McGovern was first elected as a councillor for Brunswick Park in the London Borough of Southwark in 2006, later becoming the Deputy Leader of the borough council's 29-member group of Labour councillors.
Parliamentary career
McGovern was selected as the Labour Party candidate for Wirral South in December 2009, following Ben Chapman's decision to stand down at the next election for family reasons following adverse publicity in The Daily Telegraph over the expenses scandal, and subsequently won the seat in the 2010 general election, defeating the Conservative candidate, Jeff Clarke, by 531 votes. '' programme in 2016 McGovern made her maiden speech in the House of Commons on 3 June 2010 in a debate on European Affairs. She became former Prime Minister Gordon Brown's parliamentary private secretary in July 2010. On 14 September 2010, she held her first adjournment debate regarding employment prospects for young people in Wirral. In November 2010. she was selected by the PLP to become a member of the International Development Select Committee. In December 2010, she introduced a private member's bill before Parliament that would amend the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 to broaden the scope of the general duty of library authorities so as to include a duty to provide related cultural facilities alongside the library service. In March 2011, she visited India as part of an International Development Select Committee delegation. In the 2013 Labour reshuffle, she was added to the Shadow International Development team. In 2014, she was moved to the shadow Children and Families portfolio. In May 2015, McGovern was appointed as shadow city minister in Labour's treasury team, but did not stay on the opposition frontbench after Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in September 2015. In October 2015, McGovern was appointed as Chair of Progress, a political organisation associated with the development of New Labour. In January 2016, McGovern resigned from Labour's policy review on child poverty and combating inequality, as a protest against Progress being described by shadow ChancellorJohn McDonnell as having "a hard right agenda". She commented that she had been "backed into a corner". A Labour Party spokesperson stated "She is resigning from something that doesn't exist", as the initiative had not been confirmed or launched yet. She supported Owen Smith in the failed attempt to replace Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 Labour Party leadership election. In September 2016 McGovern was elected co-chair of the all-party parliamentary groupFriends of Syria.
