Anneliese Dodds

Anneliese Jane Dodds (born 16 March 1978) is a British Labour and Co-operative politician and public policy analyst serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, and Chair of the Labour Party.

While at Oxford, she was involved with student activism and ran for president of Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) in 1998.

She was fined £75 for breaking election rules by canvassing using email.

In 1999, she became OUSU president, serving until 2000.

She took part in protests against the introduction of tuition fees in 2000 and in support of LGBT rights.

She graduated in 2001 with a first-class degree.

After joining the Labour Party, she unsuccessfully contested Billericay at the 2005 general election and Reading East at the 2010 general election.

At the 2005 general election, Dodds stood unsuccessfully as the Labour Party candidate in Billericay, where she finished second with 29.2% of the vote behind the incumbent Conservative Party MP John Baron.

Dodds later studied for a master's degree in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in Government at the London School of Economics, where she completed a thesis on liberalisation in higher education in France and the UK in 2006.

She also had her postdoctoral fellowship at the LSE funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

She was also unsuccessful in the 2006 Oxford City council elections for the ward of Holywell.

Dodds was a lecturer in Public Policy at King’s College London from 2007 to 2010 and a senior lecturer in Public Policy at Aston University from 2010 to 2014.

Her research interests have been stated as being in regulation and risk in the public sector, and she has been published in journals such as The Political Quarterly, Public Policy and Administration, and the British Journal of General Practice.

Dodds also stood unsuccessfully in the 2010 general election in Reading East, finishing third with 25.5% of the vote behind the incumbent Conservative MP Rob Wilson and the Liberal Democrat candidate.

Dodds was elected to the European Parliament at the 2014 European Parliament election.

Dodds was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the South East England region in 2014.

In the European Parliament, she sat on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

In the 2015 Labour leadership election, she supported Yvette Cooper.

She has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Oxford East since 2017 and was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 2014 to 2017.

Born in Aberdeen and privately educated at Robert Gordon's College, Dodds read Philosophy, Politics and Economics as an undergraduate at St Hilda's College, Oxford and subsequently took a master's degree in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Government at the London School of Economics.

She lectured in Public Policy at King’s College London and Aston University.

She resigned her South East England seat when she was elected to the House of Commons at the 2017 general election.

She served in the Shadow Treasury Team of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell as Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 2017 to 2020.

In this role, she supported calls for a confirmatory referendum on Britain's withdrawal from the European Union.

At the snap 2017 general election, Dodds was elected to Parliament as MP for Oxford East, winning with 65.2% of the vote and a majority of 23,284.

On 3 July 2017, she was appointed as a Shadow Treasury Minister by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

In 2018, the second edition of her book, Comparative Public Policy, was published by Red Globe Press, an imprint of Palgrave Macmillan.

She was Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Whistleblowing from 2018 to 2019.

In April 2019, she supported calls for a second Brexit referendum.

Dodds was re-elected as MP for Oxford East at the 2019 general election with a decreased vote share of 57% and a decreased majority of 17,832.

She was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer from April 2020 to May 2021, the first woman to hold the position.

In April 2020, she was appointed Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer by new Labour leader Keir Starmer.

She was demoted from the role in a reshuffle after the 2021 local elections, and appointed Chair of the Party and Policy Review.

She gained the additional Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary brief in September 2021, following Marsha de Cordova's resignation.

Anneliese Dodds was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and was educated at Dunnottar Primary School in Stonehaven and the private co-educational day school Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen.

She then studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Hilda's College, Oxford.

On 5 April 2020, Dodds was appointed Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer by the newly-elected Labour leader Keir Starmer, becoming the first woman to hold this position.

Some commentators argued that she struggled to make an impact on the political discussion in the context of generous government spending during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2021, The Sunday Times reported that Starmer was preparing to dismiss Dodds.

Two months later, after a set of relatively poor results for Labour at the 2021 local elections she was removed from her position in a shadow cabinet reshuffle and replaced with Rachel Reeves.