Clive Lewis became the Labour MP for Norwich South in 2015, being re-elected in 2019 with a majority of 12,760.
The constituency of Norwich South covers the southern side of Norwich and includes the University of East Anglia and Norwich University of the Arts. Over a fifth of the electorate are students. The offices of Aviva (formerly, the Norwich Union) and Norwich’s Carrow Road football stadium are found in this constituency.
Norwich South is currently the only Labour seat in Norfolk. Traditionally a Labour seat which was held by the party between 1987 and 2010, the Liberal Democrats represented this area for five years between 2010 and 2015, before it has returned comfortably to Labour. This is one of the seats in the UK where the Green Party has polled over 5%, and been able to retain its deposit. The seat was once represented in Parliament by the former Labour Home Secretary under Tony Blair, Charles Clarke.
Clive Lewis served as Shadow Defence Secretary and Shadow Business Secretary in the Shadow Cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn between 2015-2016. On the left of the Party, in 2015 he declared New Labour is ‘dead and buried’. He was briefly a candidate for the Labour leadership in 2019 but failed to muster enough nominations to make the ballot.
Born in 1971, Lewis grew up on a council estate in Northampton. He studied economics at the University of Bradford before being elected student union president and, eventually, Vice President of the National Union of Students (NUS).
Before being elected to Westminster, Lewis was a former BBC News Reporter, rising to become the BBC eastern region’s chief political reporter. He served as an infantry officer in the Territorial Army and undertook a 3 month tour of Afghanistan in 2009.
In 2017 he was at the centre of a storm about offensive language he was alleged to have used to a woman at that year’s Labour Party conference.
Lewis is a supporter of proportional representation.
Clive Lewis is Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Future of Work; the Green New Deal; and Race and Community. He is Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Humanism; the Limits to Growth.
Email: clive.lewis.mp@parliament.uk
Personal Website: http://www.clivelewis.org
Twitter: @labourlewis
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/labourclivelewis
