Jess Asato MP

ACHIEVEMENTS: Our FIRST female MP   
Born in 1982 she is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lowestoft since 2024. She was a member of Islington Borough Council from 2010 to 2013. Born in 1982 she is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lowestoft since 2024. She was a member of Islington Borough Council from 2010 to 2013.     

Early life 

Asato is a quarter Japanese and has family in Hawaii. She grew up in the Gorleston-on-Sea area of Great Yarmouth and the nearby Norfolk village of Rollesby where she lived with and cared for her grandmother, who had serious health problems, and went to Flegg High School in Great Yarmouth. When she was 16 in 1997, she moved from Norfolk to live with her mother in London and went to Francis Holland School, an all-girls private school. She was a keen debater at Sixth Form level, reaching the semi-finals of the Oxford Union schools' debate competition. Asato studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she graduated with a degree in law.   

Political career       

She was a councillor on Islington London Borough Council from 2010 to 2013,[10] but resigned to spend more time in Norwich. She has been criticised in Islington by political opponents for spending too much time in Norfolk, and for allegedly being a "professional politician".[11] She worked in Westminster two days a week as political adviser to former cabinet minister and culture secretary Tessa Jowell, and was featured as one of the Evening Standard's Lucky 13 in 2013.[12] She is reported as saying that spending her formative years growing up in a low income household in Norfolk – from 11 until she left home at 16, and being the first person in her family to have made it to university - gives her a good foundation for life as an MP.