PRESIDENT Barack Obama is just about to hang up his boots; he’s nearly halfway through his second term, about the time when US presidents can afford to relax a little, travel and start pursuing their legacy projects.

But it seems the Obama fairy dust is still potent, more than ten years after his head-turning 2004 speech at the Democratic Party convention.

Across the sea in Britain, a fast-rising politician is a favourite to win the Labour party leadership, and he shares many uncanny parallels with the US president.

Chuka Umunna is Labour’s business spokesperson and so far is the second candidate angling to succeed Ed Miliband following Labour’s disastrous showing at the UK general election last week.

If Umunna wins, he’d be the first black leader of any major UK political party.

The road claims their fathers

Umunna, 36, is the son of a Nigerian father and English mother,  and grew up in Brixton, south London. Both Umunna and Obama lost their fathers at a young age in road crashes – Umunna was 14 when his father died in a road accident in Nigeria, and Obama was 21 when his father died in a road accident in Kenya.

The trauma of losing his father is said to have made the young Umunna grow up quickly, and teachers remember a student who was mature beyond his years, says this article by the Financial Times.

Like Obama, Umunna had a law career before joining politics; the two men even look alike.

But Umunna is said to dislike the comparisons with the US president, and goes out of his way to shrug them off. He’s digital-savvy, articulate and a formidable TV performer, which gives him the kind of crossover appeal that propelled Tony Blair – a former Labour leader himself – to the top.

But his critics say that it is his very lack of political definition that makes him a polarising figure among his own Labour colleagues, and he will need to marshall much internal support if he is to clinch the party’s leadership.

Umunna has represented the south London electoral district of Streatham since 2010, and says that his identification with Labour’s pro-working class ideologies was shaped by experiencing poverty while visiting his relatives in Nigeria and the social divide in his own Streatham backyard.

“I will be standing for the leadership of the party,” Umunna said Tuesday in a video posted on his Facebook page. “Some have actually suggested over the last few days that somehow this is now a 10-year project to get the Labour Party back into office…I think the Labour Party can do it in five years.”

Source: Mail & Guardian