Jon Cruddas
Jonathan Cruddas (born 7 April 1962) is a British Labour Party politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Dagenham and Rainham, and formerly for Dagenham, since 2001. A graduate of the University of Warwick, Cruddas was first elected to Parliament at the 2001 general election. Having been critical of many aspects of the Blair government, he stood for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 2007, although he openly stated he did not wish to become Deputy Prime Minister. Despite winning the most votes in the first round of voting, he was eliminated in  the penultimate round of the contest. Cruddas ruled himself out of the 2010 leadership election, saying he would rather influence policy. In 2012, Cruddas was appointed to Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, replacing Liam Byrne as Policy Coordinator. Early life and education. Cruddas was born in Helston, Cornwall to John, a sailor, and Pat (a native of County Donegal, Ireland). Cruddas was educated at the Oaklands Roman Catholic Comprehensive School, Waterlooville, Portsmouth, before attending the University of Warwick where he ultimately received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Industrial and Business Studies in 1991, writing a thesis entitled "An analysis  of value theory, the sphere of production and contemporary approaches to the reorganisation of workplace relations". He was a Visiting Fellow of the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1987 to 1989. Cruddas is a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford (2016–present), and is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Leicester (2016–present), primarily involved with the Centre for Sustainable Work and Employment Futures. Early career. In 1989, he became a policy officer for the Labour Party before being appointed Senior Assistant to Labour Party General Secretary Larry Whitty in 1994, remaining in that position when Tom Sawyer  became General Secretary that same year. After the 1997 general election, he was employed as Deputy Political Secretary to newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair. His main role was to be a liaison between the Prime Minister and the trade unions, with whom Blair had often had a difficult relationship. In this role, he also worked heavily on the introduction of the minimum wage. Political career. Cruddas was selected to be the prospective parliamentary candidate for the safe Labour seat of Dagenham in 2000, after the sitting MP Judith Church announced that she would be retiring. He was elected as  the MP for Dagenham the following year at the 2001 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. He rebelled against the government on a number of occasions; including on the introduction of university top-up fees, the legislation on asylum seekers, the introduction of trust schools, proposals to renew the UK Trident nuclear weapons system, and foundation trusts. He supported both the Fourth  Option for direct investment in council housing and the Trade Union Freedom Bill. Cruddas was re-elected at the 2005 general election, but his Dagenham constituency was abolished in boundary changes for the 2010 general election. Cruddas chose to contest the newly created constituency of Dagenham 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 the British National Party had heavily targeted. This resulted in a large number of anti-fascist organisations not affiliated to the Labour Party, such as Hope not Hate, campaigning for  Cruddas to resist the BNP. After being successfully elected, he took up a part-time position teaching Labour history at University College, Oxford from 2010 to 2012. Deputy leadership election. On 27 September 2006, Cruddas announced his intention to stand to become Deputy Leader of the Labour Party once the incumbent, John Prescott, stood down. He said he did not want to be Deputy Prime Minister, but instead wished to act as a "transmission belt" with the grassroots of the party. 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 the Dorneywood weekend country residence. Cruddas accrued nominations from 49 MPs and received strong union backing, including Amicus and the Transport and General Workers' Union. He received backing from former Deputy Leader Roy Hattersley, then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, NUS President Gemma Tumelty, and former National Executive Committee member, actor and presenter Tony Robinson. The left-wing magazine "Tribune" endorsed him as "the change that is required". On 24 June 2007, it was announced that Harriet 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 and Alan Johnson. He had secured the highest number of votes from members of affiliated organisation in every round before his elimination. Policy Review Coordinator. Touted by some media sources as a potential candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party, he ruled himself out of the 2010 leadership election and said he did not want the job; but instead wanted to influence policy. In 2012, Cruddas was appointed to Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet, replacing Liam Byrne as Labour Party Policy  Coordinator. On 15 May 2012, Labour Leader Ed Miliband offered Cruddas a position in his Shadow Cabinet as Labour's Policy Coordinator, with a view to crafting Labour's manifesto for the 2015 general election. Cruddas accepted the offer, saying that it had always been his wish to influence policy. The Future of Work Commission. 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. Jon Cruddas MP is one of the Commissioners working on the project. Since 2018. Cruddas narrowly retained his seat at the 2019 general election, with a hugely reduced majority, winning by 293 votes over the Conservative candidate. He supported Lisa Nandy for Labour Leader in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election. Political views. 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 journalist John Harris and funded by the pressure group Compass. Cruddas won a Compass membership poll in March 2007 , gaining 53% of first preference votes among the deputy leadership candidates. In terms of his relative position within the Labour Party, newspapers have described Cruddas as "left wing"; however, he has also been described as "modernising centre-left", and more recently has become associated with the socially conservative Blue Labour tendency and has formed a political partnership with James Purnell. He described himself as "mistaken" over his decision to vote for British participation in the 2003 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. After speculation that Cruddas, a Catholic, was in favour of restricting abortion, he re-affirmed his pro-choice position. In an interview concerning Cruddas' faith, he stated "in our family the political heroes weren't Gaitskell or Bevan. They were the Kennedys because they were Irish, there was Óscar Romero because liberation theology was quite a big thing, and Pope John. So I joined the Labour Party, and my brother joined the Carmelites. 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". "The Times Guide to the House of Commons" describes him as "a well-liked and well-respected left winger who took on the BNP and won