Tri-Service

Shadow Defence: Who Is Emily Thornberry?

After days of uncertainty and a reshuffle that dragged on for 36 hours, Jeremy Corbyn has installed a new Shadow Defence Secretary to bolster his front bench team.

Gone is Maria Eagle - who backs a replacement for Trident and voted against her leader over airstrikes in Syria - to be replaced with Emily Thornberry.

In an exclusive interview with Forces TV, Dan Freedman asked the new Shadow Defence Secretary if she had been appointed, to ensure Labour's defence review ends up opposing Trident (above).

Speaking to Forces TV the MP declared she was 'honoured' to be given the job but taking on the defence brief will thrust her, and her views, further into the limelight.

Mrs Thornberry has been the Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury since 2005, re-elected in 2015 with a healthy 12,000 vote majority.

On the issue of Britain's nuclear deterrent and its successor, Emily Thornberry has consistently either voted against or chosen to be absent from the debate - leaving one such parliamentary session in 2007 to address a CND rally outside the Commons.

In September 2015 she told the BBC that "I don't think being against nuclear weapons is that zany."

With Maria Eagle ousted as co-covener of the Labour Party's own defence review, Mrs Thornberry is unlikely to clash with her colleague Ken Livingstone who is himself an opponent of a nuclear deterrent.

She says she was against the 2003 invasion of Iraq but supported the initial airstrikes against Islamic State in the country because "we have a responsibility for what's happened in Iraq and what is essentially a baby democracy."

"It's a very different situation that we're talking about now, they've asked for our help."

In 2006 and 2007 Emily Thornberry was respectively absent and voted against an inquiry into the Iraq War.

She has also consistently voted in favour of strengthening the military covenant.

Her appointment to the defence job will be seen by many as controversial and marks a return to the shadow cabinet after being forced to resign while working under Ed Miliband.

Then the Shadow Attorney General, she had tweeted a picture of a white van parked on the driveway of a house adorned with St George's flags - an action at the time judged to be mocking and snobbish.

For Emily Thornberry's full voting record while an MP, please click here.

It comes as Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn denies being "muzzled" after surviving the reshuffle.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, a Corbyn ally, said Mr Benn had agreed not to disagree with the leader from the front bench.

But Mr Benn, who made a passioned speech in favour of carrying out airstrikes in Syria prior to the vote on the matter, said he would carry on with his job "exactly as before".