British Obama has Galway roots!

Galway can lay legitimate claim to the man who many believe could be the next leader of the British Labour Party – and first black Prime Minister of Britain.

Chuka Umunna – the colourful Shadow Business Secretary labelled by some as the British Obama and once named by Sky News as Britain’s most fanciable male MP– has been to the forefront of Labour’s attempts to regain power in this week’s UK election.

Seen as one of the rising forces in British politics, he is equally renowned for his style sense and charisma which have led so many political pundits to mark him down as a future leader of his party – and thus a potential Prime Minister.

Indeed the 37 year old MP for Streatham in London found himself at the centre of a Wikipedia storm when members of his own campaign team famously altered his profile to describe him as the ‘British Obama’.

But his roots are also Irish – and Connemara can claim its share of his heritage too.

Because while his late father, Bennett, was Nigerian, his mother Patricia was reared in Furbo before going on to become a solicitor based in London.

Her father, Sir Helenus Milmo, was born in Limerick but moved the family to Furbo when Patricia was a child; he became a UK High Court Judge.

Indeed the family appears in the 1911 census, living at Ballynahown, Furbo when Helenus Padraic Seosamh Milmo was aged two, the third son of Daniel and Kathleen (née White).

He went on to become a leading British lawyer and British High Court judge whose career was notable for his role in the prosecution team at the Nurenberg Trials.

His daughter, Patricia – Chuka’s mother – followed him into the legal profession as a solicitor, while Bennett, of the Nigerian Igbo ethnic group, died in a road accident in Nigeria in 1992.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune