Gloria De Piero

In February 2010, De Piero resigned as GMTV's political editor to seek selection as the Labour candidate for the Ashfield constituency in the 2010 general election.[9] The candidacy became vacant following the announcement that the constituency's Labour MP, former Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, would be stepping down at the election.[12] On 21 March, she was selected as the party's candidate.[13] De Piero was elected with a majority of 192 votes (reduced from 10,213 in 2005) after a 17.2% swing to the Liberal Democrats.[14] During her election campaign, it was reported that she had posed for topless photographs for a modelling agency at the age of 15.[15][16] Three years later, an unnamed news agency attempted to buy the photographs on behalf of a national newspaper.[17] It later emerged that The Mail on Sunday had purchased the photographs in 2010. De Piero issued a legal warning to the newspaper that she had been underage when the photographs were taken and the negatives were returned to her with an apology.[3][18]

In October 2010, Labour leader Ed Miliband appointed De Piero as a shadow culture minister.[19] In the 2011 reshuffle, De Piero became Shadow Minister for Crime Prevention,[20] and in 2013, she was promoted to the shadow cabinet as Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities.[21]

In 2012, De Piero held a national tour called 'Why Do People Hate Me?' designed to discover why voters were so disenchanted with politicians.[22] She visited bingo halls, jazzercise classes, warehouses and golf clubs to ask people about their disenchantment, writing that 'I want to hear the disillusionment in their own words'.

Gloria de Piero in Bradford in 2015.

At the 2015 general election, De Piero held Ashfield with an increased majority of 8,820.[23][24] In September 2015, De Piero was elected to the Labour Party's Conference Arrangements Committee with 109,888 votes.[25] In new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's first shadow cabinet, De Piero was made Shadow Minister for Young People and Voter Registration, a new shadow cabinet-level role.[26] She resigned her shadow cabinet position on 26 June 2016, among dozens of her colleagues, believing Corbyn could not lead the party to a general election victory.[27][28]

De Piero supported the UK remaining within the European Union (EU) in the 2016 UK EU membership referendum, and was present with Corbyn at the launch of the Labour In for Britain campaign.[29] Approximately 70% of her constituents voted for the UK to leave the EU.[30] She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Corbyn in the 2016 Labour leadership election.[31]

At the June 2017 general election, De Piero's majority in Ashfield fell to just 441 votes.[32] The following month, she accepted a place in Corbyn's shadow front-bench team as Shadow Justice Minister.[33]

In the indicative votes on 27 March 2019, De Piero voted for Norway plus, and to a customs union with the EU.[34] In July 2019, she resigned from the shadow front-bench and announced that she would not stand at the next general election. On 12 December 2019, she was succeeded as Member of Parliament for Ashfield, Nottinghamshire by the Conservative politician Lee Anderson, her former office manager.[35][36][37]