Gloria De Piero (born 21 December 1972) is a British broadcaster and former politician, who served as
Member of Parliament (MP) for
Ashfield from 2010 to 2019.
She began her television career at the
BBC and
ITV, and was political editor of
GMTV from 2003 to 2010. De Piero returned to broadcasting in 2020, and has been a presenter on
GB News since 2021.
De Piero was born on 21 December 1972 in
Bradford,
West Riding of Yorkshire, England to Giorgio and Maddalena De Piero.[2] Her parents are
Italian immigrants who moved to the United Kingdom to work in Bradford's textile mills. Her father had a mental health crisis when she was around the age of nine. This resulted in him requiring admissions to psychiatric hospitals throughout her childhood. His mental health meant that he could not continue to work, and De Piero's mother gave up her job to look after him, and the family lived on
benefits.[3]
She attended Yorkshire Martyrs Catholic College where she obtained five
GCSEs, and
Bradford College where she gained two D
A-levels.[3] During her youth, De Piero was a member of
Socialist Organiser, and joined the
Labour Party's student wing
Labour Students at the age of 18.[4][5] De Piero then studied sociology at the
University of Central England (now
Birmingham City University) and the
University of Westminster, graduating with a first.[2][3] She was involved in the Labour Students' campaign in 1996–1997 as one of its national officers based in London.[5] Following the
1997 general election which resulted in the Labour Party winning in a landslide, De Piero applied for several government positions including as a special adviser, parliamentary researcher, and at left-wing think tanks but failed to gain employment.[6][3]
On 2 June 2020, De Piero was announced as a presenter on the new
Times Radio station.[10] She presented her own show on Friday mornings, and co-presented the Sunday morning political show G&T alongside the former political editor of The Sun,
Tom Newton Dunn.[11] In April 2021 she announced that she was joining the weekday afternoon programme of
GB News, a new TV channel.[12] In August it was announced that De Piero would host a new political programme on the channel: The Briefing: Lunchtime with Gloria De Piero.[13] She launched interview show Gloria Meets on the network in November 2022.[14]
Parliamentary career
2010 to 2015
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 SecretaryGeoff Hoon, would be stepping down at the election.[15] On 21 March, she was selected as the party's candidate.[16] 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.[17] During her election campaign, it was reported that she had posed for topless photographs for a modelling agency at the age of 15.[18][19] Three years later, an unnamed news agency attempted to buy the photographs on behalf of a national newspaper.[20] 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][21]
In October 2010, Labour leader
Ed Miliband appointed De Piero as a shadow culture minister.[22] In the 2011 reshuffle, De Piero became Shadow Minister for Crime Prevention,[23] and in 2013, she was promoted to the
shadow cabinet as Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities.[24]
In 2012, De Piero held a national roadshow called Why Do People Hate Me? to discover why voters were so disenchanted with politicians. She interviewed six groups of people including retired miners and warehouse workers.[25][26]
2015 to 2019
At the
2015 general election, De Piero held Ashfield with an increased majority of 8,820.[27][28] In September 2015, De Piero was elected to the Labour Party's Conference Arrangements Committee with 109,888 votes.[29] 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.[30] 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.[31][32]
At the
June 2017 general election, De Piero's majority in Ashfield fell to just 441 votes.[36] The following month, she accepted a place in Corbyn's shadow front-bench team as Shadow Justice Minister.[37]
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 politician
Lee Anderson, her former office manager. Anderson was elected as a
Conservative but now sits as a
Reform UK MP.[40][41][42]
Personal life
De Piero married James Robinson in 2012. Robinson was a media correspondent at The Guardian, media editor at The Observer and an employee at PR firm Powerscourt. He was the director of communications for former deputy leader of the Labour Party
Tom Watson.[43][44][45][46]