Kezia Dugdale

At 43 years old, Kezia Dugdale physical status not available right now. We will update Kezia Dugdale's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Kezia Alexandra Ross Dugdale (born 28 August 1981) is a Scottish politician.

She was the Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 15 August 2015 until her resignation on 29 August 2017.

She was previously the Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2014 to 2015, and was a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Lothian region between 2011 and 2019.After leaving frontbench politics, Dugdale worked as a columnist and appeared as a contestant on the seventeenth series of ITV reality show I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in November 2017.

Early life and education

Dugdale was born in Aberdeen on 28 August 1981. She attended secondary school at Harris Academy in Dundee, where she was Head Girl. She studied law at the University of Aberdeen from 1999 until 2003, and completed a master's degree in policy studies from 2004 until 2006 at the University of Edinburgh. Whilst attending university, she worked as campaigns and welfare adviser for Edinburgh University Students' Association and as public affairs officer at the National Union of Students Scotland.

Personal life

In a 2016 interview with Mary Riddell for the Fabian Review, Dugdale said she was in a relationship with a woman but was disinclined to provide details of her private life. She first appeared in public with her partner Louise Riddell when they voted together in Edinburgh in the 2016 Scottish Parliament election.

In February 2017, Dugdale revealed the couple had separated shortly after the New Year and following nine years together. In July 2017, it was reported Dugdale was in a relationship with Mid Fife and Glenrothes MSP Jenny Gilruth, a member of the SNP, and the two had started dating around four months earlier. In June 2022, Dugdale married Gilruth in a private ceremony.

In September 2017, she was named Politician of the Year at the Icon Awards, an awards ceremony celebrating Scotland's LGBT community. Dugdale's late father was retired teacher Jeff Dugdale, a campaigner for the Scottish independence movement. Her relationship with her father had been left "sad" and "sore" by his public criticisms of her on Twitter and his support for Stuart Campbell in the defamation case against her. Jeff Dugdale died on 10 September 2021.

Dugdale says her interests include the theatre, Scottish crime novels, and the city of Edinburgh. She supports Hibernian F.C., living close to their ground at Easter Road. She has lived in the Lochend, and Meadowbank, area since 2006. She is a member of Unite the Union and the Community trade union. From 2014 until 2018, she published a weekly column in the Daily Record. She has also written for LabourList and Progress.

Source

Early political career

Dugdale sat on Scottish Labour's Policy Forum from 2006 until 2008, as well as serving as an election agent to both Sarah Boyack MSP and Sheila Gilmore MP. She had also volunteered as a researcher in the parliamentary office of Pauline McNeill MSP. She worked from 2007 to 2011 for the Labour Lothian regional MSP George Foulkes, by then also a Labour life peer, as his parliamentary office manager and political adviser.

In the 2011 Scottish Parliament election, Dugdale was elected to the Scottish Parliament as Scottish Labour's second candidate on their list for the Lothian region. She served as a Scottish Labour and Co-operative Party member and sat on the Local Government and Regeneration and Subordinate Legislation Committees. Dugdale was appointed as Scottish Labour's Spokesperson for Education and Lifelong Learning on 29 June 2013.

Dugdale won the 2014 Scottish Labour deputy leadership election, succeeding Anas Sarwar, and defeating Katy Clark. As Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy did not have a seat in the Scottish Parliament, she stood in for him at First Minister's Questions. On 13 June 2015, she resigned from the deputy leadership in order to contest the 2015 Scottish Labour leadership election. She was succeeded by Alex Rowley after the leadership election.

Later career

In November 2017, ITV announced that Dugdale would appear as a contestant on its reality television series, I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! It was subsequently reported that she faced disciplinary action from the Labour Party because she did not notify party managers she would be out of the country on non-work related business while the Scottish Parliament was in session. On 21 November, the party said that she would not be suspended.

Dugdale made her first appearance on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! on 22 November. She became the second person to be eliminated from the show. Speaking about the experience afterwards, she said that she knew her appearance on the programme would be a "political gamble", but that she wanted to "take on the myth that every politician [is] old, white, male, pale and stale" and would return home "with [her] head held high". She expressed regrets of the effect of her appearances on the show during the first weeks of the new Labour leadership in Scotland, and received a written warning for agreeing to take part without approval from the Scottish Labour parliamentary group. She promised to donate her MSP's salary for her absence, and part of her show fees, to charity.

In 2018, Stuart Campbell, a blogger running the pro-independence Wings Over Scotland website, started defamation proceedings against Dugdale about comments she made as a columnist for the Daily Record about his Twitter activity, a case he lost. The judgement said Dugdale was incorrect to imply Campbell had been homophobic but her article was protected under the principle of fair comment.

On 29 April 2019, Dugdale announced she would be resigning as an MSP before the summer recess of the Scottish Parliament in order to take up the role of director of the John Smith Centre for Public Service at the University of Glasgow. On 15 July 2019, Dugdale resigned as a Member of the Scottish Parliament. The following day it was announced she would be succeeded by former transport minister Sarah Boyack, who had been a candidate on the Lothian regional list in 2016. On 10 October 2019, it was revealed she had also resigned from Scottish Labour that July, following disagreement with the party over Brexit.

Source