Who is Chuka Umunna?

Ever since the day he was elected, there has been a buzz around Chuka Umunna. Sharp, eloquent and blessed with that indefinable air of cool, it seemed almost certain in 2010 that the MP for Streatham would sail to high office without a hiccough. Yet, as with a lot of things which seemed certain in 2010, it was not to be. As the co-leader of The Independent Group, Umunna has indeed become a household name – but the path to prominence has been anything but smooth.

Chuka was born in 1978 in London, the son of Bennett, a Nigerian immigrant from the Igbo tribe, who arrived at Liverpool docks in the 1960s carrying a suitcase on his head and no money. Bennett, an entrepreneurial sort, began an import-export business trading with Nigeria, and was making decent money when he met – and fell for – Patricia Milmo, a London solicitor and daughter of a High Court Judge. In class-obsessed 80s London, their son, Chuka, a middle class, mixed-race boy living in Brixton during the riots, was something of an enigma. But being tricky to pin down has never seemed to faze him. At St Dunstan’s College, a smart independent school in Catford, Umunna was studious, well-liked – and cool enough to pull off being a chorister.

In 1992, when Chuka was still in his early teens, tragedy struck: his father died in Nigeria after his car ploughed into a lorry carrying logs. Chuka has never commented on his father’s death, other than to say that it had a profound effect on his life.

Upon arriving at Manchester to study law, he joined the Labour club, but spent most of his spare time pursuing his principal interest: music. His chorister days now firmly behind him, he had acquired some “old school” decks, and was carving out a second career as a club DJ – with a particular interest in soulful house and garage. A handsome, confident student with a sharp tongue, buckets of ambition, and a DJ’s street cred, the world was the 21 year-old Umunna’s oyster.

It came as no surprise to those close to him when he took up work as a corporate employment lawyer with Herbert Smith after graduation, and excelled. His stylish student DJ garb was replaced by equally stylish sharp suits, and trips to Ibiza and Miami with his lawyer set became the norm. If the Streatham seat hadn’t come up, Umunna might well have stayed in corporate law – which deeply appealed to his metropolitan sensibilities – for years. But he had long harboured political ambitions, and wisely realised that Streatham, the place his parents had called home, was too good an opportunity to pass over.

He was duly elected in 2010, and immediately proved a hit with his constituents. He had a knack for making easy conversation, and quickly grasped the importance of community in the south London enclave. As a charismatic black politician, he was popular among the many black parents in the area, who naturally thought him the perfect role model for their children. Politically, he was always tricky to pigeonhole, but economically, he self-defined as a “responsible capitalist”, a sentiment welcomed by Streatham’s many small business owners.

His career really took off in October 2012 when he took to the stage at Labour Party Conference as the new shadow Business secretary. In a soft, well-educated voice – sharpened by just the right amount of South London twang – he spoke of his parents, the self made Nigerian who’d been welcomed by cosmopolitan Britain, and the high-flying lawyer who’d flourished under equal pay laws. The weary New Labour supporters could hardly believe their eyes: here, at last, was the true heir to Blair.

Following Labour’s defeat in the 2015 general election and the resignation of leader Ed Miliband, Umunna was immediately identified as one of the potential candidates to take over as leader of the party. In a press conference just after the election, he called for Labour to target Conservatives and “aspirational, middle-class voters”, saying that the party needs to be “on the side of those who are doing well.” Given that most of the PLP believed Labour had lost because Miliband was too left-wing, Umunna’s words seem to strike precisely the right note, and his announcement that he would stand as a candidate for the Labour leadership was greeted with considerable excitement.

But he had peaked too soon. Just three days later he withdrew from the contest, saying that he had been “uncomfortable” with “the added level of scrutiny that came with being a leadership candidate”. It was a strange statement from one so ambitious, and with hindsight it seems possible that Umunna had noticed support for the far left bubbling up around the party, and preemptively stepped back to avoid the sort of humiliating defeat suffered by Liz Kendall, the Blairite candidate he ended up endorsing. Either way, 2015 was a bad year for Umunna. Upon the election of Jeremy Corbyn, he immediately resigned from the shadow cabinet, citing differences over the Brexit referendum and issues of collective ministerial responsibility. In short, he disagreed with his leader on every important issue.

And as the months drew on, the disagreements intensified. Umunna – a classic urban Europhile presiding over a Metropolitan constituency – became quickly frustrated by the leadership’s lukewarm support for the remain cause. When Britain voted to leave the EU – but 80% of Streatham voted to remain – he toyed with rebelling against the Labour whip and voting against the triggering of Article 50. He changed his mind at the eleventh hour, writing with Wes Streeting that “as democrats we must abide by the national result”.

By early 2018, however, his grudging acceptance of the referendum result had worn away. Against the express wishes of the Labour leadership, he attended the launch event of the People’s Vote, the campaign group calling for a public vote on the final Brexit deal between the UK and the European Union.

Along with Anna Soubry, he became one of the most recognisable faces of the second referendum campaign – writing in July 2018 “if the proposals which the PM is pursuing feel unacceptable to the majority of the electorate, that says something. People voted to leave and to remain for very different reasons, but it’s nonsense to say that every single person who voted for Brexit in the EU referendum did so because they unanimously agreed on leaving the single market and the customs union putting the Good Friday Agreement at risk, garnering no extra money for the NHS (contrary to what they were told) and potentially continuing years of austerity.”

By the end of last year, when Corbyn was still refusing to support a second referendum and the anti-Semitism complaints against Labour were coming in thick and fast, it had become crystal clear that the Labour Party Chuka Umunna had joined back in his university days was finished. He had clung on valiantly for as long as he could, but his announcement earlier this week that he has left Labour, and set up the new Independent Group came as no surprise.

So, what will become of Chuka Umunna now?

As a brilliant communicator with true star quality, it is widely expected that he will turn the splinter group into something more significant. But the big question is whether or not he can shake off the personal accusation which has dogged him for years: that he is more style than substance.

According to one constituent, a passionate remainer who supported Chuka in 2017 and is no fan of the hard left, “his ‘local lad done good’ routine during election campaigning has now worn extremely thin. The new independent party looks like the Chuka show at the moment, and despite concerns about labour under Corbyn, I suspect he’ll find in Streatham that he has disillusioned too many people and that this constituency is a Labour stronghold, and not a Chuka one.”

If Umunna gives into pressure and fights a by-election in Streatham, it could well mean the end of his chequered political career – and if Chuka falls, the longed for centrist party may fold before it has begun.