Richard Burgon

Richard Burgon
MP

Burgon in the House of Commons, March 2016
Member of Parliament
for Leeds East
Assumed office
7 May 2015
Preceded by George Mudie
Majority 12,533 (32.8%)
Personal details
Born (1980-09-19) 19 September 1980
Leeds, United Kingdom
Political party Labour
Alma mater St John's College, Cambridge
Website Official website

Richard Burgon (born 19 September 1980) is a British Labour Party politician who is currently the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds East, first elected at the 2015 general election.[1]

Early life and education

Burgon was educated at Cardinal Heenan Roman Catholic High School and then studied at St John's College, Cambridge. He was chair of Cambridge University Labour Club.

He is the nephew of the former Labour MP Colin Burgon.

Career

Burgon was a trade union lawyer before being elected as the MP for Leeds East at the 2015 general election.[2]

Burgon is regarded as being on the hard left of the Labour Party[3] and has taken part in People's Assembly Against Austerity protests.[4] He has opposed military intervention and the bombing of Syria following the 2015 Paris attacks by alleged ISIS militants.[5]

Standing on the floor of the House of Commons in May 2015 he prefaced his mandatory oath of allegiance to Elizabeth II by expressing his support for constitutional change for an elected head of state: "As someone that believes that the head of state should be elected I make this oath in order to serve my constituents".[6]

Richard Burgon was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015.[7] Corbyn appointed him as shadow economic secretary to the treasury (city minister).

In an October 2015 Channel 4 News interview Burgon admitted that despite being Shadow City Minister for more than a month he was still yet to actually meet anyone from the city of London's finance and banking industry, nor could he remember the UK budget deficit for 2015.[8][9] A month later he was still yet to hold any such meeting.[10]

References

  1. ↑ "Parliamentary General Election results [Leeds East, 2015]". Leeds City Council. Retrieved 8 May 2015.
  2. ↑ Simmons, Richard, Meet the lawyers standing for Parliament, Lawyer 2B, 10 April 2015
  3. ↑ Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition Socialist Party (UK)
  4. ↑ "Protests held against UK Chancellor's spending cuts" Press TV 25 November, 2015.
  5. ↑ Burgeon, Richard (30 November 2015). "Bombing Syria Is Not the Right Thing for the Country, the Wider Region or for Britain". Huffington Post. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
  6. ↑ "Labour MP Richard Burgon Calls For End Of Monarchy Before Swearing Allegiance To The Queen". The Huffington Post UK. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
  7. ↑ http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/who-nominated-who-2015-labour-leadership-election
  8. ↑ Newman, Cathy. "Why I went full throttle in my own car-crash interview". www.telegraph.co.uk. he Telegraph. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
  9. ↑ Bartlett, Evan. "Labour MP endures four excruciating minutes in painful Channel 4 interview". i100. The Independent. Retrieved 14 December 2015.
  10. ↑ Hancock, Edith. "Labour's shadow City minister Richard Burgon remains a man of mystery in the Square Mile". www.cityam.com. City AM. Retrieved 10 December 2015.
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
George Mudie		 Member of Parliament
for Leeds East
2015–present 		Incumbent
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