Member Article

Shadow business secretary announces Labour leadership bid

Chuka Umunna (pictured right), the shadow business secretary and MP for Streatham, has thrown his hat in the ring for the Labour party leadership.

Ed Miliband stepped down as leader on Friday after his party lost several seats to the SNP and Conservative Party in one of the most unpredictable general elections to date.

Despite first being appointed MP in 2010, Umunna was handed the business brief shortly after.

At the weekend, he said: “We cannot have a message that anybody is too rich or too poor to be a part of our party.

“What the Labour Party does well is build a big tent of people of different backgrounds, creeds, colours, races, religions, economic circumstances. And it is when we have an offer that is a big tent and appeals to a lot of people, that’s when we win.”

Born and bred in Streatham, Uumnna originally worked as a solicitor in the City before becoming a member of the Management Committee of the Labour-aligned Compass pressure group.

Umunna is the second individual to have put themselves forward for the role. Liz Kendall, the shadow health minister and MP for Leicester West, announced her candidacy in an interview with Andrew Neil on Sunday. She said: “We didn’t get people’s trust on the economy, we didn’t build a broad enough coalition of voters in different parts of the country and we didn’t set out a positive enough alternative for the future.

“It’s not enough to just critique what’s going [on] under this government, but actually you’ve got to set out something people can believe in that’s going to give them hope and confidence in the future … I’ve argued for quite a long while that we’ve got to set out something positive and not just be the kind of moaning man in the pub.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .