Florence Eshalomi

Florence Eshalomi
Official portrait, 2019
Shadow Minister for Democracy
Assumed office
5 September 2023
LeaderKeir Starmer
Preceded byOffice established
Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office
In office
22 July 2022 – 5 September 2023
LeaderKeir Starmer
Preceded byRachel Hopkins
Opposition Whip
In office
14 April 2020 – 30 December 2020
LeaderKeir Starmer
Member of Parliament
for Vauxhall
Assumed office
12 December 2019
Preceded byKate Hoey
Majority19,612 (34.8%)
Member of the London Assembly
for Lambeth and Southwark
In office
5 May 2016 – 6 May 2021
LeaderLen Duvall
Preceded byValerie Shawcross
Succeeded byMarina Ahmad
Member of Lambeth Borough Council
for Brixton Hill
In office
4 May 2006 – 3 May 2018
Preceded byLydia Serwaa
Succeeded byMaria Kay
Personal details
Born
Florence Dauta Nosegbe

(1980-09-18) 18 September 1980 (age 43)
Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
Political partyLabour Co-op
SpouseMatthew O. Eshalomi
Children2
Residence(s)Brixton, London
Alma materMiddlesex University
Utrecht University
ProfessionPolitician

Florence Dauta Eshalomi (née Nosegbe; born 18 September 1980) is a British Labour and Co-operative politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) representing Vauxhall since 2019. She previously served as the Member of the London Assembly (AM) for Lambeth and Southwark from 2016 to 2021, and represented Brixton Hill on the Lambeth London Borough Council from 2006 to 2018.

Early life

Born Florence Nosegbe in Birmingham, the daughter of Anthony Nosegbe, she is a lifelong Brixton resident and the eldest of three girls from a single parent family. Her mother, the late Maria Da-Silva, worked as a school teacher until her illness forced her to retire early. Florence supported her mother, who suffered from sickle cell anaemia and kidney failure, as her carer.

Eshalomi attended local schools in Lambeth including Durand Primary (now Van Gogh) and St Helen's RC Primary school and Bishop Thomas Grant Secondary School. She completed her A-Levels at St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College in Clapham South. She is the first member of her family to go to university, graduating with a BA Hons in Political & International Studies with Law from Middlesex University. Florence benefited from the EU Funded 'Erasmus Student Exchange' and had the opportunity to study at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Eshalomi started her working life as a 16-year-old at Sainsbury's supermarket, Clapham High Street. She has worked in a variety of campaigning and public affairs roles including in local government as a policy officer, as a regional organiser for the Labour Party during the 2005 general election and as the Public Affairs Manager for the UK's leading race equality think tank, the Runnymede Trust.

Political career

Prior to winning her seat on the London Assembly, she worked for the PR agency Four Communications as a public affairs account manager.

Eshalomi served as a local councillor from Brixton Hill on Lambeth London Borough Council. She represented the ward along with future Labour MP Steve Reed.

Eshalomi has previously served as a member of the Progress Strategy Board. In 2016, The Times reported that "one of Momentum's most militant factions" planned to picket an event held to support Eshalomi's candidacy for the London Assembly. MPs including Chuka Umunna, Ben Bradshaw and Stella Creasy strongly criticised the picket, and a spokesperson for Momentum stated that the picket was organised by a separate group and that "Momentum are fully behind Flo's campaign." In the 2015 leadership election Eshalomi supported Liz Kendall to become Labour Party leader.

Eshalomi was elected to the London Assembly on 5 May 2016 with a majority of 62,243 over the Conservative Party candidate Robert Flint. She was lead spokesperson for the London Assembly Labour Group on Transport issues, and current Chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee.

As an Assembly Member, Eshalomi has campaigned on issues including gang crime and the closure of Kennington Police Station.

Eshalomi was selected as Labour candidate for the Vauxhall parliamentary constituency on 27 October 2019, after Kate Hoey, a long-standing MP of 30 years, had announced she would not stand again as Labour's candidate in the constituency. Eshalomi won the seat with a slightly reduced majority of 19,612 votes.

Eshalomi made her maiden speech in the House of Commons on 17 January 2020. She said that "I never imagined that almost five years to the day, as I was literally pacing up and down the maternity ward, looking over the river, trying to coerce my daughter to come out, I would now be sat in this Parliament fighting for funding for our hard-working doctors and nurses" in reference to St Thomas' Hospital in her Vauxhall constituency. Eshalomi also prioritised more funding for the NHS and Police, and to focus on tackling youth violence and young women facing sexual exploitation. On 14 April 2020, Eshalomi was promoted to the opposition front bench as a whip.

Eshalomi and her fellow black female MPs have frequently been mistaken for each other since entering parliament, with Eshalomi herself being twice mistaken for black female colleagues in the nine months since her election. Eshalomi said of the misidentifications that "The frequency is worrying and lends itself to a lazy racist view that all black people look the same". Eshalomi was wrongly identified as Taiwo Owatemi by BBC Parliament and a fellow MP ran up to her thinking she was Kate Osamor. During Eshalomi's time on the London Assembly, she was mistaken for Conservative Kemi Badenoch, then a fellow assembly member. Eshalomi wrote that "All those women I've referenced are individual politicians in their own right...They're women who fought to get elected. So they deserve to be named and not to be confused with other black women. This doesn't happen to some of my white female colleagues, who sometimes have their hair down, sometimes they'll have it back in a ponytail. So why is it, if we as black women change our hair or our appearance, you can't recognise us?"

On 30 December 2020, Eshalomi abstained on the Future Trade Agreement between the UK and the EU, resulting in her resignation as an opposition whip.[non-primary source needed]

In May 2021, Eshalomi returned to the Labour front bench as the Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Angela Rayner, the Shadow First Secretary of State and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

In June 2021, a 59-year-old man from Brixton was prosecuted after sending a stream of abusive messages to Eshalomi between December 2020 and February 2021.

In the 2023 British shadow cabinet reshuffle, she was appointed Shadow Minister for Democracy.

Personal life

Eshalomi married her husband Matthew in 2014. They have two children, who were born at St Thomas' Hospital. She is of Nigerian descent.

Electoral history

2019 general election

General election 2019: Vauxhall
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Co-op Florence Eshalomi 31,615 56.1 Decrease1.2
Liberal Democrats Sarah Lewis 12,003 21.3 Increase0.8
Conservative Sarah Bool 9,422 16.7 Decrease1.9
Green Jacqueline Bond 2,516 4.5 Increase2.4
Brexit Party Andrew McGuinness 641 1.1 N/A
Independent Salah Faissal 136 0.2 N/A
Majority 19,612 34.8 Decrease1.9
Turnout 56,333 63.5 Decrease3.6
Registered electors 88,659
Labour hold Swing Decrease1.0

2016 London Assembly election

2016 London Assembly election: Lambeth and Southwark[citation needed]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Florence Eshalomi 96,946 51.6 -1.2
Conservative Robert Flint 34,703 18.5 -0.9
Liberal Democrats Michael Bukola 21,489 11.4 -0.3
UKIP Idham Ramadi 6,591 3.5 +0.7
Socialist (GB) Kevin Parkin 1,333 0.7 -1.2
All People's Party Amadu Kanumansa 906 0.5 N/A
Majority 62,242 33.1 -0.3
Total formal votes 187,761 98.8 +0.3
Informal votes 2,229 1.2 +0.3
Turnout 189,990 44 +6.7

2014 Lambeth London Borough Council election

2014 Lambeth London Borough Council election: Brixton Hill (3 seats)
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Adrian Garden 1,849
Labour Florence Eshalomi * 1,791
Labour Martin Tiedemann 1,560
Green Roger Baker 818
Green Andrew Child 768
Green Betty Mehari 719
Conservative James Calder 415
Conservative Charles Tankard 381
Conservative Michael Woolley 310
UKIP Paul Gregory 254
Liberal Democrats Chris Keating 244
Liberal Democrats Liz Maffei 231
Liberal Democrats Adam Pritchard 228
TUSC Lisa Bainbridge 132
TUSC Alex Richardson 83
TUSC Jessica Walters 74
Total votes 9,857
Labour hold Swing
Labour hold Swing
Labour hold Swing

2010 Lambeth London Borough Council election

2010 Lambeth London Borough Council election: Brixton Hill (3 seats)
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labour Alexander Holland 2,805
Labour Steve Reed * 2,699
Labour Florence Nosegbe * 2,648
Liberal Democrats Kate Horstead 2,100
Liberal Democrats Krystal Johnson 1,873
Liberal Democrats John Mead 1,560
Green Thomas Law 1,108
Green Elkin Atwell 1,023
Conservative Tim Briggs 873
Green Phillipa Marlowe-Hunt 850
Conservative Victoria Edwards * 768
Conservative Diana Thompson 688
Total votes 18,995
Labour hold Swing
Labour hold Swing
Labour hold Swing

This page was last updated at 2023-12-27 19:37 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari