MORAN
Layla
Michelle

• 1. Early life and career
• 2. Political career
• 3. Political positions
• 4. Personal life

Layla Michelle Moran (born 12 September 1982) is a British Liberal Democrat politician serving as the Liberal Democrat Spokesman for Foreign Affairs and International Development since 2020, and serving as the Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon since 2017. She identifies as pansexual and is believed to be the first UK parliamentarian to come out as pansexual (which she did in 2020). She is the first MP of Palestinian descent.

She attended private schools in Brussels, Kingston in Jamaica and Roedean School near Brighton. She studied Physics at Imperial College London and completed her PGCE at Brunel University London. She worked as a maths and physics teacher. Moran unsuccessfully campaigned as the Liberal Democrat candidate in Battersea at the 2010 general election and in the West Central constituency at the 2012 London Assembly election.

She contested Oxford West and Abingdon at the 2015 general election, coming second. She was selected for the seat again at the 2017 general election and was elected to the House of Commons, defeating Conservative MP Nicola Blackwood, with 26,256 votes (43.7%) and a majority of 816.

She served as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for the Department for Education under three leaders from 2017 to 2020, and was spokesperson for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from 2019 to 2020. After Jo Swinson lost her seat at the 2019 general election, Moran stood to become Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the 2020 leadership election, which she lost to Acting Leader Sir Ed Davey. On 31 August 2020, Davey appointed Moran as the Liberal Democrats' Shadow Foreign Secretary and as International Development Spokesperson the following day.

Early life and career

Layla Michelle Moran was born in Ham­mer­smith on 12 Sep­tem­ber 1982, the elder daugh­ter of diplo­mat James Moran and Randa Moran, a Chris­t­ian Pales­tin­ian from Jerusalem. Her great-grand­fa­ther was the Pales­tin­ian writer Wasif Jawhariyyeh, who pub­lished ex­ten­sive mem­oirs. Moran de­scribes her­self as a British Palestinian. On her up­bring­ing, Moran said "My Pales­tin­ian back­ground has made me in­ter­ested at a global level. Pol­i­tics was al­ways at the din­ner table; it primed me to engage." Moran was raised as a cul­tural Chris­t­ian and now iden­ti­fies as a hu­man­ist.

Be­cause her fa­ther was a diplo­mat for the Eu­ro­pean Union and its pre­de­ces­sors, Moran grew up in var­i­ous coun­tries, in­clud­ing Bel­gium, Greece, Ethiopia, Ja­maica and Jordan. She at­tended pri­vate schools in Brus­sels, Kingston in Ja­maica and Roedean School in Brighton. From 2000 to 2003, she stud­ied physics at Im­pe­r­ial Col­lege Lon­don, and from 2005 to 2007 com­pleted a PGCE at Brunel Uni­ver­sity Lon­don. From 2007 to 2008, she stud­ied for a mas­ter's de­gree in com­par­a­tive ed­u­ca­tion at UCL's In­sti­tute of Ed­u­ca­tion.

From 2003 to 2012, Moran was a maths and physics teacher at the In­ter­na­tional School of Brus­sels, and at two schools in Lon­don: Queens­mead School and South­bank In­ter­na­tional School. Be­tween 2009 and 2013 she worked as a part-time course tutor for Ox­ford Study Courses, a com­pany that helps In­ter­na­tional Bac­calau­re­ate teach­ers and stu­dents, and from 2013 she was full-time aca­d­e­mic manager.

Political career

Moran was se­lected as the Lib­eral De­mo­c­rat can­di­date for Bat­tersea at the 2010 gen­eral elec­tion and came in third place. She also stood as a can­di­date for the West Cen­tral con­stituency in the 2012 Lon­don As­sem­bly elec­tion, com­ing fourth.

Moran con­tested Ox­ford West and Abing­don at the 2015 gen­eral elec­tion, com­ing sec­ond. She was se­lected for the seat again at the 2017 gen­eral elec­tion and won the seat from Nicola Black­wood, a Con­ser­v­a­tive who was then a ju­nior min­is­ter for health, with 26,256 votes (43.7%) and a ma­jor­ity of 816. Moran be­came the first UK Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment of Pales­tin­ian de­scent and the first fe­male Lib­eral De­mo­c­rat MP from an eth­nic mi­nor­ity background.

In June 2017, Moran was named Lib­eral De­mo­c­rat spokesper­son for ed­u­ca­tion, sci­ence and young peo­ple in the House of Com­mons. That month she used her maiden speech to call for fairer fund­ing for schools, and in July 2017 she spoke out against the clo­sure of all the Sure Start chil­dren's cen­tres in Ox­ford­shire ear­lier in the year. Also in July 2017, Moran was jeered at for ac­cus­ing the Con­ser­v­a­tives of un­der­fund­ing a new scheme to pro­vide 30 hours of free child care for the chil­dren of work­ing parents. Later in 2017, she was ap­pointed a mem­ber of the Pub­lic Ac­counts Com­mit­tee, which is re­spon­si­ble for over­see­ing gov­ern­ment expenditure.

In May 2019, Moran an­nounced that, being a rel­a­tively new MP, she would not be run­ning in the 2019 Lib­eral De­moc­rats lead­er­ship elec­tion. She had been con­sid­ered a fron­trun­ner to re­place Vince Cable as leader, fol­low­ing his an­nounce­ment in Sep­tem­ber 2018 that he in­tended to step down from the post. At the 2019 gen­eral elec­tion she stood for re-elec­tion, in­creas­ing her ma­jor­ity to 8,943. In March 2020, Moran an­nounced that she would be run­ning in the 2020 lead­er­ship elec­tion. Moran fin­ished in sec­ond place with 35.6% of the vote, los­ing to Ed Davey, the Act­ing-Co Leader.

Moran has also been a lead­ing voice in the call for a full re­view of the GCSE his­tory curriculum.  She ar­gues that to tackle in­sti­tu­tional racism in so­ci­ety stu­dents must be taught of Britain's colo­nial past and the in­jus­tices that took place within it. In 2020 over 250,000 peo­ple signed a pe­ti­tion call­ing for 'Britain's colo­nial his­tory to be made a com­pul­sory part of the cur­ricu­lum' which prompted Moran and 30 other cross-party MP's to apply greater pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment to make sig­nif­i­cant changes to the his­tory cur­ricu­lum.

In 2021, Moran was one of three MPs who suc­cess­fully took legal ac­tion against the De­part­ment of Health and So­cial Care over con­tracts awarded dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­demic.

She said the names of the chil­dren killed in the 2021 Is­rael–Pales­tine cri­sis in Parliament.

Political positions

Foreign policy

Moran be­lieves that the United King­dom should an­nounce recog­ni­tion of the State of Pales­tine.

Personal life

In an in­ter­view with The Times, Moran stated that she suf­fered from de­pres­sion when she was a stu­dent and at­trib­uted it to a neg­a­tive self-im­age re­sult­ing from the so­cial stigma of obe­sity. She un­der­went stom­ach-sta­pling surgery to as­sist her in los­ing weight.

In 2013, Moran and her then boyfriend Richard Davis were briefly ques­tioned by po­lice, after she slapped him dur­ing an ar­gu­ment in their hotel room at the Lib­eral De­mo­c­rat Fed­eral Con­fer­ence. No charge was brought, but the re­la­tion­ship sub­se­quently ended.

On 2 Jan­u­ary 2020, Moran re­vealed in an in­ter­view with PinkNews that she is pan­sex­ual; she is be­lieved to be the first UK par­lia­men­tar­ian to come out as pansexual. Moran also dis­closed that she was in a sta­ble re­la­tion­ship with Rosy Cobb, for­merly a Lib­eral De­mo­c­rat press of­fi­cer. Cobb was sus­pended by the party dur­ing the pre­vi­ous gen­eral elec­tion over an ac­cu­sa­tion that she had forged an email.