Jo White is the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, having first been elected to parliament at the 2024 general election.

In the 2024 general election, White won 18,476 votes, representing 41.2% of the vote. The Conservative candidate, Brendan Clarke-Smith, received 12,708 votes (28.3%), while the Reform UK candidate, Frank Ward, secured 9,751 votes (21.7%). White was duly elected with a majority of 5,768 votes.  

The Bassetlaw constituency is located in North Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands. Considered a “red wall” seat, it was held by the Labour Party from 1935 to 2019. Brendan Clarke-Smith of the Conservative Party represented the constituency from 2019 to 2024.

Political Career

White currently serves as parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Home Office (immigration minister). She was appointed to this role in July 2026, following the Labour leadership contest and Andy Burnham’s elevation as prime minister.

In November 2024, White founded the Red Wall Caucus of Labour MPs representing constituencies in the Midlands and Northern England. The caucus serves as a voice for the so-called “red wall” seats that returned to Labour en masse at the 2024 general election. White serves as convenor of the caucus.

The group’s founding statement, issued in February 2025, stated that its “people want to see investment on their doorsteps that resolves our structural infrastructure challenges, creates new jobs, builds skills and the wealth that will lead to a huge range of new opportunities. We ignore this challenge at our peril.”

In May 2025, following a series of disappointing local election results for the Labour Party, the caucus issued a statement calling for a shift in government strategy. The group argued that Keir Starmer’s “plan for change” messaging had “fallen on deaf ears”, inviting ministers to “visit our areas, listen and rebuild the social contract between government and the people.”

The statement added: “The demands raised by new MPs from post-industrial towns where infrastructure is poor with years of underinvestment must be taken off the too-difficult-to-do list.

“Breakaway from Treasury orthodoxy otherwise we will never get the investment we desperately need. The government needs to it improve messaging by telling our story and articulating our values in the language that resonates and is heard.”

In a subsequent letter to Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, on 27 August 2025, the MPs said they were elected “with commitments to destroy the criminal smuggling gang networks, ensure that our border is secure… and to quickly remove those who have no entitlement to be here.”

They went on to critique Farage’s deportations plan.

The MPs added: “We believe that migrants who pose a threat to public safety should be tagged, and that we should expand right-to-work checks to crack down on illegal working. We believe sex offenders should never get asylum in the UK. We believe that the criminal people smuggling gangs should be treated like terrorists.”

White was appointed as an honorary vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) in November 2024. LFI is one of the most established and prominent advocacy groups within Labour, campaigning for a strong bilateral relationship between the UK and Israel and working to bolster ties with its sister party, Israeli Labor. The organisation advocates for a two-state solution, with a secure Israel alongside a “viable, democratic and independent” Palestinian state.

White sat as a member of the House of Commons home affairs select committee (2025-2026).

White has been listed as a member of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPGs) for dementia in sport (chair), fusion energy (chair), golf (vice chair), jazz and kidney (chair).

White delivered her maiden speech on 23 July 2024 during a debate on immigration and home affairs.

In it, she said: “I get the little me’s so common in Bassetlaw and elsewhere: they are my people, my responsibility. Money is often a problem, but poverty of aspiration is much a bigger one to overcome.

“You are told that you cannot do that, that this door is not for you, that you stink, that you are thick, that your hopes are only ever dreams and can never be realised; well, this kid never stopped dreaming.

” Today’s little me’s – the ones who do without the flashy trainers, who play outside but never go inside the big sports stadiums or the posh restaurants and the cafés, who do not fly on aeroplanes or get taken to museums or theatres, who have never seen the King or his palace or Big Ben – in my area, in my constituency of Bassetlaw, are too often expected by this place to celebrate a rapidly changing world by getting to the back of the queue and behaving themselves.

“I am not having that. I drove trucks across the channel – the only woman in the drivers’ section on the ferries. Small boats – new problem? The flight cases I drove were huge, with ventilation and a false bottom. The border sniffer dogs were an infrequent luxury. I regularly ran the gauntlet of organised crime and desperate people.”

Before entering parliament, White was elected as a Labour councillor on Bassetlaw District Council in 2012. She became deputy leader of the council in 2015, stepping down from this post in 2024.

Political Views

Leadership elections

Labour deputy leadership 2025: White was one of 175 Labour MPs who nominated Bridget Phillipson for the party’s deputy leadership in September 2025. The election followed the resignation of Angela Rayner, who stepped down as deputy prime minister and deputy party leader after an investigation into her tax affairs. It marked the first time since 2007 that Labour had held a deputy leadership contest while in government.

Phillipson, the serving education secretary, was widely viewed as the candidate favoured by Downing Street and the party leadership. She secured 175 nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), comfortably exceeding the 80 required to reach the final ballot. She was ultimately defeated by Lucy Powell.

White co-wrote an article endorsing Phillipson alongside colleagues Michael Payne, Michael Wheeler, Antonia Bance, Steve Race, Michelle Welsh, Tim Roca and Sureena Brackenridge.

The LabourList article stated: “Bridget is the right choice to be Labour’s next deputy leader. She embodies the best of our movement: authenticity, hard work, and a deep sense of service.

“From growing up in a single-parent family in Sunderland to serving as MP for Houghton and Sunderland South – a marginal constituency she has defended and won against the odds – Bridget has always fought and always won.”

It added: “Bridget brings the same strength. She delivers. She inspires. She wins. She will unite our party to take the fight to Reform. That’s why we’re backing her to be the next deputy leader of the Labour Party.”

Factional identity and party tradition

Labour Friends of Nato: White is a patron of Labour Friends of Nato (LFN), a parliamentary network and pressure group established in January 2026 to reinforce the Labour Party’s commitment to the Atlantic alliance. According to a LabourList report, the group seeks to deepen understanding of Nato’s strategic role among MPs and party activists. It also seeks to provide a platform to rebut political arguments from both the left and right that seek to diminish Britain’s involvement in the treaty.

The formation of the network was framed by its founders as a return to the post-war traditions of the Clement Attlee government, which helped establish the alliance.

The group set up with plans to organise fact-finding missions to Nato’s military and political headquarters in Brussels, and host an annual lecture in honour of Ernest Bevin, the former foreign secretary and Nato treaty signatory.

Get Britain Working Group: White has been listed as a member of the Get Britain Working Group of Labour MPs – a caucus supportive of the Starmer leadership’s position on welfare. The group argues for a “new social contract built on employment and opportunity”, focusing on the rising number of people out of the workforce due to long-term sickness.

In an open letter, issued upon the group’s founding in March 2025, the group expressed its support for the government’s welfare measures set out in the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill. The bill was subject to a significant revolt of over 120 Labour MPs – which forced ministers into a series of concessions shortly before its first vote in the House of Commons.

Ahead of the bill’s fraught second reading debate, the MPs wrote: “Our Labour values are built on a simple but powerful idea: that every individual, regardless of background or circumstance, should have the support they need to make the most of their lives.

Welfare

Welfare vote (July 2025): White voted in favour of the government’s flagship welfare bill at second reading. The vote came after ministers agreed to significant concessions to avoid defeat via a mass rebellion of Labour MPs on 1 July 2025.

Assisted dying

White voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the assisted dying bill, at second reading (November 2024) and third reading (June 2025).

Social values and conscience issues

Abortion decriminalisation (2025): White voted in favour of a backbench amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that sought to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales in June 2025. The amendment, which was passed by a majority of 242 votes, removed women from the threat of prosecution for ending a pregnancy at any stage. As an issue of conscience, MPs were allowed to vote according to their personal beliefs.

Before Politics

Joanna Ruth White was born on 22 January 1964 in Stamford, Lincolnshire. She studied at the University of Manchester. 

White was office manager for her husband, John Mann, during his tenure as Bassetlaw’s MP (2003-2019). She also served for a decade on the national executive of the Unite union.

Personal Life

White married John Mann (now Lord Mann) in 1986. They have three children.

Her identical twin sister, Deb Davies, has served as a Labour councillor in Newport, Wales.

Trivia

White leads the Red Wall Caucus of Labour MPs.