Council estate boy tipped to lead Labour
A KEY ally of Jeremy Corbyn, hard-Left MP Clive Lewis has been tipped as a future leader of the Labour Party.
The former BBC presenter and Army reservist, who was raised on a council estate in Northampton, became the MP for Norwich South in the 2015 election.
In the two years since, the 46year-old self-proclaimed ‘proud socialist’ has been at the centre of a number of controversies.
Mr Lewis, who is married to the actress Katy Steel, was promoted to the shadow cabinet as defence spokesman by Mr Corbyn last summer after mass Labour frontbench resignations.
But he missed his first Commons questions session because he was at Glastonbury Festival.
At last year’s Labour Party conference, Mr Lewis was said to have punched a wall in fury after Mr Corbyn’s spin doctor Seumas Milne changed his speech minutes before he went on stage.
The former soldier, who served as an officer in the Territorial Army, including a stint in Afghanistan, had apparently planned to say that he would not challenge Labour’s official policy that Trident should be renewed.
But the line was cut to keep open the possibility of scrapping the nuclear deterrent – and Mr Lewis was reportedly notified only by post-it note.
Sources said he was so furious that he punched a wall, swore and threw his mobile phone.
Mr Lewis publicly played down the reports, saying he was ‘really pleased’ with the speech, adding there was ‘nothing to see here’.
Last October, he was shifted to business spokesman.
However, he resigned from the shadow cabinet in February after voting against the Brexit Bill.
His position was that, while he respected the result of the referendum in favour of leaving the European Union, he was unhappy that Labour had failed to secure amendments to the legislation.
Mr Lewis, who was one of the original organisers of the Momentum grassroots campaign, said at the time that he could not ‘in all good conscience’ support a bill that he believed would ‘harm’ his constituents.
‘Punched a wall in fury’