Chuka Umunna University, Chuka Harrison Umunna (born 17 October 1978) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Streatham since 2010. He was a member of the Labour Party until 2019, when he resigned to form The Independent Group along with six other MPs. As a member of the Labour Shadow Cabinet, he was Shadow Business Secretary from 2011 to 2015.
Umunna was educated at St Dunstan’s College before studying at the University of Manchester and Nottingham Trent University. He worked as a solicitor in the City of London, first for Herbert Smith and then Rochman Landau, while writing articles for the Compass think tank. He joined Labour when party styled itself as “New Labour” and, when in parliament, he aligned with the party’s “Blue Labour” trend and was a member of the Labour Friends of Israel group. He was selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Streatham in 2008, and was elected MP in the 2010 United Kingdom general election.
As an MP, Umunna joined the Shadow Cabinet under Ed Miliband’s Labour leadership. In parliament, he sat on the Treasury Select Committee. He was re-elected in the 2015 and 2017 general elections. After Miliband’s resignation, Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015; Umunna was critical of Corbyn’s push leftward and that year resigned from the Shadow Cabinet to sit as a backbencher. A supporter of the unsuccessful campaign to retain UK membership of the European Union in the 2016 referendum, he then campaigned for a second referendum. In February 2019 he joined other centrist Labour MPs in splitting from the party to form The Independent Group.