Nadia Whittome

Nadia Edith Whittome (born 29 August 1996) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Nottingham East since the 2019 general election. A member of the Labour Party, she was elected at the age of 23, and became the Baby of the House as the youngest MP. She is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group and describes herself as a democratic socialist.

Early life

Nadia Edith Whittome was born on 29 August 1996 in Nottingham, England, to Indian parents. Her Punjabi Sikh father emigrated to the UK from Banga, India, at the age of 21. He first worked in factories and as a miner before giving immigration advice and running a shop. Her mother is an Anglo-Indian Catholic solicitor and former member of the Labour Party, who left in protest at the amendment of Clause IV of the constitution in 1995. Whittome grew up in a single-parent household, with a brother. Whittome attended a private school in Nottingham, between the ages of 7 and 11 and later attended West Bridgford School, an academy school. She also attended Bilborough Sixth Form College, sitting two A Levels. Whittome has lived in The Meadows, Top Valley, and West Bridgford areas of Nottinghamshire.

Whittome says she became interested in politics in 2013 due to the effects of the "Bedroom tax" and austerity on her local community. She worked in the constituency office of the Member of Parliament (MP) for North West Durham, Pat Glass, Shadow Minister of State for Europe, during the 2016 European Union referendum campaign. She completed an access course at Nottingham college, and law at Nottingham University. She contested the 2017 Nottinghamshire County Council election as the Labour candidate for the West Bridgford West ward, coming second.

After university, she was employed as a hate crime project worker and a carer.

Before her election, she was a national committee member of the pro- Remain organisations Another Europe is Possible and Labour for a Socialist Europe.

Parliamentary career

Whittome was selected as the Labour candidate for Nottingham East on 28 October 2019. She was elected as the MP for the constituency in the December general election with a majority of 17,393 (43.4%). At the age of 23, she was the youngest MP in the House of Commons, and therefore gained the unofficial title of Baby of the House. The seat had been won by the Labour Party candidate at every election since the 1992 general election, and had previously been represented by Chris Leslie, himself a former Baby of the House. Whittome is of Punjabi descent and the first BAME MP elected in Nottingham. She identifies ideologically as a democratic socialist.

Following her election, she said that she would keep what she termed "a worker's wage" of £35,000 (after tax), and would donate the remainder of her £79,468 salary as an MP to local charities. Whittome initially supported Clive Lewis in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election but when Lewis withdrew, nominated Emily Thornberry. On 28 February 2020, Whittome announced that she would be voting for Rebecca Long-Bailey for leader and Dawn Butler for deputy.

In February 2020, Whittome organised a letter signed by 170 MPs demanding that foreign-born offenders not be deported back to Jamaica. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked as a part-time carer at a care home. Whittome appeared on ''Newsnight'' in April where she discussed shortages in PPE at her workplace. Shortly after her appearance on the show, she claimed that she had been fired from her job as a carer for "spreading misinformation". Her employer ExtraCare denied that there were any shortages in PPE at the care home, and also stated that Whittome had not been fired, but that her services were "no longer needed" as their own in-house care team could now meet their needs. In September, however, ExtraCare issued a statement in which they admitted that there had been shortages of PPE at the care home, and that Whittome had helped to resolve this through public appeals in March and April.

Following Keir Starmer taking over as Leader of the Labour Party in April 2020, Whittome was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. In response to the toppling of the Statue of Edward Colston on 7 June 2020, Whittome tweeted "I celebrate these acts of resistance" and called for "a movement that will tear down systemic racism and the slave owner statues that symbolise it".

In September 2020, Whittome was one of eighteen Labour MPs who defied the whip and voted against the Overseas Operations Bill. She said the bill was "anti-veteran, anti-human rights, and would effectively decriminalise torture". In response, she was sacked from her role as a parliamentary private secretary. In November, she signed an open letter condemning violence and discrimination against transgender people.

Whittome was critical of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, calling it "the next step in our descent to authoritarianism" and claimed the Bill was "born out of Priti Patel's fury at Black Lives Matter". In May 2021, alongside celebrities and other public figures, she was a signatory to an open letter from ''Stylist'' magazine which called on the government to address what it described as an "epidemic of male violence" by funding an "ongoing, high-profile, expert-informed awareness campaign on men's violence against women and girls".

During the 2022 United Kingdom railway strike that began in June 2022, she donated £2,000 of her parliamentary salary to the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers strike fund, and also joined strikers at Nottingham railway station. Following the October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, she tweeted that Rishi Sunak becoming Britain's first British-Asian Prime Minister wasn't "a win for Asian representation". She was later instructed by her party's whips to delete the tweet.

Personal life

Whittome identifies as queer. She speaks fluent French and German. In May 2021, Whittome announced that she had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and would be taking a leave of absence. On 6 September 2021, she returned to her duties in the House of Commons. She is a vegan. Whittome has described herself as a baptised Catholic who does not follow any religion, and has taken affirmation rather than an oath of office.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Whittome, Naida
1996 births
Living people
Politicians from Nottingham
21st-century British women politicians
Alumni of the University of Nottingham
British people of Indian descent
British people of Anglo-Indian descent
British people of Punjabi descent
British politicians of Indian descent
British politicians of Punjabi descent
English people of Indian descent
English people of Punjabi descent
UK MPs 2019–present
Female members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
Labour Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
People educated at West Bridgford School
English socialists
Queer women
21st-century English women