Candidate Lewis was selected as the Labour Party's
prospective parliamentary candidate for Norwich South at the party's hustings in November 2011, beating other candidates including the musician
Dave Rowntree. Norwich South had been won by
Simon Wright of the
Liberal Democrats in the
2010 general election with a majority of just over 300 votes, defeating former
Home Secretary and
Education Secretary Charles Clarke. In April 2015, during an interview with the
New Statesman, in response to a prediction that Norwich South was 97 per cent likely to vote Labour, Lewis said "I’m more worried about complacency. I mean, in the multiverse there’s still 3 universes in a 100 where there’s a Green MP in Norwich, so anything could happen. I could be caught with my pants down behind a goat with
Ed Miliband at the other end – well, hopefully that won’t happen.". He subsequently apologised for the remark, saying he was sincerely sorry if anyone had been offended by the comment. Lewis opposed the Labour Party's position on immigration. Locally, Lewis supported the campaign to prevent the
Hewett School, a
comprehensive school in Norwich, from being turned into an academy.
1st term (2015–2017) At the
2015 general election, Lewis was elected MP for
Norwich South with 39.3% of the vote and a majority of 7,654. In his
maiden speech, Lewis brought attention to the Government's plan to allow
Housing Association homes to be bought by individuals. He accused the Government of forcibly asset-stripping housing associations, stating the policy would "further segregate" Norwich as well as increase the number of homes that were owned "as mere units of speculation". In June 2015, Lewis was elected Chair of the
All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. In the same month, he became a patron of the Anti-Academies Alliance. In December 2015, Lewis voted against airstrikes in Syria. Lewis was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate
Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the
2015 Labour leadership election. Corbyn credited Lewis with getting his nominations "off the ground". Lewis has been described as an ally of Corbyn, who was elected leader. In September 2015, he was appointed to the
Labour frontbench as a shadow minister in the
Energy and Climate Change team. Following resignations from Corbyn's shadow cabinet after the
2016 EU referendum, Lewis was appointed as
shadow defence secretary. In September 2016, at the
Labour Party's 2016 Conference, when Lewis was preparing to give his first speech as shadow defence secretary, a section of his speech announcing that he "would not seek to change" Labour's current policy on nuclear weapons was changed by Corbyn's communications advisor
Seumas Milne. Lewis was informed of the change by a
sticky note. A month later, Corbyn removed Lewis from the defence brief, replacing him with
Nia Griffith. Lewis was then appointed as
shadow business secretary, with the move viewed as a tactical demotion. On 8 February 2017, Lewis resigned from the shadow cabinet, citing the Labour Party's decision to whip its MPs to vote to trigger
Article 50 to start
Brexit negotiations. In April 2017, Lewis was one of thirteen MPs to vote against triggering the
2017 general election.
2nd term (2017–2019) At the snap
2017 general election, Lewis was re-elected to Parliament as MP for Norwich South with an increased vote share of 61% and an increased majority of 15,596. At the 2017 Labour Conference, video footage taken at a fringe event emerged in which Lewis told the male actor Sam Swann to "get on your knees, bitch". Lewis' language attracted criticism from Labour colleagues.
Stella Creasy, a Labour colleague, said: "It's not OK. Even if it's meant as a joke, it reinforces menace that men have the physical power to force compliance." Swann told
The Guardian: "It is clearly jovial and nothing vicious". Swann also said "The whole event was so brilliant for seeing MPs letting their hair down and fucking around with people who support them. I think Clive Lewis is an absolute legend." Lewis subsequently tweeted an apology, in which he described his behaviour as "offensive and unacceptable". At the same conference, Lewis was accused of groping a woman at
Momentum's
The World Transformed event. In response, Lewis said he was "pretty taken aback" by the accusation and "completely" and "categorically" denied it. On 12 December 2017, he was cleared by Labour's
National Executive Committee sexual harassment panel. In January 2018, Lewis was reappointed to Labour's shadow frontbench as a shadow Treasury minister, responsible for sustainable economics. Lewis supported Labour activist
Marc Wadsworth, who was expelled from the party in April 2018 for bringing it into disrepute. Wadsworth had accused Jewish Labour MP
Ruth Smeeth of working "hand in hand" with the media at the launch of the
Chakrabarti report into
anti-Semitism in the party. Lewis, who had provided a character reference for Wadsworth, opposed the decision to expel him. Jewish students at the
University of East Anglia, in Lewis's constituency, criticised him for his stance, whilst the
Union of Jewish Students (UJS) issued an open letter to Lewis, who they believed had "categorically failed" Jewish people. At the 2019 Labour conference, Lewis published a paper which accused the party of a "moral failure" on migrants' rights and called for the party to adopt an
open border immigration policy with the European Union. He also accused party leader
Jeremy Corbyn of being "silent on
detention centres" and the "no recourse to public funds" policy of the Conservative government.
3rd term (2019–2024) At the
2019 general election, Lewis was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 53.7% and a majority of 12,760. In December 2019, he announced that he would run in the
2020 Labour Party leadership election following Corbyn's resignation. Despite a petition by members and supporters to get him on the ballot due to his democratisation and electoral reform policies, he received only five of the necessary 22 nominations from Labour MPs, and withdrew from the contest, which allowed his five supporters to nominate other candidates before nominations closed on 13 January. In September 2019, alongside
Caroline Lucas MP, Lewis tabled the
Green New Deal Bill (formally known as the Decarbonisation and Economic Strategy Bill). The Bill was tabled to "change the way the government manages the economy to enable extensive public and private investment in a Green New Deal". In February 2022 Lewis was appointed to the
Environmental Audit Committee, which explores the extent to which the policies and programmes of government departments and non-departmental public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development. A few days before
Liz Truss became prime minister in September 2022, Lewis said that the government had the power to address the
United Kingdom cost-of-living crisis through measures such as: a
windfall tax, nationalisation of energy companies, implementing retrofits of homes, and establishing a
universal basic income and
universal basic services. He said such things would not be implemented under Truss because, "it will not favour the private interests who are benefiting from the cost of living crisis, such as the funders of dark money think tanks that appear to be driving the incoming Truss government's agenda." In September 2022, following the
death of Queen
Elizabeth II, Lewis wrote an article criticising the monarchy and the "flawed reality of the very limited democracy we inhabit". Lewis stated that he despaired at the queues to see the Queen's coffin and noted that the royal succession "is as much about coercion as consent". He also criticised the language of "duty" and "sacrifice" used about the royal family, which he said to be a lie, and he called for
constitutional, democratic reform. In the title of the article he referred to himself as a
republican. Ahead of the
coronation of King
Charles III, Lewis said
that the monarchy had exempted itself from 160 different pieces of legislation. He stated that exemptions to the taxes people must pay have allowed the King to amass a fortune of almost £2 billion "at a time when almost three million children, his subjects, face abject poverty". In March 2023 Lewis led a
Westminster Hall debate on the UK's role in promoting financial security and reducing inequality in the
Caribbean, where he urged the Government to enter "meaningful negotiations with the governments of the Caribbean" about
reparations for Britain's role in the
transatlantic slave trade.
4th term (2024–) At the
2024 general election, Lewis was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 47.6% and an increased majority of 13,239. Lewis prefaced his parliamentary
affirmation stating that he took his "oath under protest and in the hope that one day my fellow citizens will democratically decide to live in a republic". He subsequently remade his affirmation having omitted the words "his heirs and successors" on the first occasion. He was faced with a fine and potentially losing his seat if he refused to do so. He prefaced his second affirmation by stating: "I was elected to parliament to represent my constituents and our country to the best of my ability to defend democracy and uphold human rights and one day I hope all members of parliament will be entitled to swear an oath of allegiance based on those values." Alongside a majority of the Labour MPs, Lewis voted against an amendment to the
King's Speech that sought to "abolish the two-child limit to Universal Credit; recognise that this policy is pushing children into poverty". Seven MPs were suspended from the
Labour Party for voting for the amendment by
Keir Starmer, while Starmer himself abstained, as did chancellor
Rachel Reeves. In response to the
2024 United Kingdom riots, Lewis spoke at two anti-racism protests in Norwich – one outside a hotel housing
asylum seekers, and another in the city centre. In September 2025, he publicly stated that
Keir Starmer "doesn't seem up to the job" following the controversy surrounding the resignation of ambassador
Peter Mandelson. Lewis was a signatory of the founding statement of
Mainstream, a which organises for centre-left ideas and policy within the Labour Party. In November 2025, he publicly called for
Keir Starmer to step down as Prime Minister, arguing that
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham should succeed him. He became the first sitting Labour MP to call for Starmer’s resignation. He later offered to resign his parliamentary seat should Burnham decide to challenge Starmer, a move that would trigger a
by-election in his constituency. Lewis co-sponsored the
Climate and Nature Bill when it was introduced by
Roz Savage in October 2024 (and also acted as a co-sponsor in the
2020-21 and
2023–24 sessions). Following its adjourned second reading in January 2025, he co-sponsored
Early Day Motion 1184 calling for the Government to allocate further parliamentary time for the bill. ==Personal life==