Stella Creasy was born on 5 April 1977 in Sutton Coldfield,[1] and is the daughter of Corinna Frances Avril (néeMartin) and Philip Charles Creasy;her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher of a special needs school.[1][2] Her elder brother,Matthew Creasy,born in 1974,is an academic.[3] Creasy's mother described her own parents as "very aristocratic" and herself as "enormously privileged",which contributed to her decision to join the Labour Party.[1]
At the 2015 general election,Creasy was re-elected as MP for Walthamstow with an increased vote share of 68.9% and an increased majority of 23,195.[25][26][27] Following the Labour Party's defeat in the election,she stood in the Labour Party deputy leadership election.[28][29] She stated she was prepared to work with any of the candidates for the party leadership,including Jeremy Corbyn,saying,"that process of rebuilding isn’t about any one person it's about all of us. It's written on the back of our membership card that we achieve more together than we do alone."[30][31] She gained 26% of the vote and finished second to Tom Watson. She did not back any of the final four leadership candidates.[32]
She later became a vocal critic of Corbyn and said the party under his leadership was "running on empty".[33] She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Corbyn in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election.[34] Also in 2016,she criticised Corbyn after he endorsed decriminalisation of the sex industry and accused left-wing campaign group Momentum of being more interested in "meetings and moralising" than real campaigning.[35][36]
Creasy supported Remain in the EU referendum in June 2016[37] and voted against the triggering of Article 50 in February 2017.[38]
Creasy speaking at the 2016 Labour Party Conference
At the snap 2017 general election,Creasy was again re-elected with an increased vote share of 80.6% and an increased majority of 32,017.[39][40]
Creasy argued in September 2018 that misogyny should be made a hate crime.[41] In June 2019,she described the culture of the Labour movement as toxic.[42] Later that year,she was protected from a potential trigger ballot and deselection by her local party as she was on maternity leave.[43]
At the 2019 general election,Creasy was again re-elected,with a decreased vote share of 76.1% and a decreased majority of 30,682.[44]
Payday loans
Creasy has campaigned successfully for more regulation of payday loans companies.[45] In an article published by The Guardian in 2012,she stated that just six companies controlled lending to 90% of the seven million Britons without a bank account or credit card. She highlighted that the average cost of credit charged to these customers was 272% APR,as in the rest of Europe,and that there was a fourfold increase in payday loans since the start of the recession in 2008,which led to cross-party parliamentary support for a cap.[45] Creasy also highlighted in a speech to the House of Commons the lack of competition in the market,leading to Government support for a cap of loans which exploit the poor,which in some cases reached 4000% APR.[46] Creasy won The Spectator magazine's Campaigner of the Year prize in their Parliamentarian of the Year awards in 2011 for her work on the issue,[47] and was also acknowledged by the coalition government's Chancellor George Osborne for having contributed to the government's change of policy.[48]
In 2012,a Wonga employee used company equipment to make offensive personal attacks against Creasy.[49] Wonga made an "immediate and unreserved apology" following these malicious attacks,and Creasy also managed to get the firm to promote one of her constituency events in aid of struggling families.[49]
Abortion rights
Abortion law in Northern Ireland is more restrictive than elsewhere in the United Kingdom,resulting in many women travelling from Northern Ireland to Great Britain to access abortion services. In 2017,a potential amendment to the Queen's Speech,organised by Creasy,calling for the Government to allocate adequate funding for women who are forced to travel to England to have an abortion,gained cross-party support and was ultimately signed by 100 MPs,threatening a government defeat.[50]Conservative MP Peter Bottomley was a co-signer of Creasy's amendment. In answer to a question from Bottomley in the Commons on 29 June 2017,Philip Hammond,Chancellor of the Exchequer,said the government would support free abortions on the mainland for Northern Irish women.[51][52] Earlier in June,a Supreme Court ruling upheld the legal basis for a charge of £900 for women from the province seeking an abortion on the mainland,whereas other necessary treatments on the NHS would have been free.[51][53] Creasy was cautious in her response to the development. "The devil will be in the detail",she said.[52] She was reported to have received threats from some anti-abortion activists.[54][55]
At the end of July 2013,Creasy received numerous rape threats and other misogynistic messages on her Twitter timeline[57] after expressing support for the feminist campaigner Caroline Criado Perez,who had lobbied the Bank of England to put a woman on the £10 note and received similar messages.[2] On 2 September 2014 at the City of London Magistrates' Court,Peter Nunn was found guilty of sending menacing messages to Creasy,[58] and was subsequently jailed for eighteen weeks.[59]
Creasy wrote in an article published on 27 July:"Twitter tell me we should simply block those who 'offend us',as though a rape threat is matter of bad manners,not criminal behaviour."[60] She appeared on Newsnight on 30 July 2013 with Toby Young,the Conservative commentator,over the validity of addressing harassment on the social networkingsite.[61][62] She criticised him for a previous tweet about an MP's breasts.[63] Young has objected to Twitter's subsequent change in policy,writing that the company,"shouldn't change its abuse policy in response to being brow-beaten by a politician".[64]
Anti-war protests
Creasy allegedly received threats via social media following her vote for extending UK military action against ISIS to Syria after the parliamentary debate on 2 December 2015.[65] Creasy was undecided until the day of the vote,while staff in her Walthamstow constituency office had to deal with what they referred to as harassing telephone calls.[66] Protesters had gathered outside the closed constituency office the previous night urging a 'no' vote.[65][66] On Facebook,Creasy defended their right to peaceful protest.[67] Reports that protesters had gathered outside her home proved to be unfounded.[68][69]
In April 2023 Creasy revealed that she had been subject to a baseless complaint to social services. She had been investigated by her local council after it had received a report from a man using the alias Lance Jones. The Times reported that the man had contacted Waltham Forest Council to complain that the MP's "extreme views" would damage her children and they should be removed from her care. The complainant,who apologised,had no personal connection to Creasy or her two young children.[71][72]
Views on transgender matters
Stella Creasy has said "some women were born with penises’and that ‘a trans woman is an adult human female’"[73]
Personal life
Creasy's partner is Dan Fox,a former director of Labour Friends of Israel.[74] In June 2019,she announced she was pregnant.[75] She gave birth to a daughter in November 2019 and,after campaigning for better maternity rights for MPs,became the first MP to appoint a 'locum MP',Kizzy Gardiner,to manage constituency work.[76][77][78] In February 2021,announcing her second pregnancy,she challenged government proposals to limit new plans for parliamentary maternity leave to government ministers.[79]
Related Research Articles
Diane Julie Abbott is a British politician who is a serving Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since being elected in 1987. She served in the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Home Secretary from 2016 to 2020 and is an advisor to the Privy Council. She is both the first black woman elected to parliament and the longest-serving black MP. She remains a member of the Labour Party,while sitting in the House of Commons as an independent,having had the whip suspended in April 2023.
Yvette Cooper is a British politician serving as Shadow Home Secretary under Keir Starmer since 2021,having also served in the position under Ed Miliband from 2011 to 2015. She previously served in Gordon Brown's Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2008 to 2009 and Work and Pensions Secretary from 2009 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party,she has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Normanton,Pontefract and Castleford,previously Pontefract and Castleford,since 1997.
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party,Corbyn describes himself as a socialist. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North since 1983. As of October 2020,Corbyn sits in the House of Commons as an independent,following the suspension of the whip.
Dame Angela Eagle DBE is a British Labour Party politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wallasey since 1992. Eagle was born in Yorkshire and studied PPE at the University of Oxford,before working for the CBI and then a trade union.
Dame Louise Joyce Ellman is a British politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool Riverside from 1997 to 2019. She is a member of the Labour Party.
Dame Diana Ruth Johnson is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston upon Hull North since the 2005 general election. A member of the Labour Party,she was elected as Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee on 15 December 2021,replacing Yvette Cooper.
Lisa Eva Nandy is a British Labour Party politician serving as Shadow Cabinet Minister for International Development in 2023. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wigan since 2010. Nandy previously served as Shadow Foreign Secretary,Shadow Levelling Up Secretary and Shadow Energy Secretary.
Shabana Mahmood is a British politician and barrister who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Ladywood since 2010. A member of the Labour Party,she has served in the Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice from September 2023. She previously served as Campaign Co-ordinator from 2021 to 2023,and briefly as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2015.
Owen Smith is a British lobbyist and former Labour Party politician who has been the UK government relations director for pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb since 2020. Smith was Member of Parliament (MP) for Pontypridd from 2010 to 2019.
Elizabeth Louise Kendall is a British Labour politician who has served as Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions since 2023. She has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester West since 2010.
Kezia Alexandra Ross Dugdale is a Scottish former politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2015 to 2017. A former member of the Scottish Labour Party and Co-operative Party,she was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Lothian region from 2011 to 2019.
Angela Rayner is a British politician serving as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party since 2020 and Shadow Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up,Housing and Communities since 2023. Rayner has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Ashton-under-Lyne since 2015. She ideologically identifies as a socialist and as being part of Labour's soft left.
Catherine Jane Smith is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Lancaster and Fleetwood since 2015. A member of the Labour Party,she was a member of the shadow cabinets led by Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer from 2016 to 2021 as Shadow Secretary of State,previously Shadow Minister,for Young People and Democracy.
The 2015 Labour Party leadership election was triggered by the resignation of Ed Miliband as Leader of the Labour Party on 8 May 2015,following the party's defeat at the 2015 general election. Harriet Harman,the Deputy Leader,became Acting Leader but announced that she would stand down following the leadership election. It was won by Jeremy Corbyn in the first round. Coterminous with the leadership election,in the 2015 Labour Party deputy leadership election,Tom Watson was elected to succeed Harman as deputy leader.
Rachael Helen Maskell is a British politician serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for York Central since 2015. A member of the Labour and Co-operative parties,she was Shadow Environment Secretary from 2016 to 2017 and Shadow Employment Secretary in 2020.
Jessica Rose Phillips is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Yardley since 2015. A member of the Labour Party,she was Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding in Keir Starmer's Opposition frontbench from 2020 to 2023.
Rebecca Roseanne Long-Bailey is a British politician and a solicitor serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Salford and Eccles since 2015. A member of the Labour Party,Long-Bailey served in the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2016 to 2017,Shadow Secretary of State for Business,Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2017 to 2020 and Shadow Secretary of State for Education in 2020.
Clive Anthony Lewis is a British Labour politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Norwich South since the 2015 general election. Lewis was a candidate for Leader of the Labour Party in the 2020 leadership election. He is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group parliamentary caucus.
The 2015 Labour Party deputy leadership election was triggered on 8 May 2015 by the resignation of Harriet Harman as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party of the United Kingdom following the party's defeat at the 2015 General Election. Harman,the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party,became Acting Leader following Leader Ed Miliband's resignation. Harman announced on the same day that she would step down as Deputy Leader,with her resignation taking effect when the new Leader and Deputy Leader are elected.
The 2016 Labour Party leadership election was called when a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party arose following criticism of his approach to the Remain campaign in the referendum on membership of the European Union and questions about his leadership of the party.
References
1 2 3 4 Coleman, John (5 July 2015). "Relative Values: Stella Creasy and her mum, Corinna". The Sunday Times. London. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 8 June 2019. CORINNA My parents came from a very aristocratic background, so it never occurred to them to be anything other than Tory. I grew up in Bushey in Hertfordshire and I went to a public school called St Margaret's. At college, I realised how enormously privileged I was, so partly out of a sense of guilt, I joined the Labour party.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
