the Labour Party candidate at every election since the 1992 general election, and had previously been represented by Chris Leslie, himself a former Baby of the House.[19][a] Whittome is of Punjabi descent and the first BAME MP elected in Nottingham.[20] She identifies ideologically as a democratic socialist.[21]
Following her election, she said she would only be keeping the equivalent of "an average worker's wage", as determined by the Office for National Statistics, of £35,000 (after tax), and would donate the remainder of her £79,468 salary as an MP to local charities.[6] Whittome initially supported Clive Lewis in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election but when Lewis withdrew, nominated Emily Thornberry.[22][23][24] On 28 February 2020, Whittome announced that she would be voting for Rebecca Long-Bailey for leader and Dawn Butler for deputy.[25]
In February 2020, Whittome organised a letter signed by 170 MPs demanding that foreign-born offenders not be deported back to Jamaica.[26] During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked as a part-time carer at a care home. Whittome appeared on Newsnight in April where she discussed shortages in PPE at her workplace. Shortly after her appearance on the show, she claimed that she had been fired from her job as a carer for "spreading misinformation". Her employer ExtraCare denied that there were any shortages in PPE at the care home, and also stated that Whittome had not been fired, but that her services were "no longer needed" as their own in-house care team could now meet their needs.[27] In September, however, ExtraCare issued a statement in which they admitted that there had been shortages of PPE at the care home, and that Whittome had helped to resolve this through public appeals in March and April.[28]
Following Keir Starmer taking over as Leader of the Labour Party in April 2020, Whittome was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.[29] In response to the toppling of the Statue of Edward Colston on 7 June 2020, Whittome tweeted "I celebrate these acts of resistance" and called for "a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it".[30][31]
In September, Whittome was one of eighteen Labour MPs who defied the whip and voted against the Overseas Operations Bill. She said the bill was "anti-veteran, anti-human rights, and would effectively decriminalise torture". In response, she was sacked from her role as a parliamentary private secretary.[32] In November, she signed an open letter condemning violence and discrimination against trans people.[33]
Whittome was critical of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, calling it "the next step in our descent to authoritarianism" and claimed the Bill was "born out of Priti Patel's fury at Black Lives Matter".[34] In May 2021, alongside celebrities and other public figures, she was a signatory to an open letter from Stylist magazine which called on the government to address what it described as an "epidemic of male violence" by funding an "ongoing, high-profile, expert-informed awareness campaign on men's violence against women and girls".[35]
Personal life[]
Whittome identifies as queer.[36] She speaks fluent French and German.[37][38] In 2021, Whittome announced that she had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and would be taking a leave of absence.[39] She is a vegan.[40]
Notes[]
References[]
- ^ Jump up to: a b "West Bridgford West". Nottingham County Council. Archived from the original on 17 December 2019. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
- ^ Brunskill, Ian (19 March 2020). The Times guide to the House of Commons 2019 : the definitive record of Britain's historic 2019 General Election. p. 290. ISBN 978-0-00-839258-1. OCLC 1129682574.
- ^ Nadia Whittome [@NadiaWhittomeMP] (29 August 2020). "23 has been a whirlwind. [...] 24, let's have you