Joanna Catherine Cherry KC (born 18 March 1966) is a Scottish lawyer and former politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Edinburgh South West from 2015 until 2024.

[4] Following her graduation, Cherry worked as a research assistant with the Scottish Law Commission (1990) before practicing as a solicitor with the Edinburgh legal firm Brodies WS until 1995.

[13] The performance had called Conservative leader Ruth Davidson "Dykey' D" and had portrayed her making her inappropriate comments towards SNP MP Mhairi Black.

[14] In May 2017, Cherry apologised for telling journalists that a nurse, who had told a TV debate audience she had been unable to survive on her salary and had to use food banks, was suspected to be the wife of a Conservative councillor.

[19] In May 2019, executives from Facebook and Twitter appeared before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which Cherry was a member,[20] and faced accusations over the way they handled abuse and harassment of parliamentarians on social media.

Cherry cited several abusive tweets, that were not removed swiftly by Twitter, something the company's head of UK government, public policy and philanthropy, Katy Minshall, described as "absolutely an undesirable situation".

[28] Cherry was the leading litigant in the Scottish court case challenging the five-week prorogation of Parliament by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In July 2020, Cherry announced she was ruling out a bid for Holyrood, stating that the conditions for standing as an MSP were unreasonable and made a fair contest involving her "impossible".

[34] Later that month, she was criticised by SNP colleague Kirsty Blackman, after attacking and threatening to sue the party's LGBT wing, who had been critical of her defence of Sarah Phillimore, who had been banned from Twitter for allegedly making transphobic and antisemitic statements.

Jo Maugham, with whom she had worked on the legal challenge over Boris Johnson's prorogation of Parliament, said "Because defending defamation proceedings is so expensive, a well-funded claimant can bully critics into silence and, by marking the threats 'confidential', suppress transparency over the fact they are doing so.

[44] In June 2021, she signalled her support for For Women Scotland campaigner Marion Millar, who was charged under the Malicious Communications Act 1988, with a hate-crime aggravator, for allegedly transphobic and homophobic social media posts.

A 23-year-old woman was cleared of threatening her: the judge found reasonable doubt that the tweet "STG I am gonna pop Joanna Cherry", in reply to a newspaper article on her, was grossly offensive, or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.

[58] In the 2024 General Election, Cherry lost her seat to the Scottish Labour Party, in a swing that the Centre on Constitutional Change described as "disproportionately large";[59] Allan Faulds of Ballot Box Scotland attributed this outlying result to her "thoroughly marmite"[60] nature.

After she lost her seat, Cherry criticised her former party leader Nicola Sturgeon and said under her leadership the SNP's "reputation of governing competently and for integrity has taken a severe battering in the last couple of years."

[1] During the accusations and charges of sexual harassment against the former SNP leader and First Minister, Cherry was described as one of his allies in the party and a critic of then-leader Nicola Sturgeon.

"[85] Cherry has argued that trans young people "must be treated like any other children with psychological problems" and called for Scotland's only gender identity clinic to be closed.

[86][87] Cherry has denied accusations of transphobia, stating that she approaches the issue "as a feminist" and that there was a "big dose of misogyny" in debates over Gender Recognition Act reform.

[89][90][91] She has stated that she has faced abuse over her position and that sections of the SNP with opposing views have "engaged in performative histrionics redolent of the Salem witch trials".

[92] She believe "many same-sex attracted women and those who hold gender-critical beliefs have found themselves in a relationship of coercive control with employers, service providers and membership organisations".

[93] Writing in The National in June 2021, Cherry stated that some veteran members of the LGBT+ community no longer felt welcome at Pride events due to their views on transgender rights, claimed that LGBT+ rights charity Stonewall's workplace inclusion schemes misrepresent the law, and stated her belief that "many same-sex attracted women and those who hold gender-critical beliefs have found themselves in a relationship of coercive control with employers, service providers and membership organisations".

[97] In October 2021, Cherry criticised the Biden administration's actions during the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and the Fall of Kabul, and urged Prime Minister Boris Johnson to help the refugees fleeing the Taliban.

[99][100] In March 2019, she announced she would be proposing a motion to force the government to revoke Article 50 if the UK was due to leave in a No Deal Brexit on 10 April that year.