British Parliamenterian Chuka Umunna Appears With Girlfriend

Until now, Chuka Umunna has steadfastly refused to disclose the identity of his girlfriend or discuss her in public.
But with a Labour leadership race now in full swing, he appeared to have had a change of heart as he arrived for his appearance on today's Andrew Marr show hand in hand with 30-year-old Alice Sullivan.
During his appearance Mr Umunna became the first senior Labour figure to say the party was wrong to run a deficit before the financial crisis and condemned Ed Miliband's attacks on "wealth creators".
Until now Mr Umunna has kept his girlfriend's identity a secret, and their first public appearance together will spark suggestions that the move was carefully choreographed to coincide with his leadership bid.
Her father Richard, 63, was a director and head of group resources at Xerox, and the family home is a 400-year-old mansion in Gloucestershire which Mr Sullivan bought for £1.3 million in 2007. It has its own tennis court and came with a ram and 50 chickens when he bought it.
Today he said: “I haven’t even met him. This is very early on.
“I’m not going to make any comments. I’m just going to say that we haven’t met him yet so any comment I make about him would be completely unrelated to anything else.”
Miss Sullivan studied politics at Bristol University then took a law conversion course at BPP University in London and worked as a trainee at Hogan Lovells solicitors in London before moving to her current job in 2012. She specialises in employment law and lists her interests as “going to the theatre, travelling abroad, catching up with friends and weekends in the countryside”.
Last year, after the party conference season, one of Miss Sullivan's colleagues at her law firm criticised Mr Umunna's approach.
Tom Heys wrote in a blog that: "Labour’s plans on employment tribunal fees were first announced by Chuka Umunna at the TUC’s recent conference a couple of weeks ago, but he was so vague that many did not actually know what the announcement actually was."
When Mr Umunna was previously asked about his girlfriend, he said: “I just switch off. I’m not bad at that. It’s very hard not to remain wired, but one of the things is having two phones.
“And just having one which is family, girlfriend, friends. If I’m on holiday I will just switch off the other phone, that’s quite important.”
Asked if he had plans for marriage, he replied: "I think she deserves to know first.”
Like Miss Sullivan, Mr Umunna was an employment law solicitor before he entered politics. He worked for the City law firm Herbert Smith, and was elected as Labour MP for Streatham in 2010.
His mother Patricia was a lawyer and his grandfather Sir Helenus Milmo QC was a High Court judge who was one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials of Nazis after the Second World War.
During his appearance on Andrew Marr Mr Umunna became the first senior Labour figure to say the party was wrong to run a deficit before the financial crisis and condemned Ed Miliband's attacks on "wealth creators".