The Labour MP Chuka Umunna is to marry his girlfriend, Alice Sullivan, it has been announced.
A notice placed in the Times by Sullivan’s parents on Tuesday read: “The engagement is announced between Alice Elizabeth Jane, younger daughter of Mr and Mrs Richard Sullivan of Pauntley, Gloucestershire, and Chuka Harrison, son of Patricia Umunna and the late Ben Umunna of Streatham, London.”
Umunna’s relationship with the employment lawyer was revealed only a couple of days before the Streatham MP formally announced he was to run for the Labour leadership in May. The couple were pictured walking hand-in-hand to an interview on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show.
But Umunna, 37, surprised Westminster by pulling out of the race to succeed Ed Miliband just three days after declaring his candidacy, citing his unease with media scrutiny of his family and partner.
He said at the time: “Until you’re actually in the eye of the storm it’s hard to know how you and people around you will think about it. I felt terrible about it.
“My family is incredibly important and precious. I’ve said that I could live without leading the Labour party or politics. For once I decided to put the rest of my life first.”
The former shadow business secretary was the bookmakers’ favourite to win the leadership contest. After his withdrawal he threw his support behind the Labour party’s other centrist candidate Liz Kendall.
Following the election of Jeremy Corbyn in September, Umunna issued a call for party unity, but ended up stepping down from the shadow cabinet, where he had been working since 2011.
Sullivan, 31, studied politics at Bristol University before taking a law conversion course at BPP University in London. She worked as a trainee at Hogan Lovells solicitors in London before moving to the Chancery Lane firm Lewis Silkin in 2012.
