Gisela Stuart

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Gisela Gschaider Stuart (born November 26, 1955 as Gisela Gschaider) is the Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Edgbaston in the United Kingdom.

Stuart was born in Velden, Bavaria, Germany and took her parents' Roman Catholic faith. She moved to Britain in 1974 when she married her husband and lived in the Midlands. In the 1997 general election, she won the Birmingham Edgbaston seat, which had been held by the Conservative Party for over seventy years. Her victory was the first seat to change hands on TV on election night (Crosby was the first but that was not covered on TV) and therefore heralded the Labour landslide of May 1, 1997. Stuart and her husband subsequently divorced.

Stuart was a junior health minister until 2001 and accompanied Tony Blair on a visit to a Birmingham hospital where he was surprised by Sharron Storer who demanded that he improve health services; some commentators speculated that Blair's embarrassment at this incident during the 2001 election campaign led to Stuart being dropped from the government. She sat on the European Convention's 13-strong presidium or steering group, but after the draft constitution was published, she complained that it had been drawn up by a "self-selected group of the European political elite" determined to deepen European integration.

She attracted some controversy in October 2004 by becoming the only Labour MP to openly call for the re-election of George W. Bush in that year's US Presidential election, arguing "you know where you stand with George and, in today's world, that's much better than rudderless leaders who drift with the prevailing wind."[1].

She is a signatory of the Henry Jackson Society principles, which promote the spread of liberal democracy across the world and the maintenance of a strong military with global expeditionary reach.[2]