John Cryer

John Robert Cryer (born 11 April 1964) is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leyton and Wanstead since the general election in May 2010. He was previously MP for Hornchurch from 1997 until his defeat at the 2005 general election. He is the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Education
A journalist by profession, Cryer was educated at Oakbank School, Keighley, Hatfield Polytechnic and the London College of Printing.

Political career
He is on the left-wing of the Labour Party and is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group. He has worked for Tribune and the Morning Star for ASLEF and the Transport and General Workers Union (now Unite).

He is a Eurosceptic, and voted for the UK to leave the European Union in the 2016 Brexit Referendum.

As Member of Parliament for Hornchurch, he had a record as a rebel. He voted against tuition fees and top-up fees for higher education, against cuts in lone parent benefits (the first major rebellion under the Blair government) and against the Iraq War.

He was involved in local campaigns, for example to save a local primary school, to prevent the loss of a popular GP surgery in Rainham and against proposals to cut the number of beds at Oldchurch Hospital.

He was one of 16 signatories of an open letter to Ed Miliband in January 2015 calling on the party to commit to oppose further austerity, take rail franchises back into public ownership and strengthen collective bargaining arrangements.

On 9 February 2015, he was elected, unopposed, to succeed Dave Watts as the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

On 8 May 2015, he was re-elected as MP for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency with 58.6% of the vote. On 8 June 2017, he was re-elected as MP for the Leyton and Wanstead constituency with 69.8% of the vote.

Personal life
He is the son of Ann Cryer and Bob Cryer, both former Labour MPs. As a child he appeared as an extra in the film The Railway Children (1970). His wife is Ellie Reeves, a Labour MP for Lewisham West and Penge and Labour NEC member from 2006-2016 and a trade union lawyer, who is the sister of Rachel Reeves, the former Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.