Prior to winning her seat on the London Assembly, she worked for the PR agency Four Communications as a public affairs account manager. Eshalomi served as a local councillor from
Brixton Hill on
Lambeth London Borough Council. She represented the ward along with future Labour MP
Steve Reed. Eshalomi has previously served as a member of the
Progress Strategy Board. In 2016,
The Times reported that "one of
Momentum's most militant factions" planned to picket an event held to support Eshalomi's candidacy for the London Assembly. MPs including
Chuka Umunna,
Ben Bradshaw and
Stella Creasy strongly criticised the picket, and a spokesperson for Momentum stated that the picket was organised by a separate group and that "
Momentum are fully behind Flo's campaign." In the
2015 leadership election Eshalomi supported
Liz Kendall to become Labour Party leader. Eshalomi was elected to the
London Assembly on
5 May 2016 with a majority of 62,243 over the
Conservative Party candidate Robert Flint. She was lead spokesperson for the London Assembly Labour Group on Transport issues, and current Chair of the London Assembly Transport Committee. As an Assembly Member, Eshalomi has campaigned on issues including gang crime and the closure of Kennington Police Station. Eshalomi was selected as Labour candidate for the
Vauxhall parliamentary constituency on 27 October 2019, after
Kate Hoey, a long-standing MP of 30 years, had announced she would not stand again as Labour's candidate in the constituency. Eshalomi won the seat with a slightly reduced majority of 19,612 votes. Eshalomi made her
maiden speech in the
House of Commons on 17 January 2020. She said that "I never imagined that almost five years to the day, as I was literally pacing up and down the maternity ward, looking over the river, trying to coerce my daughter to come out, I would now be sat in this
Parliament fighting for funding for our hard-working doctors and nurses" in reference to
St Thomas' Hospital in her Vauxhall constituency. Eshalomi also prioritised more funding for the
NHS and
Police, and to focus on tackling youth violence and young women facing sexual exploitation. On 14 April 2020, Eshalomi was promoted to the opposition front bench as a
whip. Eshalomi and her fellow black female MPs have frequently been mistaken for each other since entering parliament, with Eshalomi herself being twice mistaken for black female colleagues in the nine months since her election. Eshalomi said of the misidentifications that "The frequency is worrying and lends itself to a lazy racist view that all black people look the same". Eshalomi was wrongly identified as
Taiwo Owatemi by
BBC Parliament and a fellow MP ran up to her thinking she was
Kate Osamor. During Eshalomi's time on the
London Assembly, she was mistaken for Conservative
Kemi Badenoch, then a fellow assembly member. Eshalomi wrote that "All those women I've referenced are individual politicians in their own right...They're women who fought to get elected. So they deserve to be named and not to be confused with other black women. This doesn't happen to some of my white female colleagues, who sometimes have their hair down, sometimes they'll have it back in a ponytail. So why is it, if we as black women change our hair or our appearance, you can't recognise us?" On 30 December 2020, Eshalomi abstained on the Future Trade Agreement between the UK and the EU, resulting in her resignation as an opposition
whip. In May 2021, Eshalomi returned to the Labour front bench as the
Parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to
Angela Rayner, the
Shadow First Secretary of State and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. In June 2021, a 59-year-old man from
Brixton was prosecuted after sending a stream of abusive messages to Eshalomi between December 2020 and February 2021. In the
2023 British shadow cabinet reshuffle, she was appointed Shadow Minister for Democracy. In November 2023, Eshalomi abstained on an
SNP motion for a
King's Speech amendment calling for a ceasefire in
Gaza. After the vote, she immediately clarified her support for a humanitarian ceasefire and has called for one in Parliament on several occasions. ==Personal life==