Jon Cruddas

Jonathan Cruddas (born 7 April 1962) is a British Labour Party politician who has been a Member of Parliament (MP) since 2001, first for Dagenham and then for Dagenham and Rainham.

A graduate of Warwick University, Cruddas was first elected to Parliament in 2001. Having been critical of many aspects of the Blair Government, Cruddas stood for the Deputy Leadership of the Labour Party in 2007, being eliminated in the penultimate round of the contest. Unlike the other five candidates, he openly stated that he did not wish to become Deputy Prime Minister.

He won the most votes in the first round of voting, obtaining 19.39% of the vote from both party members and party-affiliated organisations, and it is thought that the second-choice votes of the Cruddas supporters contributed to Harriet Harman's eventual victory. After his campaign, he was offered a position in the Cabinet by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which he turned down.

Despite being touted by some media sources as a potential candidate for the Leadership of the Labour Party in the future, he ruled himself out of the 2010 leadership election, saying that 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.

Early life and education
Cruddas was born in Helston 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 1987–89.

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 election, he was employed as Deputy Political Secretary to new 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 incumbent MP Judith Church announced that she would be retiring. He was elected as the new MP for Dagenham one year later at the 2001 election, with a majority of 8,693.

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 woo 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 election, but his Dagenham constituency was abolished in boundary changes for the 2010 election. Cruddas chose to fight the newly created seat 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 winning re-election, he took up a part-time position teaching Labour history at University College, Oxford from 2010–12.

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 also 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
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.

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".

Jon Cruddas was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015.

Personal life
He married Labour activist Anna Mary Healy in 1992; the couple have one son, Emmett Cruddas. His wife works as an assistant for Harriet Harman, and had previously worked for Labour MPs Jack Cunningham, Mo Mowlam and Gus Macdonald. Cruddas lives in Notting Hill.

In October 2012 he was banned from driving for eight weeks, for driving with no MOT or insurance.

Books

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