Jon Cruddas

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.

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.

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.

Jon Cruddas was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015. However, he later supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Corbyn in the 2016 Labour Party (UK) leadership election.

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.

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

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.

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.

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."

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 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 2010–12.

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, 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.

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.

Cruddas married Labour activist Anna Healy (now Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) in 1992; the couple have one son, Emmett Cruddas. His wife worked as a special adviser to Harriet Harman, and had previously worked for Labour MPs Jack Cunningham, Mo Mowlam and Gus Macdonald. He lives in Notting Hill.

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 1987–89.

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.

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