Steve Reed (politician)

Early life

Reed grew up in St Albans, Hertfordshire, and his family worked at Odhams printing factory in Watford until it closed down in 1983. Around this time, he joined the Labour Party before going on to study English at Sheffield University. He worked in the educational publishing industry from 1990 to 2008.

In March 2008 he narrowly lost out to Chuka Umunna for selection as Labour's 2010 election candidate for the Streatham constituency.

Lambeth Council

Reed first stood for the Lambeth London Borough Council in the 1998 election and won the Town Hall ward (now Brixton Hill). In 2002 Labour lost control of Lambeth council to a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, and in response Reed was elected leader of the opposition.

After Labour won back control of Lambeth Council in 2006, Reed was appointed the council's leader. During his tenure, Lambeth went from being rated London's worst-run borough, with a one-star rating in the Audit Commission's annual inspection in 2006, to having a three-star rating in 2009. At the 2010 election, Labour gained seats from the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, making it the first time that Labour had been re-elected to lead in Lambeth for twenty years.

Reed held a number of significant positions in local government. He was:

In May 2010, Reed launched a consultation on plans to turn Lambeth into the country’s first co-operative council intending to deliver better services more cost-effectively by giving more control to communities and service users, reported in The Guardian newspaper as a possible new model for Labour in local government. The final report of Lambeth Council's Cooperative Council Commission laid out the plans for achieving this objective and Lambeth Council is now putting a transformation plan into effect.

Reed was reported to the Standards Board by a Conservative councillor after he disclosed that she was barred from voting on financial matters because of her refusal to pay council tax on one of her properties for several years. This information was legally disclosable and no sanction was imposed.

Reed was named one of the three most influential council leaders in the country by the Local Government Chronicle in 2011 and was the highest-ranked Labour politician in the 2010 Pink List compiled by The Independent on Sunday.

Reed was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to local government.

Member of Parliament

Reed's first attempt to enter Parliament was in Lambeth, contesting the Labour nomination for the Streatham Constituency in 2008, on the retirement of Keith Hill. In March of that year, Reed was beaten to the nomination by Chuka Umunna. On 3 November 2012, Reed narrowly defeated former Croydon Council leader Val Shawcross by only three votes, to become the Labour candidate for the historically safe Labour seat of Croydon North, following a selection meeting of the local Croydon North Constituency Labour Party. The by-election followed on from the death of the former MP for Croydon North Malcolm Wicks and was won by Reed on 29 November 2012.

In October 2013 Reed was appointed a Shadow Home Office Minister by Labour Leader Ed Miliband.

In the 2015 general election, Reed again stood for the Croydon North constituency. He was elected as MP with 33,513 votes (a 62.5% share, up 6.6% from the previous General Election in 2010) and a majority of 21,364 (39.9% ) with a 62.3% turnout.

On 27 June 2016, Reed resigned as Shadow Minister for Local Government as part of the mass resignation of the Labour Shadow Cabinet against Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour party.