Emily Thornberry

Emily Anne Thornberry (born 27 July 1960) is a British politician who has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington South and Finsbury since 2005.

A member of the Labour Party, she has served as Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales since 2021, and previously from 2011 to 2014.

Thornberry was born in Guildford, Surrey on 27 July 1960.

Her parents were Sallie Thornberry (née Bone ), a teacher, and Cedric Thornberry, at the time teaching international law at the London School of Economics, and later a United Nations Assistant Secretary-General.

Due to her father's birth in Belfast she is an Irish citizen and Irish passport holder.

When Thornberry was seven, her parents divorced and she had to leave their home with her mother and two brothers.

After this, she relied on free school meals and food parcels, and their cats were euthanised to save money.

She 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.

Her mother later became a Labour councillor and mayor (representing Stoke in Guildford from 1983 to 2003), and her father stood as the Labour candidate for Guildford in the 1966 general election.

She failed the eleven-plus exam, so attended a secondary modern school.

She 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.

She worked as a cleaner and a barmaid in London alongside resitting her O-Levels and taking her A-Levels.

After graduating from the University of Kent in Canterbury, she worked as a human rights lawyer from 1985 to 2005 and joined the Transport and General Workers' Union.

She 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.

Thornberry joined the Transport and General Workers' Union in 1985.

At the 2001 general election, Thornberry stood as the Labour candidate in Canterbury, but was defeated by the Conservative incumbent, Julian Brazier.

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.

Following the decision of Chris Smith not to stand again, 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.

She was elected to Parliament with a majority of 484, narrowly beating the Liberal Democrats.

Nick Smith (who was subsequently elected to Parliament representing Blaenau Gwent) served as her election agent.

Thornberry made her maiden speech in the House of Commons on 24 May 2005.

In Parliament, she has been a member of the Environmental Audit Committee and was on the Communities and Local Government Select Committee during the 2005–10 Parliament.

She has served as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Cycling Group and the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Choice and Sexual Health Group.

In 2006, 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.

She was found not to have broken the Parliamentary code of conduct.

Thornberry's main interests since becoming an MP have been in health, housing, the environment and equality.

She has also spoken on the need for more affordable housing, particularly in Islington.

In 2006, Thornberry introduced the Housing Association Bill, a Private member's bill which sought to improve the control of housing association tenants over their landlords.

Many of the ideas from this bill were taken up by the Cave Review.

On environmental matters, Thornberry worked with Friends of the Earth and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to campaign for a Climate Change Bill and a Marine Bill.

In 2006, Thornberry won the ePolitix Award for Environment Champion of the Year after being nominated by WWF.

In 2008, Thornberry supported a change in the law to allow single women and lesbian couples to seek in vitro fertilisation treatment.

In 2009, she was appointed as a ministerial aide in the Department of Energy and Climate Change and attended the Copenhagen Summit in December that year with Joan Ruddock and Ed Miliband.

In May 2010, Thornberry was returned as MP for Islington South and Finsbury with an increased majority, in a seat identified as the Liberal Democrats' top target in England for the 2010 general election.

After Jeremy Corbyn won the 2015 Labour leadership election, Thornberry was appointed Shadow Minister of State for Employment in September 2015, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in January 2016 and Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in June 2016.

She has also served in a number of other senior positions on Labour's front bench, namely as Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2016 to 2020, Shadow First Secretary of State from 2017 to 2020 and Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade from 2020 to 2021.

The daughter of a teacher and a diplomat, Thornberry was born in Guildford, Surrey, and attended a local secondary modern school.

She 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.

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.

She was appointed Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales in November 2021.