CHUKA Harrison Umunna, the telegenic and media-savvy politician, now looks certain to be the leader of The Independent Group at Westminster.
One of his fellow TIGers, Heidi Allen, said on Friday that Mr Umunna, who represents Streatham in London, was the obvious candidate to lead the group, noting: “Chuka has brought us together." An announcement on Mr Umunna’s coronation is expected soon.
The son of a Nigerian father and an Anglo-Irish mother, the 40-year-old’s grandfather Sir Helenus Milmo was a QC, who was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.
London-born, Mr Umunna was educated locally, studied English and French law at Manchester University, and worked as a solicitor in the City before entering Parliament in 2010.
His majority then was 3,259, polling 43 per cent of the vote; in the 2017 election his majority was 26,285, polling 68 per cent of the vote.
When Ed Miliband became leader in October 2010, he was appointed his Private Parliamentary Secretary and within a year was in the Shadow Cabinet with the business portfolio. He was once dubbed the “Barack Obama for Britain”.
After Labour’s defeat in 2015 and Mr Miliband’s resignation, Mr Umunna was tipped as a replacement.
He called for Labour to target Conservatives and "aspirational, middle-class voters", saying the party needed to be "on the side of those who are doing well".
The Shadow Cabinet member threw his hat in the ring but within three days had removed it again, saying he was "uncomfortable" with the added level of scrutiny of being a leadership candidate.
When Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015, Mr Umunna returned to the backbenches and, following the EU referendum, has been largely associated with the Remain cause and the push for another EU referendum.
At the launch of TIG this week, the London MP said: “The bottom line is this: politics is broken, it doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s change it.” He later made clear he wanted the Westminster group to evolve into a fully-fledged centre-ground party.
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