Nadia Whittome


Nadia Edith Whittome is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Nottingham East since the 2019 general election. She was elected at the age of 23, and became the 'Baby of the House' as the youngest MP. She is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, a parliamentary group of Labour MPs.

Early life

Whittome was born in Nottingham, England. Her Punjabi Sikh father emigrated to the UK from Banga, India at the age of 21. He has worked a variety of jobs including as an immigration advisor, factory worker, miner, and a driving instructor. Her mother is an Anglo-Indian Catholic solicitor whose parents emigrated from Calcutta in the 1950s. She was formerly a member of the Labour Party, who left the party in protest at the amendment of Clause IV of the constitution in 1995. Whittome has a brother who works as a bricklayer in Sydney. Her grandparents belonged to the Communist Party of India. She grew up in a single-parent household. Whittome reports that she attended a private school between the ages of 7 and 11. She later attended West Bridgford School, a local comprehensive which was formerly a grammar. Whittome has lived in the Meadows, Top Valley, and West Bridgford.
She has commented in interviews that she first got involved in politics in 2013 due to the effects of the under-occupancy penalty and austerity on her local community. Whittome worked as a parliamentary intern in the constituency office of the Member of Parliament for North West Durham Pat Glass, Shadow Minister of State for Europe, during the 2016 European Union referendum campaign. Glass stood down at the 2017 general election. She studied law at Nottingham University after attending an access course at Nottingham College. While studying there, she contested the 2017 Nottinghamshire County Council election as the Labour candidate for the West Bridgford West ward, where she finished second to the Conservative candidate with 1,393 votes. Whittome later dropped out of university due to financial reasons, and worked as a hate crime project worker at Communities Inc, and as a carer.
Prior to her election, she was a national committee member of the pro-Remain organisations Another Europe is Possible and Labour for a Socialist Europe.

Parliamentary career

Whittome was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Nottingham East on 28 October 2019. She was elected as the MP for the constituency in the December general election with a majority of 17,393. Elected at the age of 23, she was the youngest MP and therefore gained the unofficial title of Baby of the House. The seat had been won by the Labour Party candidate at every election since the 1992 general election, and had previously been represented by Chris Leslie, himself a former Baby of the House. Whittome is of Punjabi descent, and was also the first BAME MP elected in Nottingham. She identifies as a democratic socialist.
Shortly after her election, she announced that she would only be keeping the equivalent of "an average worker's wage", as determined by the Office for National Statistics, of £35,000, and would donate the remainder of her £79,468 salary as an MP to local charities. Whittome initially supported Clive Lewis in the 2020 Labour Party leadership election but after Lewis withdrew his candidacy, nominated Emily Thornberry to ensure she received enough nominations to proceed to the next stage. On 28 February 2020, Whittome announced that she would be voting for Rebecca Long-Bailey for leader and Dawn Butler for deputy.
Following Keir Starmer taking over as Leader of the Labour Party, Whittome was appointed as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jonathan Ashworth as Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
In February 2020, Whittome organised a letter signed by 170 MPs demanding that foreign-born offenders not be deported back to Jamaica. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked as a part-time carer at a care home. Whittome appeared on Newsnight where she discussed shortages in PPE at her workplace. Shortly after her appearance on the show, she claimed that she had been fired from her job as a carer for "spreading misinformation". Her employer ExtraCare denied that there were any shortages in PPE at the care home and also stated that Whittome had not been fired but that her services were "no longer needed" as their own in-house care team could now meet their needs.