Emily Thornberry Biography

Emily Anne Thornberry was born on July 27, 1960, in Guildford, Surrey, England. Her mother, Sallie Thornberry (née Bone), was a teacher, while her father, Cedric Thornberry, taught international law at the London School of Economics and then served as the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General.

However, she spent her early years surviving on benefits, as her parents got divorced when she was 7. A local Labour councillor helped her, her mother, and her two brothers find a house and convinced Thornberry’s mother to run for the council.

Her mother later served as a councillor and mayor. Thornberry was in her teens when she joined the Labour Party. After failing her 11-plus exams, she attended a secondary modern and then moved to Hammersmith to finish her A-levels.

While Emily Thornberry began staying with her father at 15, her father went to serve the UN when she was 17. She had to work as a cleaner and barmaid in London to afford her education.

She then joined the University of Kent in Canterbury to study law and graduated in 1982. Even while at the university, she took up odd jobs such as working in a care home and cleaning toilets on ferries. She was also part of the university students’ union and served as its full-time officer.

Emily Thornberry started her career as a human rights lawyer in 1985 and then worked as a representative of striking mining workers, Wapping printers, and P&O seafarers. She was also part of the Transport and General Workers' Union.

She also worked on her Labour campaign in East London and fought against the rise of the National Front at the same time. In 2001, Thornberry contested in her first election in Canterbury. There, she increased Labour’s vote share considerably.

In 2005, she contested in Islington South and Finsbury. She personally knocked on all 11,800 doors of the constituency during her campaign and won by 484 votes.

She thus took over as the MP for Islington South and Finsbury on May 6, 2005. She has been re-elected multiple times since then.

Throughout her career, she has worked relentlessly on issues such as the housing crisis, the climate change issue, and social equality. She is also one of the shadow cabinet’s longest continually serving members. In 2006, she initiated the housing association bill, which was a private member’s bill geared toward improving the control and power of housing association residents over landlords.

In 2009, Emily Thornberry was named a ministerial aide for Energy and Climate Change. She became the Shadow Minister for Energy and Climate Change and the Shadow Minister for Health and Social Care in 2010.

In October 2011, in Ed Miliband’s first reshuffle, she was named the Shadow Attorney General. In 2014, accused of snobbery, she resigned from Ed Miliband's team. Reportedly, in November 2014, she had tweeted a picture of a house adorned with St. George’s flags and the owner’s white van parked outside and had captioned it as “image from Rochester.”

She was criticized for being disrespectful and snobbish toward the homeowner Dan Ware. She later apologized for the incident.

Then-PM David Cameron, too, criticized her actions using strong words. She then returned to the front bench in September 2015, when she was elected as Shadow Employment Minister by Jeremy Corbyn.

Since 2016, she has covered significant areas such as Defense, Foreign Affairs, Brexit, and International Trade. She was named the Shadow Secretary of State for Defense in 2016. From 2016 to 2020, she has served as the Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

During the 2017 election campaign, Thornberry replaced Diane Abbott and appeared on the Radio 4 show Woman's Hour. She apparently looked for Labour figures in her handbag while she was live on air. However, even with the Labour manifesto right in front of her, she failed to give an accurate figure.

From 2017 to 2020, Emily Thornberry has been the Shadow First Secretary of State. From 2020 to 2021, she was the Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade and the Shadow President of the Board of Trade. On November 29, 2021, she assumed office as the Shadow Attorney General for England and Wales.

In December 2019, Thornberry was the first candidate to declare the Labour Party wanted to replace Jeremy Corbyn as their leader in the 2020 leadership election, owing to the party’s poor show in the 2019 general election. Though she was initially a contender for the party leader’s role, she withdrew from the race after she failed to get the minimum requirement of 33 nominations.

In January 2020, she publicly stated that she had failed to explain her motives behind mocking Dan Ware for displaying three white England flags in front of his house in 2014. Over the years, she has criticized many of her fellow politicians.

She once called Boris Johnson a "reckless liar" and stated he was surrounded by "Rasputin-like" cronies. She also criticized him for his handling of the Brexit issue. Thornberry also criticized strategist Dominic Cummings.

Emily Thornberry met her husband, Christopher Nugee, at the Kent University law school. They married in July 1991.

Nugee has been a High Court judge and a judge of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. He was also knighted. The couple has three children: a daughter and two sons. The family now lives in Islington, London.