Neil Coyle

Neil Coyle is not a politician with an artificially clean mouth. In 2019, he termed Boris Johnson “a dick” on live television. Following complaints, Coyle said “I will be toning down the language but never the passion”. It is fair to say that he has done neither: just a month later, he judged Jeremy Corbyn’s ambivalent stance on Brexit to be “bullshit”. In 2020, he sent a since-deleted, highly explicit tweet to Jacob Rees-Mogg. A former local councillor on in Southwark (from 2010 to 2016), Coyle was a supporter of the unsuccessful garden bridge project (on which his wife worked as a landscape architect). Despite nominating Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership elections, Coyle resigned from the shadow cabinet in protest at Corbyn’s leadership post-referendum, backing Owen Smith’s unsuccessful bid to replace him. Coyle also defied the Labour whip in 2017 to vote against the triggering of Article 50. Coyle has campaigned for local children’s hospital and mental health services funding. Coyle chairs the APPG on wine and spirits. In 2020, he was appointed to three committees: work and pensions (of which he was previously a member from 2016), foreign affairs and arms export controls.