On Sunday 5th April, the MP for Wigan was appointed as the Shadow Foreign Secretary by newly elected Labour leader Keir Starmer. Indian-origin MP Lisa Nandy came third in the Labour leadership election and has replaced Emily Thornberry in a surprising elevation from being a backbencher to the frontlines of the Labour leadership.
The daughter of India-born academic and the first director of Runnymede Trust, Dipak Nandy, Lisa is considered to have her ideology aligned slightly left-off the centre and recently canvassed for the re-structuring of Labour ever since the Party’s decimation in the recent 2019 General Elections. Whilst the recent election was a Brexit referendum of sorts, polls suggested that Labour had recorded a historic decline in its British-Indian vote share following its policy on the revocation of Article 370 and its intervention on the subject of Kashmir.
Now, all eyes will be pinned on Nandy to re-gain the trust of the British-Indian vote even as she is not directly involved in drawing up plans for the revival of Labour. She had previously been critical of Corbyn and his team to criticise Russia, and she called for a more positive defence of international values.
"It's a real honour to be tasked with leading Labour's foreign policy response in these difficult times," she said in a statement.
Having served as a former shadow energy secretary, Nandy born in Manchester voted Remain in 2016. However, in recent times she has argued against a second referendum and revealed that she voted in favour of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal in October.
