Long Biography

Liam is the Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, a member of His Majesty's Privy Council, elected Chair of the Global Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF and Chair of the House of Commons Business and Trade Select Committee.

As Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster during the Great Financial Crisis, Liam coordinated No 10 Downing Street for Gordon Brown before serving as Chief Secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury. He is a former member of the Council of Europe and is one of Westminster's leading authorities on China.

An economic historian, Liam has published over twenty books, pamphlets and chapters on economic history, foreign policy and public service reform. Liam's history of British capitalism, Dragons was published in 2016. Liam has written for Newsweek, the Financial Times, the Daily Mirror, the Guardian and New Statesman, and lectured at Harvard University, Oxford University and the LSE.

Liam graduated top of his year at Manchester University, before winning a Fulbright Scholarship to the Harvard Business School where he graduated with honours, and later becoming a Gwilym Gibbon Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.

Before entering politics, Liam worked in strategic consulting and banking, before founding a fast-growing venture-backed European technology company in 2000. He gave up his company in the 2004 by-election to serve Hodge Hill in East Birmingham where five generations of his family have lived and worked.

Liam was first elected with a majority of 450 votes. Today, it is the biggest Labour majority in the West Midlands. Over £500 million has been invested in Hodge Hill’s NHS, schools, homes and parks on Liam’s watch and today Hodge Hill sends more young people to university than almost any other constituency in the West Midlands. 

Liam is married to Sarah, a graduate of Aston University, and together they have three children, Alex, John and Kyla.