Gordon Marsden

Gordon Marsden was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015.

While in opposition, from 2010 to 2019, Marsden served as Shadow Minister for Higher Education, Further Education and Skills and previously sat as a member of the House of Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee and Education and Skills Select Committee before it was dissolved in 2007.

Marsden is gay. In early 2009, Gordon was named as one of the Daily Telegraph's expenses "saints", due to the low levels of his expenses claims.

Marsden convened the first group of Labour MPs representing seaside and coastal towns. In 2007 Gordon was asked to chair a Manifesto Group for the Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Seaside and Coastal Towns.

In 2003, he was made a Visiting Parliamentary Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford.

Marsden is a member of the Fabian Society, of which he was chairman in 2000–1. He also served as Chair of the Young Fabians and now serves as a Trustee of Dartmouth Street, the building where the Society is based.

Before entering Parliament he had been a tutor for the Open University since 1994, as well as a public affairs adviser to English Heritage and, for twelve years, the editor of History Today and New Socialist magazine.

Marsden first contested the seat of Blackpool South in 1992 and won it in 1997. Once elected to Parliament, Gordon served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Lord Irvine of Lairg in the Lord Chancellor's Department (2001–03), Tessa Jowell as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (2003–05) and John Denham as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and shadow communities secretary (2009–).

Gordon Marsden (born 28 November 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackpool South from 1997 to 2019.