Richard Burgon

Richard Burgon (born 19 September 1980) is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds East since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, Burgon served as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor in the Corbyn shadow cabinet from 2016 to 2020.

Burgon read English Literature at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was chairman of the Cambridge University Labour Club. After working as an employment lawyer, he was elected as the MP for Leeds East at the 2015 general election.

Burgon was appointed as Shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury (City Minister) in September 2015 by new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Burgon was promoted to Shadow Secretary of State for Justice in June 2016 following the organised mass resignations in protest against the leadership of Corbyn. He was a candidate in the 2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election. He was dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet in April 2020 after Keir Starmer became Labour Leader.

As of March 2021, he was Vice President of Labour CND, a group open to all Labour Party members who are also members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Burgon was brought up in Leeds and has distant Irish ancestry. He was educated at Cardinal Heenan Roman Catholic High School in Leeds. He moved to St Aidan's and St John Fisher Associated Sixth Form in Harrogate to complete his A Levels. He was the first person in his immediate family to go to university, studying English Literature at St John's College, Cambridge. He was chair of Cambridge University Labour Club.

Burgon has said that growing up hearing about the 1984–1985 miners' strike initiated his interest in politics. His aunt was a member of Women Against Pit Closures and was married to a striking miner. He is the nephew of the former Labour MP Colin Burgon. Tony Benn described meeting Burgon in July 1999 in his diary, describing him as "a good socialist, [who] had written a thesis on 'Tony Benn's influence on the Labour Party'." Benn also noted that Burgon wore a "specially made" T-shirt which said "Socialism is the Flame of Anger and the Flame of Hope".

Burgon attended the 15 February 2003 anti-war protests against George W. Bush and Tony Blair's planned invasion of Iraq.

Burgon qualified as a solicitor in 2006, specialising in employment law for 10 years in the Employment Rights Unit at Thompsons Solicitors in Leeds. Burgon has described how, as a solicitor, he "represented members from a wide range of trade unions in Employment Tribunal cases relating to, for example, unfair dismissal, detriment on trade union grounds, disability discrimination, sex discrimination, discrimination on grounds of religion or belief, unlawful deduction of wages and TUPE."