Laura Kyrke-Smith | |
---|---|
Member of Parliament for Aylesbury | |
Assumed office 4 July 2024 | |
Preceded by | Rob Butler |
UK Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee | |
Assumed office 1 September 2013 | |
Personal details | |
Born | Laura Elizabeth Kyrke-Smith 1 September 1983 |
Political party | Labour |
Website | www |
Laura Elizabeth Kyrke-Smith MP (born September 1983) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Aylesbury since 2024. A member of the Labour Party,she gained the seat from Rob Butler,a member of the Conservative Party,which ended a century streak of Conservative/Unionist MPs in Aylesbury,started in the 1924 general election. [1] She is the first ever Labour MP in the Aylesbury Constituency as well as the first female MP to represent Aylesbury in the House of Commons. [2]
Kyrke-Smith was born in September 1983 to Peter St. L Kyrke-Smith,son of BHS Kyrke-Smith of Penbedw estate near Nannerch in Wales,and to Lyndsay Madeleine Pelly,daughter of Peter Jeremy Pelly and his wife Dorothy Joan Hill. [3] On her maternal side,through her grandfather her four-times great grandfather was the Hudson's Bay Company governor Sir John Pelly,1st Baronet,and through her grandmother her three-times great-grandfather was Sir Robert Keith Alexander Dick-Cunyngham,7/9th Baronet. [3]
From 2013 to 2017 Kyrke-Smith was chair of the socialist society Labour Campaign for International Development. She also worked at Portland Communications and in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a policy analyst. In 2019 she became the UK Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee. From 2021-2024 she was on the Board of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC). [4] [5] [6] She previously worked as an assistant to Professor Charlie Beckett [7] at the Polis media project at the London School of Economics. [8]
She is credited as a reader-contributor to the 3rd edition of Lonely Planet's Tanzania [9] and 2nd edition of The Rough Guide to Tanzania [10] guidebooks.
In the 2021 Buckinghamshire Council elections Kyrke-Smith ran for Labour in the Little Chalfont &Amersham Common ward coming 8th out of the eleven candidates with 448 votes. [11] [12]
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshire to the east, Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, and Oxfordshire to the west. The largest settlement is the city of Milton Keynes, and the county town is Aylesbury.
New Labour is the name given to the period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid-to late 1990s until 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen in a draft manifesto which was published in 1996 and titled New Labour, New Life for Britain. It was presented as the brand of a newly reformed party that had altered Clause IV and endorsed market economics. The branding was extensively used while the party was in government between 1997 and 2010. New Labour was influenced by the political thinking of Anthony Crosland and the leadership of Blair and Brown as well as Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell's media campaigning. The political philosophy of New Labour was influenced by the party's development of Anthony Giddens' Third Way which attempted to provide a synthesis between capitalism and socialism. The party emphasised the importance of social justice, rather than equality, emphasising the need for equal opportunity and believed in the use of markets to deliver economic efficiency and social justice.
Dame Margaret Mary Beckett is a British former politician who was Britain's first female Foreign Secretary and a minister under Prime Ministers Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown. Beckett was Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1992 to 1994, and briefly Leader of the Opposition and acting Leader of the Labour Party following John Smith's death in 1994. A member of the Labour Party, she served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Lincoln from 1974 to 1979 and for Derby South from 1983 to 2024. Her 45 years' tenure makes her the longest-serving female MP in British history. In the 2024 Dissolution Honours, she was nominated for a life peerage.
Quainton Road railway station was opened in 1868 in under-developed countryside near Quainton, in the English county of Buckinghamshire, 44 miles (71 km) from London. Built by the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, it was the result of pressure from the 3rd Duke of Buckingham to route the railway near his home at Wotton House and to open a railway station at the nearest point to it. Serving a relatively underpopulated area, Quainton Road was a crude railway station, described as "extremely primitive".
Buckinghamshire Railway Centre is a railway museum operated by the Quainton Railway Society Ltd. at Quainton Road railway station, about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, England. The site is divided into two halves which are joined by two foot-bridges, one of which provides wheelchair access. Each side has a demonstration line with various workshop buildings as well as museum buildings.
Luffield Abbey is a former civil parish, now in the parish of Lillingstone Dayrell with Luffield Abbey, in the very north of Buckinghamshire, England. It is on the border with Northamptonshire, close to Biddlesden and Silverstone.
Pitchcott is a village and civil parish in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire, England. It is about 3 miles (5 km) north-east of Waddesdon, slightly less than 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Winslow and slightly more than 4 miles north of Aylesbury. It is in the civil parish of Oving.
Aylesbury is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament.
Wycombe is a constituency in Buckinghamshire represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2024 by Labour's Emma Reynolds.
Buckingham was a constituency that was last represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament by Greg Smith, a Conservative.
Chesham and Amersham is a parliamentary constituency in Buckinghamshire, South East England, represented in the House of Commons by Sarah Green, a Liberal Democrat elected at a 2021 by-election.
Aylesbury railway station is a railway station in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England, on the London–Aylesbury line from London Marylebone via Amersham. It is 38 miles (61 km) from Aylesbury to Marylebone. A branch line from Princes Risborough on the Chiltern Main Line terminates at the station. It was the terminus for London Underground's Metropolitan line until the service was cut back to Amersham in 1961. The station was also known as Aylesbury Town under the management of British Railways from c. 1948 until the 1960s.
Buckinghamshire is a former United Kingdom Parliamentary constituency. It was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1885.
The Battle of Aylesbury was an engagement which took place on 1 November 1642, when Royalist forces, under the command of Prince Rupert, fought Aylesbury's Parliamentarian garrison at Holman's Bridge a few miles to the north of Aylesbury. The Parliamentarian forces were victorious, despite being heavily outnumbered.
Granborough Road railway station was a station serving the village of Granborough, to the north of Quainton in Buckinghamshire, England.
The Labour Party is a social-democratic political party in the United Kingdom. It has been described as being an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists, and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. It is the governing party of the United Kingdom, having won the 2024 general election, and is currently the largest political party by number of votes cast and number of seats in the House of Commons. There have been seven Labour prime ministers and fourteen Labour ministries. The party traditionally holds the annual Labour Party Conference during party conference season, at which senior Labour figures promote party policy.
The Brill Tramway, also known as the Quainton Tramway, Wotton Tramway, Oxford & Aylesbury Tramroad and Metropolitan Railway Brill Branch, was a six-mile (10 km) rail line in the Aylesbury Vale, Buckinghamshire, England. It was privately built in 1871 by the 3rd Duke of Buckingham as a horse tram line to transport goods between his lands around Wotton House and the national railway network. Lobbying from residents of the nearby town of Brill led to the line's extension to Brill and conversion to passenger use in early 1872. Two locomotives were bought for the line, but as it had been designed and built with horses in mind, services were very slow; trains travelled at an average speed of only 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/h).
Polis is the journalism think tank at the Media and Communications Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. It was founded in 2006 by Charlie Beckett, a journalist with 20 years experience at the BBC and ITN’s Channel 4 News. He is the author of SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World.
Buckinghamshire Council is the local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Buckinghamshire in England. It is a unitary authority, performing both county and district-level functions. It was created on 1 April 2020, replacing the previous Buckinghamshire County Council and the councils of the four abolished districts of Aylesbury Vale, Chiltern, South Bucks, and Wycombe. The non-metropolitan county is smaller than the ceremonial county, which additionally includes Milton Keynes.
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