Stella Creasy

Stella Creasy     (Labour's 'Dream Team' deputy leadership contender)
Born	Stella Judith Creasy 5 April 1977 Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
Nationality	British
Party	Labour
Member of Parliament for Walthamstow In office 6 May 2010 - Present

Stella Judith Creasy (born 5 April 1977) is a British Labour Co-operative politician who has been Member of Parliament for the London constituency of Walthamstow since 2010.

Following Labour's defeat at the May 2015 general election and the resignation of Harriet Harman as deputy leader, Stella Creasy announced she would stand against Tom Watson, Caroline Flint, Angela Eagle and Ben Bradshaw as a candidate in the Labour Party deputy leadership election.

On 27 July 2015, Stella Creasy wrote in The Guardian:

Attlee once argued that Labour is what its members make it – our future is in our hands. We can either rage against the dying of the light of the parties of our youth or get ahead of these trends and return to our roots. There are plenty of politicians who want to give people a grievance; let’s be the ones to give them hope. Let’s make Labour a place where the next generation of political activists want to join. Let’s become a movement again, not a machine.

Early life and career

Born in Sutton Coldfield, she is the daughter of Cambridge graduates Corinna Frances Avril (née Martin, on 26 April 1948) and Philip Charles Creasy, both active Labour party members; her father is a trained opera singer and her mother a headteacher. Her elder brother, Matthew Henry Creasy (born 1974), is an M.A. (Cantab) and D.Phil. (Oxon) and an academic.

Stella Creasy has aristocratic family connections on her mother's side, including with the Howard family, Earls of Carlisle (through whom she is related to Polly Toynbee), the Cayzer baronets and the present Viscount Gort who is her fourth cousin.

After spending early childhood in Manchester, her family moved to Colchester where Creasy attended Colchester County High School for Girls, a grammar school. Although she initially failed the eleven-plus exam, the Creasy family's move south gave her a second chance. Creasy attended Magdalene College, Cambridge where she read Social and Political Sciences before pursuing postgraduate studies at London School of Economics.

In 2006, having already started work as a parliamentary researcher, she completed her thesis entitled Understanding the lifeworld of social exclusion, receiving a PhD degree in Social Psychology from London University. Creasy also received the Richard Titmuss Award for her academic psychology papers.

Early political career

Stella Creasy worked as a lobbyist and PR consultant, becoming head of Public Affairs at the Scout Association.

A former deputy director of a think tank, Involve, she worked as a researcher and speech writer for various Labour government ministers, notably Douglas Alexander, Charles Clarke and Ross Cranston.

Elected a Waltham Forest Councillor, Stella Creasy became Deputy Mayor before serving as the borough Mayor for four months prior to her election to the House of Commons.

Creasy was a member of the Young Fabians and served on its executive. In 2009 she co-wrote, with Rachel Reeves, a pamphlet for the Young Fabians entitled The New Progressives.

In Parliament

In 2010, Stella Creasy was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Walthamstow, being elected to Parliament at the 2010 general election as the successor to the previous Labour MP, Neil Gerrard, who was stepping down from Parliament.

Creasy was re-elected in the May 2015 general election with a substantially increased majority, securing a 17% increase in the share of the vote.

Payday loans

Stella Creasy has been a leading protagonist in campaigning for better regulation of payday loans companies. In an article in The Guardian, she stated that just six companies controlled lending to 90% of the seven million Britons without a bank account or credit card. Her disclosure that the average cost of credit charged to these customers was 272% APR, as in the rest of Europe, and that there was a fourfold increase in payday loans since the start of the recession in 2008 led to cross-party parliamentary support for a cap. Creasy also highlighted in a speech to the House of Commons the lack of competition in the market, leading to Government support for a cap of loans which exploit the poor, which in some cases reached 4000% APR.

In 2012, a Wonga employee used company equipment to make offensive personal attacks against Creasy. Wonga made an "immediate and unreserved apology" following these malicious attacks, and Creasy also managed to get the firm to promote one of her constituency events in aid of struggling families.

Rape tweets

At the end of July 2013 on her Twitter timeline, as with the feminist journalist Caroline Criado-Perez, Creasy received numerous rape threats and other misogynistic messages; this brought the two women together, Criado-Perez having successfully lobbied the Bank of England to feature a woman on the reverse of £10 bank notes.

Stella Creasy wrote in an article published on 27 July: "Twitter tell me we should simply block those who 'offend us', as though a rape threat is matter of bad manners, not criminal behaviour." She also appeared on Newsnight on 30 July 2013 with Toby Young, the Conservative commentator, over the validity of addressing harassment on the social networking site. Young has objected to the subsequent change in Twitter policy, writing that the company, "shouldn't change its abuse policy in response to being brow-beaten by a politician". On 2 September 2014 at the City of London Magistrates' Court, Peter Nunn was found guilty of sending menacing messages to Creasy, and was subsequently jailed for eighteen weeks.

Dream Team

On 27 July 2015, influential Scottish Labour Co-operative figure Mary Lockhart declared on Facebook:

I shall be voting Jeremy Corbyn for leader, and Stella Creasy for deputy. And I think that will produce a very interesting and robust combination. Any sparks which fly will help ignite the new ideas to forge a future in which socialism and co-operative public ownership combine with localism to make democracy more than just a system of government. If we succeed in electing Corbyn, there are many dangers to nurturing and growing his leadership and transforming the Labour Party to make it fit for ALL its members, and for the wider electorate who so badly need a party of the left in power.

Stella Creasy is a brilliant campaigner - and a street campaigner, not merely a lobbyist and PR engineer. She has an instinct for what makes people tick. She does believe in public ownership, but recognises that nationalisation can be more quickly undone than it can be made to become Public, as distinct from State ownership. Corbyn is to the left of Tony Benn - who, like Creasy, had aristocratic and academic connections - and we never got a Benn as leader. I think, for this to work, we need a Deputy who has ideas, who is a proven campaigner, and who has never quite become part of any of the Labour Westminster cliques. I also think we need gender balance, for a host of reasons I haven't time to explore here.

I have met Stella Creasy. I have chaired a meeting at which she spoke, and subsequently received, as promised, a comprehensive reply to an issue I raised with her after the meeting. We need more Labour MPs who have gone into parliament after working in jobs not directly connected to politics. More working class MPs. More intellectuals and thinkers. And we need them to be ready for leadership. Right now? We haven't got that. Stella Creasy to me has other qualities. Her principles seem sound. For me, for now, as Jeremy Corbyn's foil, she'll do!

Outside interests

Stella Creasy has long been a fan of Indie band The Wedding Present and wrote an essay to accompany the re-release of their album Seamonsters in 2012.

External links

• www.parliamentaryrecord.com
• Interview by John Rentoul of Ethos Journal

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