Jon Cruddas | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2020 | |
| Policy Coordinator of theLabour Party | |
| In office 15 May 2012 – 11 May 2015 | |
| Leader | Ed Miliband |
| Preceded by | Liam Byrne |
| Member of Parliament forDagenham and Rainham Dagenham (2001–2010) | |
| In office 7 June 2001 – 30 May 2024 | |
| Preceded by | Judith Church |
| Succeeded by | Margaret Mullane |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1962-04-07)7 April 1962 (age 63) |
| Political party | Labour |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
| Residence(s) | Notting Hill,London, England |
| Alma mater | University of Warwick |
| Signature |  |
| Website | www |
| Academic background | |
| Thesis | An analysis of value theory, the sphere of production and contemporary approaches to the reorganisation of workplace relations (1991) |
Jonathan Cruddas[1] (born 7 April 1962) is a BritishLabour Party politician who served asMember of Parliament (MP) forDagenham and Rainham, formerlyDagenham, between2001 and2024.
A critic of theBlair government, Cruddas unsuccessfully stood for thedeputy leadership of the Labour Party in2007. He has been a leader inMaurice Glasman'sBlue Labour project, launched in 2009. In 2012, he was appointed toEd Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, replacingLiam Byrne as Policy Coordinator.
Cruddas was born inHelston, Cornwall, to John, a sailor in theRoyal Navy, and Pat (a native ofCounty Donegal, Ireland).[2][3] He was educated at theOaklands Roman Catholic Comprehensive School inWaterlooville nearPortsmouth. He then moved toAustralia before enrolling at theUniversity of Warwick.[3] He graduated from its Department of Industrial Relations with anMA thesis onLabour market structure in the construction industry: a case study of Milton Keynes in 1985.[4] He was a Visiting Fellow at theUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison from 1987 to 1989.[3] He received aPhD from the University of Warwick'sSchool of Industrial and Business Studies in 1991 for a thesis entitledAn analysis of value theory, the sphere of production and contemporary approaches to the reorganisation of workplace relations and supervised by Peter John Nolan.[5][6]
In 1989, he became apolicy officer for theLabour Party before being appointed Senior Assistant toLabour Party General SecretaryLarry Whitty in 1994, remaining in that position whenTom Sawyer became General Secretary that same year. After the1997 general election, he was employed as Deputy Political Secretary to newly electedPrime MinisterTony Blair. His main role was to be a liaison between the Prime Minister and thetrade unions, with whom Blair had often had a difficult relationship. In this role, he also worked heavily on theintroduction of theminimum wage.
Cruddas was selected to be theprospective parliamentary candidate for the safeLabour seat ofDagenham in 2000, after the sitting MPJudith Church announced that she would be retiring. He was elected as the MP for Dagenham the following year at the2001 general election, with a majority of 8,693 votes.
From the backbenches, Cruddas quickly became a vocal critic of the government for what he saw as their ignoring of their traditional, working-class support in a bid to be more appealing to middle-class voters.[7] He rebelled against the government on a number of occasions; including on the introduction ofuniversitytop-up fees, the legislation onasylum seekers, the introduction oftrust schools, proposals to renew theUK Trident nuclear weapons system, andfoundation trusts.[8][9][10][11] He supported both the Fourth Option for direct investment in council housing and theTrade Union Freedom Bill.[12]
Cruddas was re-elected at the2005 general election, but hisDagenham constituency wasabolished in boundary changes for the2010 general election. Cruddas chose to contest the newly created constituency ofDagenham and Rainham, which was notionally marginal. He won the seat by 2,630 votes in a close-run election campaign, which was a seat that theBritish National Party had heavily targeted. This resulted in a large number of anti-fascist organisations not affiliated to the Labour Party, such asHope not Hate, campaigning for Cruddas to resist the BNP. After being elected, he took up a part-time position teaching Labour history atUniversity College, Oxford, from 2010 to 2012.[13]
On 27 September 2006, Cruddas announced his intention to stand to becomeDeputy Leader of the Labour Party once the incumbent,John Prescott, stood down.[14] He said he did not want to beDeputy Prime Minister, but instead wished to act as a "transmission belt" with the grassroots of the party.[15] In interviews, Cruddas also said that he did not want the "trappings or baubles" that would potentially come with the job of Deputy Prime Minister, such as use of theDorneywood weekend country residence.[16]
Cruddas accrued nominations from 49 MPs and received strong union backing, includingAmicus and theTransport and General Workers' Union.[17] He received backing from former Deputy LeaderRoy Hattersley,[18] thenMayor of LondonKen Livingstone,[19]NUS PresidentGemma Tumelty, and formerNational Executive Committee member, actor and presenterTony Robinson.[20] The left-wing magazineTribune endorsed him as "the change that is required".[21]
On 24 June 2007, it was announced thatHarriet Harman had won the election, although Cruddas gained the highest proportion of votes in the first round. He was ultimately eliminated in the fourth round of voting, coming third behind Harman andAlan Johnson. He had secured the highest number of votes from members of affiliated organisation in every round before his elimination.[citation needed]
In 2007, Cruddas featured in theImmigrants: The Inconvenient Truth episode of theChannel 4 documentary programmeDispatches, which was based on the conclusions of theInstitute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).[22]
Associated with bottom-up renewal initiatives for the Labour Party,[23] Cruddas became a central figure and a leading thinker inMaurice Glasman'sBlue Labour project, launched in 2009.[24][25][26][27]
Touted by some media sources as a potential candidate for theleadership of the Labour Party, he ruled himself out of the2010 leadership election and said he did not want the job; but instead wanted to influence policy.[28] In 2012, he was appointed toEd Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, replacingLiam Byrne asLabour Party Policy Coordinator.[29]
On 15 May 2012,Labour LeaderEd Miliband offered Cruddas a position in hisShadow Cabinet as Labour's Policy Coordinator, with a view to crafting Labour's manifesto for the2015 general election. Cruddas accepted the offer, saying that it had always been his wish to influence policy.[13] He continued to work with Maurice Glasman in this role[30] and was described in 2013 as "one of the most influential people in the Labour Party".[31] He was accused of failing to disclose sponsorship by the IPPR during this period.[32]
Jon Cruddas was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominateJeremy Corbyn as a candidate in theLabour leadership election of 2015.[33] He subsequently appealed to Labour voters opposed to Corbyn to consider the Conservatives as an "alternative workers' party" and in October 2015 launched theLabour Together group,[34][35] which went on to conduct ablack propaganda campaign against Corbyn's leadership of the party.[36] Together with Maurice Glasman, Cruddas persuadedTrevor Chinn andMartin Taylor to provide the initial £75,000 of funding for Labour Together before 2017.[37] In the2016 Labour leadership election, he supportedOwen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Corbyn.[38]
In April 2017, Cruddas was among more than 75 MPs who re-launched the centre-leftTribune Group. Although the participants denied that the initiative posed a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, it was interpreted as offering resistance to radical left leadership of the party in the long term.[39] He subsequently became a member of Tribune's steering group.[40]
The Future of Work Commission was announced at the 2016 Labour Party Annual Conference in Liverpool. The goal of the commission is to make a set of achievable policy recommendations, which will be delivered in a report in September 2017 at Labour Annual Conference in Brighton. Cruddas was one of the Commissioners working on the project.[41]
Cruddas narrowly retained his seat at the2019 general election, with a hugely reduced majority, winning by 293 votes over theConservative candidate.[42] He supportedLisa Nandy forLabour Leader in the2020 Labour Party leadership election.[43]
In August 2022 Cruddas announced his intention to retire from Parliament at the2024 General Election.[44] He expressed optimism about Labour's chances of winning the election.[45] He left the Commons on 30 May 2024.[46]
In September 2025, Cruddas joinedMainstream, a newsoft left pressure group within the Labour Party organised aroundAndy Burnham.[47][48]
Cruddas received avisiting fellowship atNuffield College, Oxford in 2016 and was made anhonorary fellow of the college in July 2024.[49][50] He was also a visiting professor at theUniversity of Leicester, primarily involved with the Centre for Sustainable Work and Employment Futures, from 2016.[49] In 2021, he became anhonorary professor at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at theUniversity of Birmingham.[49] He wrote a history of the Labour Party to celebrate the 100-year centenary of thefirst Labour Government in January 2024.[51]
Cruddas's deputy leadership challenge was based on the precepts contained in a pamphlet called 'Fit for purpose: A programme for Labour Party renewal', co-authored with journalistJohn Harris and funded by the pressure groupCompass.[52] Cruddas won a Compass membership poll in March 2007, gaining 53% of first preference votes among the deputy leadership candidates.[53] In terms of his relative position within the Labour Party, newspapers have described Cruddas as "left wing";[54] however, he has also been described as "modernising centre-left",[55] and more recently has become associated with the socially conservativeBlue Labour tendency and has formed a political partnership withJames Purnell.[56] He described himself as "mistaken" over his decision to vote for British participation in the2003 invasion of Iraq and has criticised his party's record on immigration, saying that "we had too many people coming too fast", and that "immigration has been used as a 21st century incomes policy, and protections in terms of the labour market have not been substantial enough."[57][58]
After speculation that Cruddas, a Catholic, was in favour of restricting abortion, he re-affirmed his pro-choice position.[59] In an interview concerning Cruddas' faith, he stated:
in our family the political heroes weren'tGaitskell orBevan. They were theKennedys because they wereIrish, there wasÓscar Romero because liberation theology was quite a big thing, andPope John. So I joined the Labour Party, and my brother joined theCarmelites. The Labour Party always seemed to me to be a rational, natural element within some of those things we were brought up to believe in. It was as simple as that. My family was part of the Diaspora, they were all over the world, and again that returned to certain issues of solidarity. So there was always that seamless thing between faith and political agency, and union activity as well, forged out of the politics of Irish immigration".[60]
Cruddas was characterised as "an enthusiastic supporter" ofDavid Cameron'sBig Society.[3] Following the2015 United Kingdom general election, he criticised Labour's anti-austerity approach as the alleged main reason for the party's defeat.[35]
The Times Guide to the House of Commons describes him as "a well-liked and well-respected left winger who took on theBNP and won".[61]
In 2023 Cruddas publicly revealed his opposition to expansion of theUltra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) by the Mayor of LondonSadiq Khan, calling it "an unwelcome hit on working people".[62]
He is a member ofLabour Friends of Israel.[63]
Cruddas married Labour activistAnna Healy (now Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) in 1992; the couple have one son, Emmett Cruddas.[64] His wife worked as a special adviser toHarriet Harman, and had previously worked for Labour MPsJack Cunningham,Mo Mowlam andGus Macdonald. He lives inNotting Hill.[citation needed]
In October 2012, Cruddas was banned from driving for eight weeks, for driving with noMOT orinsurance.[65]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forDagenham 2001–2010 | Constituency abolished |
| New constituency | Member of Parliament forDagenham and Rainham 2010–2024 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Policy Coordinator of theLabour Party 2012–2018 | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| People | |
