Clive Lewis | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2024 | |
| Shadow Minister for Sustainable Economics | |
| In office 12 January 2018 – 9 April 2020 | |
| Leader | Jeremy Corbyn |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Succeeded by | Office abolished |
| Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy | |
| In office 6 October 2016 – 8 February 2017 | |
| Leader | Jeremy Corbyn |
| Preceded by | Jon Trickett[a] |
| Succeeded by | Rebecca Long-Bailey |
| Shadow Secretary of State for Defence | |
| In office 27 June 2016 – 6 October 2016 | |
| Leader | Jeremy Corbyn |
| Preceded by | Emily Thornberry |
| Succeeded by | Nia Griffith |
| Member of Parliament forNorwich South | |
| Assumed office 7 May 2015 | |
| Preceded by | Simon Wright |
| Majority | 13,239 (29.3%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Clive Anthony Lewis (1971-09-11)11 September 1971 (age 54) London, England |
| Political party | Labour |
| Other political affiliations | Socialist Campaign Group |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
| Alma mater | University of Bradford Royal Military Academy Sandhurst |
| Website | Official website |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Branch/service | British Army (Territorial Army) |
| Years of service | 2006–2009 |
| Rank | Captain, (Territorial Army) |
| Unit | 7th Battalion,The Rifles |
| Battles/wars | Operation Herrick |
Clive Anthony Lewis (born 11 September 1971) is a BritishLabour politician who has been theMember of Parliament (MP) forNorwich South since2015.[1] Lewis was a candidate forLeader of the Labour Party in the2020 leadership election. He is a member of theSocialist Campaign Group parliamentarycaucus.[2]
He previously served as vice-president of theNational Union of Students, worked as a TV reporter forBBC News and served as an infantry officer with theArmy Reserve. Lewis served a three-month tour of duty inAfghanistan in 2009.
Lewis becameshadow defence secretary in June 2016, andshadow business secretary in October 2016. Lewis left the Shadow Cabinet in 2017 in protest over the Labour Party's decision to whip its MPs into voting to triggerArticle 50, but re-joined the front bench a year later as shadow minister for sustainable economics. He stood in the2020 Labour Party leadership election, but did not receive the required 22 parliamentarian nominations, and withdrew.
Lewis has written extensively about theclimate crisis, race, and democracy. He has argued that Britain is built on forgetting its "imperial history", stating that this "forgetting" is crucial to the "British state – the Union, anunwritten constitution, and even our voting system".[3]
Clive Lewis was born on 11 September 1971 in London.[4][5] He grew up on a council estate inNorthampton, the son of a single father fromGrenada and his mother from England.[6][7] He was the first member of his family to attend university, studying economics at theUniversity of Bradford before being elected student union president, and later vice-president of theNational Union of Students (NUS).[5] In November 1995, he was a signatory to a letter that argued for the abolition of student loans.[8]
Lewis was temporarily suspended from the role of vice-president of the NUS in 1996 by its president,Jim Murphy, for publicly supporting concerns about tuition fees.[9] Murphy's actions were condemned byKen Livingstone, then a Labour MP.[9][10] Lewis ran for president of the National Union of Students in 1996 on a platform of unfunded full grants and free education, and lost the election toDouglas Trainer.[11]
After completing a postgraduate diploma in journalism, Lewis worked on local newspapers in Northampton andMilton Keynes, and was then accepted into the BBC's News Trainee Scheme. He went on to work as a broadcast journalist inNottingham,Norwich, andCoventry. He then became the main reporter on the BBC'sPolitics Show East.[12][13]
Lewis joined theArmy Reserve, passing out of theRoyal Military Academy Sandhurst in 2006 as an infantry officer withThe Rifles. In 2009, he served a three-month tour of duty in Afghanistan.[13] In an opinion piece he wrote years later, Lewis said "despite being on the left, and despite being told in the cadets that 'there ain't no black in the union jack', I still opted to serve".[14] Shortly after returning from his tour of duty, he experienced depression, saying "I just felt like I was being crushed by it all." He received counselling through theMinistry of Defence and recovered.[15]
Lewis was selected as the Labour Party'sprospective parliamentary candidate for Norwich South at the party's hustings in November 2011, beating other candidates including the musicianDave Rowntree. Norwich South had been won bySimon Wright of theLiberal Democrats in the2010 general election with a majority of just over 300 votes, defeating formerHome Secretary andEducation SecretaryCharles Clarke.[16]
In April 2015, during an interview by theNew Statesman, in response to a question on whether he was taking his upcoming victory for granted, he said he would only lose if "he was caught with [his] pants down behind a goat withEd Miliband at the other end". He subsequently apologised for the remark, saying he was sincerely sorry if anyone had been offended by the comment.[17]
Lewis opposed the Labour Party's position on immigration.[18] Locally, Lewis supported the campaign to prevent theHewett School, acomprehensive school in Norwich, from being turned into an academy.[19]
At the2015 general election, Lewis was elected MP forNorwich South with 39.3% of the vote and a majority of 7,654.[20][1] In his victory speech, Lewis declaredNew Labour to be "dead and buried" and promised to stand up for Norwich's most vulnerable against an "onslaught of cuts" by the governingConservative Party.[21]
In hismaiden speech, Lewis brought attention to the Government's plan to allowHousing Association homes to be bought by individuals. He accused the Government of forcibly asset-stripping housing associations, stating the policy would "further segregate" Norwich as well as increase the number of homes that were owned "as mere units of speculation".[22]
In June 2015, Lewis was elected Chair of theAll Party Parliamentary Humanist Group.[23][24] In the same month, he became a patron of the Anti-Academies Alliance.[25]
In December 2015, Lewis voted against airstrikes in Syria.[26]
Lewis was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominateJeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the2015 Labour leadership election.[27] Corbyn credited Lewis with getting his nominations "off the ground".[28][29] Lewis has been described as an ally of Corbyn, who was elected leader.[30] In September 2015, he was appointed to theLabour frontbench as a shadow minister in theEnergy and Climate Change team.[31]
Following resignations from Corbyn's shadow cabinet after the2016 EU referendum, Lewis was appointed asshadow defence secretary.[32] In September 2016, at theLabour Party's 2016 Conference, when Lewis was preparing to give his first speech as shadow defence secretary, a section of his speech announcing that he "would not seek to change" Labour's current policy on nuclear weapons was changed by Corbyn's communications advisorSeumas Milne. Lewis was informed of the change by asticky note.[33][34] A month later, Corbyn removed Lewis from the defence brief, replacing him withNia Griffith. Lewis was then appointed asshadow business secretary, with the move viewed as a tactical demotion.[35]
On 8 February 2017, Lewis resigned from the shadow cabinet, citing the Labour Party's decision to whip its MPs to vote to triggerArticle 50 to startBrexit negotiations.[36]
In April 2017, Lewis was one of thirteen MPs to vote against triggering the2017 general election.[37]
At the snap2017 general election, Lewis was re-elected to Parliament as MP for Norwich South with an increased vote share of 61% and an increased majority of 15,596.[38]
At the 2017 Labour Conference, video footage taken at a fringe event emerged in which Lewis told the male actor Sam Swann to "get on your knees, bitch". Lewis' language attracted criticism from Labour colleagues.Stella Creasy, a Labour colleague, said: "It's not OK. Even if it's meant as a joke, it reinforces menace that men have the physical power to force compliance." Swann toldThe Guardian: "It is clearly jovial and nothing vicious". Swann also said "The whole event was so brilliant for seeing MPs letting their hair down and fucking around with people who support them. I think Clive Lewis is an absolute legend." Lewis subsequently tweeted an apology, in which he described his behaviour as "offensive and unacceptable".[39] At the same conference, Lewis was accused of groping a woman atMomentum'sThe World Transformed event.[40] In response, Lewis said he was "pretty taken aback" by the accusation and "completely" and "categorically" denied it.[41] On 12 December 2017, he was cleared by Labour'sNational Executive Committee sexual harassment panel.[42]
In January 2018, Lewis was reappointed to Labour's shadow frontbench as a shadow Treasury minister, responsible for sustainable economics.[43][44]
Lewis supported Labour activistMarc Wadsworth, who was expelled from the party in April 2018 for bringing it into disrepute. Wadsworth had accused Jewish Labour MPRuth Smeeth of working "hand in hand" with the media at the launch of theChakrabarti report intoanti-Semitism in the party.[45] Lewis, who had provided a character reference for Wadsworth,[46] opposed the decision to expel him.[47] Jewish students at theUniversity of East Anglia, in Lewis's constituency, criticised him for his stance, whilst theUnion of Jewish Students (UJS) issued an open letter to Lewis, who they believed had "categorically failed" Jewish people.[48][49]
At the 2019 Labour conference, Lewis published a paper which accused the party of a "moral failure" on migrants' rights and called for the party to adopt anopen border immigration policy with the European Union.[50] He also accused party leaderJeremy Corbyn of being "silent ondetention centres" and the "no recourse to public funds" policy of the Conservative government.[51]
At the2019 general election, Lewis was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 53.7% and a majority of 12,760.[52][53]
In December 2019, he announced that he would run in the2020 Labour Party leadership election following Corbyn's resignation.[54] Despite a petition by members and supporters to get him on the ballot due to his democratisation and electoral reform policies, he received only five of the necessary 22 nominations from Labour MPs, and withdrew from the contest, which allowed his five supporters to nominate other candidates before nominations closed on 13 January.[55]
In September 2019, alongsideCaroline Lucas MP, Lewis tabled theGreen New Deal Bill (formally known as the Decarbonisation and Economic Strategy Bill). The Bill was tabled to "change the way the government manages the economy to enable extensive public and private investment in a Green New Deal".[56]
In February 2022 Lewis was appointed to theEnvironmental Audit Committee, which explores the extent to which the policies and programmes of government departments and non-departmental public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development.[57]
A few days beforeLiz Truss became prime minister in September 2022, Lewis said that the government had the power to address theUnited Kingdom cost-of-living crisis through measures such as: awindfall tax, nationalisation of energy companies, implementing retrofits of homes, and establishing auniversal basic income anduniversal basic services. He said such things would not be implemented under Truss because, "it will not favour the private interests who are benefiting from the cost of living crisis, such as the funders of dark money think tanks that appear to be driving the incoming Truss government's agenda."[58]
In September 2022, following thedeath of QueenElizabeth II, Lewis wrote an article criticising the monarchy and the "flawed reality of the very limited democracy we inhabit". Lewis stated that he despaired at the queues to see the Queen's coffin and noted that the royal succession "is as much about coercion as consent". He also criticised the language of "duty" and "sacrifice" used about the royal family, which he said to be a lie, and he called forconstitutional, democratic reform. In the title of the article he referred to himself as arepublican.[59][60] Ahead of thecoronation of KingCharles III, Lewis saidthat the monarchy had exempted itself from 160 different pieces of legislation. He stated that exemptions to the taxes people must pay have allowed the King to amass a fortune of almost £2 billion "at a time when almost three million children, his subjects, face abject poverty".[61]
In March 2023 Lewis led aWestminster Hall debate on the UK's role in promoting financial security and reducing inequality in theCaribbean, where he urged the Government to enter "meaningful negotiations with the governments of the Caribbean" aboutreparations for Britain's role in thetransatlantic slave trade.[62]
At the2024 general election, Lewis was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 47.6% and an increased majority of 13,239.[63]
Lewis prefaced his parliamentaryaffirmation stating that he took his "oath under protest and in the hope that one day my fellow citizens will democratically decide to live in a republic".[64][65] He subsequently remade his affirmation having omitted the words "his heirs and successors" on the first occasion. He was faced with a fine and potentially losing his seat if he refused to do so. He prefaced his second affirmation by stating: "I was elected to parliament to represent my constituents and our country to the best of my ability to defend democracy and uphold human rights and one day I hope all members of parliament will be entitled to swear an oath of allegiance based on those values."[66]
Alongside a majority of the Labour MPs, Lewis voted against an amendment to theKing's Speech that sought to "abolish the two-child limit to Universal Credit; recognise that this policy is pushing children into poverty". Seven MPs were suspended from theLabour Party for voting for the amendment byKeir Starmer, while Starmer himself abstained, as did chancellorRachel Reeves.[67][68]
In response to the2024 United Kingdom riots, Lewis spoke at two anti-racism protests in Norwich – one outside a hotel housingasylum seekers,[69] and another in the city centre.[70]
In September 2025, he publicly stated thatKeir Starmer "doesn't seem up to the job" following the controversy surrounding the resignation of ambassadorPeter Mandelson.[71]
Clive Lewis married Yorkshire school teacher and actress Katy Steel in May 2017.[72] Their daughter Zana was born in 2018.[73]
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forNorwich South 2015–present | Incumbent |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Shadow Secretary of State for Defence 2016 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded byas Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills | Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy 2016–2017 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded byasShadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change | ||
