Emily Sophia Wedgwood Benn (born 4 October 1989) is an English politician. She was an unsuccessful Parliamentary candidate in both the

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

and

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UK general elections. At the 2014 local elections, Benn was elected to the West Thornton ward of

Croydon Borough Council Croydon London Borough Council is the local authority for the London Borough of Croydon in Greater London, England. It is a London borough council, one of 32 in the United Kingdom capital of London. Croydon is divided into 28 wards, electing 70 co ...

, serving until 2016. At the

2022 local elections This local electoral calendar for 2022 lists the subnational elections held in 2022. Referendums, Recall election, recall and retention elections, and national By-election, by-elections (special elections) are also included. January *9 January: ...

, she was elected to the Bread Street ward of the City of London Corporation. She is the eldest child and only daughter of The 3rd Viscount Stansgate and Nita Clarke (née Bowes), and the granddaughter of the late Labour MP Tony Benn.

Early and family life

Benn was born in 1989 in Croydon, England, at the time that the Labour Party Conference of that year was being held. As the daughter of a viscount, she is entitled to be styled as '' The Honourable''. Benn is a quarter- Indian on her mother's side Benn claims that her first political experience was campaigning for her grandfather in his Chesterfield constituency in the 1992 general election at age two, and she joined the Labour Party at age 14. Four generations of her family have served as British Members of Parliament (MP) – uncle Hilary Benn, grandfather Tony Benn, great-grandfather William Wedgwood Benn and great-great-grandfathers,

Sir John Benn ''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as p ...

and Daniel Holmes.

Education

Benn attended Wallington High School for Girls where she achieved 11 A* grades in her

GCSE The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private sc ...

s. She then studied Music, History and Latin for A level at St Olave's Grammar School, and later read History and Politics at New College, Oxford.

Professional career

After university, Benn joined the graduate training programme at UBS Investment Bank. She later joined the multi-asset sales team at the bank in London. In 2016 she started working for UBS in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. In 2018 Benn was a graduate research assistant at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, helping to write a book on ageing demographics with Camilla Cavendish. She later worked as Chief of Staff for Jonathan Powell before becoming Chief Chief of Staff of Tortoise Media .

Political career

Candidacy for Parliament

On 12 September 2007, three weeks before her eighteenth birthday, Benn was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the West Sussex constituency of

East Worthing and Shoreham East Worthing and Shoreham is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 1997 by Tim Loughton of the Conservative Party. Boundaries The District of Adur, and the Borough of Worthing wards of Broadwater, Gais ...

at the 2010 general election. The sitting MP, Conservative Tim Loughton, was defending a majority over Labour of 8,183 votes from the 2005 general election. At the election, Benn finished in third place, 4,276 votes behind the Liberal Democrat candidate in second place, while Loughton increased his majority to 11,105 votes. On 16 July 2014, Benn was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Croydon South for the 2015 general election. She increased the Labour vote share by 4.8%, but was defeated by Conservative candidate Chris Philp.

Local councillor

In July 2013, Benn was selected as one of three Labour candidates for the ward of West Thornton on Croydon Borough Council in the 2014 local council elections. In May 2014, she was elected top of the ballot with a majority of 1,777. She resigned as a councillor in 2016 after accepting a job in

. Benn served on the board of trustees of the London Youth Games and London Mozart Players.Emily Benn
/ref> Benn returned to local politics in 2022, being elected to the ward of Bread Street on the City of London Corporation as an independent in the 2022 election.

Andrew Fisher complaint

In the autumn of 2015, Benn formally complained about Andrew Fisher, Jeremy Corbyn's head of policy, for supporting the

Class War party Class War is an anarchist group and newspaper established by Ian Bone and others in 1983 in the United Kingdom. An incarnation of Class War was briefly registered as a political party for the purposes of fighting the 2015 United Kingdom general ...

at the general election earlier that year; Fisher was suspended. ''The Guardian'' also stated that 'Fisher Supporters' had pointed out that a page titled 'Emily Benn for Croydon South' on Facebook published a

retweet Reblogging (or, in Twitter parlance, retweeting) is the mechanism in blogging which allows users to repost the content of another user's post with an indication that the source of the post is another user. It was first developed by Jonah Peretti ...

suggesting Labour members who were '"disappointed" with Corbyn's "male dominated" leadership join the Women's Equality Party.

Electoral history

2022 City of London Corporation election

2015 general election

2010 general election

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Benn, Emily 1989 births Living people Alumni of New College, Oxford Emily Councillors in the London Borough of Croydon Daughters of viscounts English people of American descent English people of Indian descent English people of Scottish descent Labour Party (UK) councillors Labour Party (UK) parliamentary candidates People educated at Wallington High School for Girls People from South Norwood Tony Benn People from Croydon Women councillors in England