Ruth Smeeth, Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent

Ruth Lauren Anderson, Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (formerly Smeeth; born 29 June 1979) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Stoke-on-Trent North from 2015 until 2019. Since 2022 she has been a member of the House of Lords.

After working in public relations roles for the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre and Nestlé, Anderson became more actively involved in the Labour Party. She stood as an MP candidate in the 2010 election but was not elected. She was named as an intelligence source to "strictly protect" by the US embassy in London in a 2009 diplomatic cable published online in 2011. During her parliamentary career she campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union. She served as parliamentary private secretary to Tom Watson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, but resigned so she could vote against a second Brexit referendum. She was elected Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement in April 2019 and served until she lost the contest for the Stoke constituency in December of that year.

Early life Ruth Anderson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her mother is from east London, and her father is a Scottish trade unionist. She had no contact with her father after her parents divorced when she was aged three.

Anderson attended school and taught at a Jewish school in Bristol, where her mother was later deputy general secretary for Amicus, and in her early life travelled extensively across the UK due to her mother's work.

Anderson graduated with a degree in Politics and International Relations from the University of Birmingham in 2000. leaving in early 2007 to work in PR for Nestlé.

From 2010 to 2015, she was a deputy director of anti-racism and -fascism advocacy group Hope Not Hate.

Parliamentary career Anderson was selected as Labour Party candidate for the Burton constituency in the 2010 general election, finishing 6,304 votes behind Andrew Griffiths of the Conservative Party. She was subsequently selected from an all-women shortlist to be Labour Party candidate for Stoke-on-Trent North, following the retirement of incumbent Labour MP Joan Walley, and was subsequently elected at the 2015 general election.

When she was the Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Burton, Smeeth was named in a 2009 cable from the US embassy in London as a source to "strictly protect". According to the cable Smeeth had supplied intelligence about Prime Minister Gordon Brown's intention to call an election in late 2009, and his subsequent decision against doing so at that time.

In October 2015, Anderson was given an adjournment debate on holiday hunger.

In June 2016, Anderson resigned her post as parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to the shadow Northern Ireland and Scotland teams, alongside others, in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace him in the 2016 Labour leadership election.

Anderson campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union in the approach to the 2016 referendum. Her constituency voted for Brexit by 72.1%. In November 2016, Smeeth said "I'll be voting for us to move to Article 50. The general public, especially in Stoke-on-Trent, sent a very clear message with some parts of my constituency voting 80/20 to leave. My whole priority and focus is how we can make it work".

In June 2016, at the launch of the Chakrabarti Report, Marc Wadsworth, a Labour Party activist, described Smeeth as working "hand-in-hand" with Kate McCann of The Daily Telegraph, after McCann passed Smeeth his press release. Anderson later issued a statement that Wadsworth was using "traditional antisemitic slurs to attack me for being part of a 'media conspiracy'" and criticised a lack of response from Corbyn or his office, calling on him to resign.

However, according to a video recording of the event, However, the Jewish Voice for Labour group contested this, by comparing Anderson's claim with a study by the Community Service Trust, who monitor anti-Semitic and abusive media content. The study found that over an entire year (encompassing the 12-hour period of Anderson's claim of 20,000 cases) only 9,008 original tweets concerning Jews were classified as antagonistic. Other studies investigating the most abused MPs on Twitter found that Anderson was not mentioned, since she did not exceed the threshold of abuse to be ranked. In July 2020, Wadsworth referred to Anderson as a "pro-Israeli government zealot".

Anderson lodged an official complaint against MP Chris Williamson for saying the Labour Party was being “demonised as a racist party” and had “given too much ground” to people making allegations of anti-Semitism. During a talk as part of the pressure campaign against Williamson, Anderson stated: "the only people weaponising anti-Semitism are the anti-Semites".

The police strengthened her security after she received a death threat. In April 2018, Anderson was accompanied by around 40 Labour MPs and peers to a Labour hearing into Wadsworth's conduct. Wadsworth was expelled for bringing the Party into disrepute.

Anderson retained her seat in the 2017 general election with a much reduced majority.

In March 2019, Anderson resigned as PPS to Tom Watson, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party to vote against a second referendum on Brexit, as Labour had instructed its MPs to abstain.

In April 2019, Anderson was elected Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement. She is a member of Labour Friends of Israel.

In the December 2019 general election, Anderson lost her seat to Conservative Jonathan Gullis, who overturned her 2,359, or five per cent, majority to a 15% or 6,286 majority of his own.

Anderson endorsed Ian Murray in the 2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election.

It was announced on 14 October 2022 that, as part of the 2022 Special Honours, Anderson would receive a life peerage. On 18 November 2022, she was created Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, of Stoke-on-Trent in the County of Staffordshire.

Personal life Anderson was married to Michael Smeeth, a business executive and the UK chair of the British-American Project. She describes herself as "culturally Jewish".

In June 2020, Anderson became chief executive of Index on Censorship, an organisation that campaigns for freedom of speech. After taking on her role in the House of Lords, she has advocated for Parliamentary bills that Amnesty International says "stifle free speech" and that organisations including Greenpeace and the European Legal Support Centre say "will stifle a wide range of campaigns concerned with the arms trade, climate justice, human rights, international law, and international solidarity with oppressed peoples struggling for justice".

Anderson was appointed an Honorary Captain in the Royal Naval Reserve in July 2021.

In May 2025, Anderson married Gareth Snell in a ceremony in Gibraltar.