Jo Swinson

Early life and career

Swinson attended the London School of Economics, where she studied Management gaining a Bachelor of Science in 2000. Swinson signed up as an active member of the Liberal Democrats at the age of seventeen.

After graduating with a first class degree, she moved to Yorkshire and worked for Ace Visual & Sound Systems in Thorne, South Yorkshire from August 2000, then as a marketing and public relations manager for Kingston upon Hull based commercial radio station Viking FM from December 2000.

In 2001, at the age of 21, Swinson stood as a Liberal Democrat for the Hull East constituency in the general election, gaining a 6% swing from John Prescott, deputy leader of the Labour Party. In 2003, she unsuccessfully contested the Strathkelvin and Bearsden seat in the Scottish Parliament, coming 3rd with 14% of the vote in the election.

Parliamentary career

Swinson was elected to the House of Commons as the MP for East Dunbartonshire at the 2005 general election. She defeated John Lyons of Labour by 4,061 votes, and was the first ever Member of Parliament born in the 1980s. As the youngest MP when first elected, (informally known as the "Baby of the House") she replaced fellow Lib Dem MP Sarah Teather. This situation lasted until 2009, when Conservative MP Chloe Smith was elected at the Norwich North by-election, 2009.

Swinson was vocal in her opposition to the Iraq War and the Labour government's proposals for national identity cards. She supports measures both by individuals and government to tackle climate change such as conserving energy in the home and the current Liberal Democrat policy of introducing green taxes while reducing income tax to offset the burden of this. She supports reducing the voting age to 16 as one way of engaging young people in politics. She believes more women should be involved in politics but that encouragement is better than coercion in achieving this. She opposes positive discrimination to address gender imbalance, and famously led the argument against positive discrimination to select her party's candidates at their national party conference in 2002, wearing a pink T-shirt inscribed with the slogan, "I am not a token woman".

Swinson has also called for a "wellbeing index" to be introduced, to be compared against GDP, and tabled an early day motion on the issue in 2008, gaining 50 signatures. She found support from MPs such as Vince Cable and Angela Eagle (the motion was backed by members from across the political spectrum). Swinson cited the fact that although standard of living had increased, peoples' level of wellbeing had been virtually static for some time, according to polls.

Swinson believed that new prisons ought not to be built and had campaigned vocally, but without success, against the rebuilding of a prison at Bishopbriggs within the constituency. She had said that if a prison was built it must not be built cheaply, and that it must not be named after the town in which is to be sited. The campaign to give the prison its original name was ultimately successful, this replacement prison will retain its original name, Lowmoss Prison.

An active campaigner against packaging of chocolate Easter eggs, and each year from 2007 saw Swinson attack confectionery manufacturers for what she sees as excessive packaging of the seasonal goods. She has named Guylian as the worst offender, followed by Lindt, Baileys and Cadbury.

Swinson lost her parliamentary seat in the 2015 general election to Scottish National Party candidate John Nicolson by 2,167 votes (4.0%). She stood again for her former seat (a marginal constituency) during the 2017 general election and won with a lead of 5,339 votes (10.3%) over Nicolson.

After the resignation of Tim Farron as Liberal Democrat leader on 14 June 2017 Swinson was named by the BBC as one of the possible contenders for the leadership along with Norman Lamb and Vince Cable. She later announced that she would not seek the leadership; instead, she became Deputy Leader after being the only candidate at the close of nominations.

Personal life

On 13 May 2011, Swinson married then fellow Liberal Democrat MP Duncan Hames. In June 2013, the couple announced they were expecting their first child. On 22 December 2013, their son Andrew Lennox Marshall Hames was born.

A sufferer of a peanut allergy, Swinson went into anaphylactic shock in May 2013 after she accidentally ate a biscuit containing nuts at an event in Glasgow. Swinson collapsed and had difficulty breathing, but recovered following an emergency injection of adrenaline and an overnight stay in hospital.

Political career timeline

(Current position in bold)