Louise Haigh: MP spearheading Labour rail plans known for hard work and humour

Shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh has just announced Labour’s plans to renationalise most of the railways.

The move is seen as an attempt by Labour to signal it still has an appetite for radicalism, after a series of setbacks to its election offer in recent months, including scaling back its green investment programme.

Here is everything you need to know about the senior Labour figure spearheading the plans.

Ms Haigh was elected as Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley in May 2015.

She was the youngest Labour member of that Parliament and was described some six months later by then-House speaker John Bercow as having “terrier-like intensity” in her campaigning against the closure of tax offices.

She was deemed the following year by the Yorkshire Post to be the most hard-working of the new intake of MPs, judging by the volume of her parliamentary questions and speeches.

Born in 1987 in Sheffield, she worked as a Metropolitan Police officer in London’s Lambeth borough before becoming an MP.

She has said she drew on her experience as a special constable when she was shadow policing minister from 2017. She has called for changes to the culture of policing.

She nominated Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership contest in 2015 but then backed Owen Smith, and campaigned for Lisa Nandy rather than Sir Keir Starmer to be Labour leader in 2020. But she has still remained in high-level roles.

She was made shadow secretary for Northern Ireland in 2020, at a time when tense post-Brexit trade negotiations were taking place, before taking up the shadow transport secretary post in 2021.

She has also become known for her vibrantly dyed hair and her humour. Her hair was orange as she announced Labour’s rail pledge and joked that she was overruled on calling the proposed nationalised railway “Rail Britannia”.