Jess Asato | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2024 | |
| Member of Parliament forLowestoft | |
| Assumed office 4 July 2024 | |
| Preceded by | Constituency re-established |
| Majority | 2,016 (4.8%) |
| Islington Borough Councillor for St George's Ward | |
| In office 6 May 2010 – 4 February 2013 | |
| Preceded by | Walter Burgess |
| Succeeded by | Kat Fletcher |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1981-04-30)30 April 1981 (age 44)[1] |
| Political party | Labour |
| Alma mater | Trinity Hall, Cambridge |
Jessica Redmond-Withey Asato[2] (born 30 April 1981)[3] is a BritishLabour Party politician who has been theMember of Parliament (MP) forLowestoft since2024.[4] She was a member ofIslington Borough Council from 2010 to 2013.
Asato is a quarterJapanese and has family inHawaii.[5] She grew up in theGorleston-on-Sea area ofGreat Yarmouth and the nearbyNorfolk village ofRollesby where she lived with and cared for her grandmother, who had serious health problems, and went to Flegg High School inGreat Yarmouth. When she was 16 in 1997, she moved from Norfolk to live with her mother inLondon and went toFrancis Holland School, an all-girls private school. She was a keen debater at Sixth Form level, reaching the semi-finals of the Oxford Union schools' debate competition.[6] Asato studied atTrinity Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a degree in law.[7]
In 2009, Asato was ranked no 78 among the Top 100 most influential Left-wingers byThe Daily Telegraph.[8] In 2009, she wrote to the then Health SecretaryAndy Burnham, raising concerns about his plans to make the NHS the "preferred provider" of NHS services. Asato was subsequently accused of hypocrisy for later supportingClive Efford's anti-privatisation National Health Service (Amended Duties and Powers) Bill.[9] In 2010, she madeThe Independent's list of 10 names to watch, perhaps because she was "Social media lead" onDavid Miliband's leadership election campaign[10] and was featured in theTotal Politics videoMake Your Mind Up (And Vote!) withBucks Fizz and "famous political figures".[11]
She was a councillor onIslington London Borough Council from 2010 to 2013,[12] but resigned to spend more time in Norwich. She has been criticised in Islington by political opponents for spending too much time in Norfolk, and for allegedly being a "professional politician".[13] She worked in Westminster two days a week as political adviser to former cabinet minister and culture secretaryTessa Jowell, and was featured as one of theEvening Standard's Lucky 13 in 2013.[14] She is reported as saying that spending her formative years growing up in a low income household in Norfolk – from 11 until she left home at 16, and being the first person in her family to have made it to university - gives her a good foundation for life as an MP.[15]
In Islington, she was chair of the Corporate Parenting Board. At theLabour Party Conference in 2014, she highlighted figures which she claimed showed there were 1,000 fewer childcare places in the East of England, that one in five parents had been forced to call in sick over the summer to look after their children and that child minder costs were up 44% in the last four years in the East of England.[16]
In 2015, she was one of 15 Labour candidates each given financial support of £10,000 byLord Oakeshott, the formerLiberal Democrat, in January 2015.[17] In the general election, Asato came second toChloe Smith inNorwich North, having increased the Labour vote by 2% (Smith increased the Tory vote by more than 3%).
On 24 February 2023, she was selected by local party members as theprospective parliamentary candidate forWaveney at the2024 general election.[18] Due to the2023 review of constituency boundaries across the UK, the Waveney constituency was abolished and the previous constituency that it replaced,Lowestoft, was re-established: the new Lowestoft constituency was made up of 44.9% of the geographical area of the old Waveney seat, and 91.4% of its population.[19] Asato went on to contest the Lowestoft constituency in the2024 general election, achieving a victory over the previous Conservative MP for Waveney,Peter Aldous, with a margin of just over 2000 votes.[4]
She was employed as a health policy researcher at theSocial Market Foundation and was director of the Labour Yes! Campaign in favour ofalternative vote plus. She was previously acting director ofProgress, a director ofLeft Foot Forward (2009–2015[20]) and vice-chairman of theFabian Society.[21] It has been suggested that under her directorship, Progress became less of a cheerleader group for Blairite politics than it was when it started.[22]
She was vice-chair of theElectoral Reform Society (2011–2015),[23][20] having previously directed the Vote for a Change campaign for areferendum on electoral reform along withNeal Lawson and Colin Hines from 2009 to 2012.[24] She was also chair of governors of Jack Taylor Special School for children with disabilities and learning difficulties, and served as joint acting chair ofBrook.[23] She is on the advisory board of theEuropean Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.[25]
In 2025, she was appointed a director of theSocial Market Foundation think tank.[26]
Asato was quickly divorced from her first husband,Howard Dawber, who stood as the Labour candidate forBexleyheath and Crayford at the2010 general election, whilst her second husband, journalist Gareth Butler, died of a heart attack in 2008.[27] She married her third husband, Rob Chaplin, in 2014 and had a baby in 2015.[28][5]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| New constituency | Member of Parliament forLowestoft 2024–present | Incumbent |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Chair of theFabian Society 2012–2014 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theYoung Fabians 2002–2003 | Succeeded by |