Born in London in 1953, Diane Abbott would go on to become the first black woman ever elected to Parliament, representing the diverse north London constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Abbott has for many years been an important voice on the left of the Labour Party.

In April 2023, she lost the Labour Party whip at Westminster following a controversial letter that she wrote to the Observer newspaper about racism.  The Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge, who is Jewish, described the letter “deeply offensive and deeply distressing”.

Diane Abbott’s letter was ‘deeply wrong, historically wrong, and offensive’, says shadow minister

In September 2023, Abbott claimed that Labour’s whips office is no longer conducting a formal investigation.

She said that the internal inquiry is “now run entirely out of the Labour party HQ, which reports to Keir Starmer – and there is no investigation”.

She added: “I am the longest-serving black MP. Yet there is widespread sentiment that as a black woman and someone on the left of the party, that I will not get a fair hearing from this Labour leadership.”

Abbott’s career in front line politics advanced most notably during Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour Leader.  A key-ally to Corbyn, Abbott was, consecutively, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development (2015-2016) and Shadow Home Secretary (2016-2020). Under Ed Miliband, Abbott served on the shadow health team (2010-2013).

Since Keir Starmer’s election as Labour leader, Abbott has been sidelined, and from her position on the back-benches, and at times, has been critical of the party’s new leadership.

Political Career

Having been elected as the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1987—a borough located in north-London, Abbott initially didn’t progress far within the Parliamentary Labour Party, particularly during the era of New Labour. Through much of the 1990s, Abbott served on the Treasury Select Committee of the House of Commons, after which she joined the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

In 2010, Abbott made a bid for the Labour Leadership. She limped through the contests’ first-round with the minimum 33 MP endorsements. Fellow leadership contender David Miliband was said to have lent Abbott his vote, reportedly in hope that she might subsequently deprive his brother, Ed, of left-wing support. Facing the Milibands, Andy Burnham and Ed Balls in the contest, Abbott described her opponents as ‘geeky men in suits’.

Abbott was an outspoken supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and served in his shadow Cabinet throughout his time as Labour leader.

Diane Abbott and Keir Starmer

Following the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s finding that the Labour Party broke equality law during the leadership of Corbyn, the former Labour leader was suspended from the party. Abbott was prominent in her opposition to Corbyn’s expulsion and she shared a petition on social media to demand Corbyn be reinstated.

Abbott tweeted, ‘He has always stood with us.  We must stand with him’.

Abbott has accused Keir Starmer of using his remain platform during his time in Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet as a project of his own so to become Labour Leader. The former Shadow Home Secretary told the BBC Newsnight that Starmer’s ambition was ‘apparent’.

Following the announcement of a police investigation into whether Sir Keir Starmer may have broken lockdown rules by having a beer and takeaway with staff at an event in Durham in 2021, Diane Abbott was one of the first Labour MPs to suggest Sir Keir should “consider his position” if he was fined by police.

Political Views and Controversies

A committed Socialist, Abbott is a long time member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs; Jeremy Corbynand John McDonnell are also members.

Diane Abbott: London shouldn’t have another white, middle-aged man as mayor

Abbott was criticised in 2003 for sending her son to private school—a move many felt was inconsistent with her socialist values. Abbott had previously criticised her Labour colleagues—including Tony Blair—of being ‘intellectually incoherent’ when they did the same.

When questioned about the controversy, Abbott has defended her decision saying,’I had to choose between my reputation as a politician and my son’.

As Shadow Home Secretary at the time, Abbott led the Labour response to the ‘Windrush Scandal’. Abbott repeatedly questioned then-Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, on the matter and called on him to publish the figures for people caught up in the affair.  Abbott continues to champion the Windrush cause.

Abbott apologises for ‘white people’ jibe

Background

How old is Diane Abbott?
Diane Julie Abbott was born on the 27thof September 1953.

What did Diane Abbott do before politics?
After graduating with a history degree from Cambridge University, Abbott became a Civil Servant at the Home Office.

Following this, Abbott went on to work for the lobby group the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty), and became a journalist.

As a journalist, Abbott worked as a reporter for the breakfast television company TV-AM and for Thames Television. She also worked as a public relations consultant for various public sector clients.

Is Diane Abbott married?
Diane Abbott was married to David Ayensu-Thompson, a Ghanaian architect. The two divorced in 1993.

Diane Abbott – 3 Things you may not know

She turned down an invitation for Celebrity Come Dancing
In 2020, Abbott was invited to participate in Strictly Come dancing. Abbott refused the invitation, later telling BBC Radio Four’s ‘Today Programme that she thought about the decision for about ‘sixty seconds’.

She once had a romantic relationship with Jeremy Corbyn
In the early 1970s, Abbott was romantically involved with one Jeremy Corbyn, her future boss, while he was a Councillor in north London.

Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo
At neighbouring schools in their youth, Abbott and Michael Portillo have known each other since childhood. At a joint-school production, the two performed in a production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’—albeit not in the title roles.

Abbott would later reunite with Portillo on BBC One’s ‘This Week’ programme.

Social Media

Twitter Handle — @HackneyAbbott

Facebook Address — @Dianeabbott

Personal Website — http://www.dianeabbott.org.uk/

The post Abbott, Diane appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Rishi Sunak’s Wife – Net Worth

Akshata Murthy is the daughter of Narayana Murthy, the co founder of Bangalore IT company Infosys.  Narayana Murthy has been dubbed ‘the Bill Gates of India’.  Akshata Murthy’s father was listed in 2012 by Fortune magazine as one of the world’s 12 most successful entrepreneurs.  He is said to be the sixth richest man in India.

Alongside owning her fashion label, Murthy’s daughter reportedly owns 0.91% of the shares in Infosys. In  June 2022, Infosys was valued at $77.7 Billion, which placed her holding in the firm at some £572 million.

The Murthy family are also reported to have a holding in Amazon India, albeit a joint venture with Amazon was set to end in the summer of 2022 with Amazon reportedly buying out the family’s Catamaran share in Prione Business Services.

Murthy herself was born in April 1980 in Hubli, a small town 250 miles north of Bangalore.  Her upbringing was heavily influenced by her paternal grandparents, as her mother and father built the software firm Infosys. Her father, Nagvara Murthy, was Chief Executive of Infosys from 1981 to 2002.

By 2019, Infosys’ revenues had grown to $11.8 Billion turning Akshata’s father into a prominent Indian billionaire.  Akshata herself, reportedly owns 0.91% of the shares in the $77 Billion company, a holding which the Sunday Times estimated to make her twice as rich as the Queen.

When Murthy’s husband, Rishi Sunak, became the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, her various investments and business interests have come under media scrutiny.

Fashion Label

Murthy runs a fashion label called ‘Akshata Designs’. Murty loved clothes as a child which was said to baffle her ‘no-nonsense software engineer mother’, Sudha Murthy.

Akshata Murthy has previously been shot by Vogue magazine, and declared in an interview with the magazine in 2011 that, ‘I’m about the story behind a particular garment, its authenticity, craftsmanship and protecting a rich heritage’.

Murthy has previously described fashion as her passion and claimed that she couldn’t imagine being engaged in anything else.

As well as running her own fashion label, Mr Sunak’s wife is also the owner and director of a UK-based venture capital firm Catamaran Ventures UK Ltd.

Non domicile status

In April 2022, the Independent newspaper claimed that Akshata Murthy had claimed non-domicile status in the UK, something that the paper suggested allowed her to save on her 2020 tax bill.

The non domicile status was said to occur because Murty is a citizen of India, the country of her birth and parent’s home.  India does not allow it citizens to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously, and so according to British law, Ms Murty is treated as non domiciled for UK tax purposes.

A spokesperson for Ms Murthy said, “She has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her income”.  Sky News reported that Murthy pays foreign taxes on her foreign income.

Murtyh’s tax status was criticised by the Labour Party with party treasury spokesperson, Tulip Siddiq MP saying, “It is staggering that his [the Chancellor’s] family may have been benefiting from tax reduction schemes”.  The revelations come as Murty’s husband, Chancellor Rishi Sunak was coming under pressure for introducing a rise in National Insurance and an increase in the cost of living.

In April 2022, Sunak told the BBC that he found the focus on his wife ‘very upsetting’ comparing himself with the actor Will Smith, who reacted angrily to comments about his wife during the March 2022 Oscar ceremony.

Shortly after the non domicile allegations, Ms Murthy was reported as being in the process of changing her tax arrangements such that she would now pay UK tax on all her worldwide income going forward.  Ms Murthy was said to be keen for her financial affairs not to become a ‘distraction’ for her husband.  She does though retain the non-dom status, which legally will substantially reduce her inheritance tax bill in the future.

Russian investments

In March 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the decision by many Western companies to stop operating in Ukraine, Akshata Murty’s investment in Infosys attracted public attention. Murty was reported as owning a £500 million stake in the Indian IT consultancy firm, one which continued to operate an office and has one of its delivery centres in Moscow.

The continuing presence of Infosys in Russia received attention given that Murty’s husband, then UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak had publicly stated, “I am urging firms to think very carefully about their investments in Russia and how they may aid the Putin regime”.

Subsequently aasked about his wife’s shares in Infosys and whether this flew in the face of his own advice to businesses, Rishi Sunak told Sky News, that, “I’m an elected politician and I’m here to talk to you about what I’m responsible for. My wife is not”.  Rejecting suggestions that, because of the investment, his family could be benefitting from Putin’s regime, Mr Sunak said: “No, I really don’t think that’s the case.

Furlough Scheme

Soon after his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2020, Rishi Sunak was thrust into the national spotlight because of his role in managing the British economy through the Coronavirus pandemic.

Crucially, Mr Sunak was known for fronting the UK government’s Furlough scheme that aimed to provide financial support for struggling companies.

It has been reported that Infosys took part in this scheme and used it to furlough approximately 3% of the Company’s UK staff during parts of 2020. Akshata Murty’s luxury clothing store in London was also said to have legitimately used the scheme to cover 80% of some staff’s salaries during the period.

In the face of claims that then Chancellor Rishi Sunak did not appropriately declare his wife’s interests before he unveiled the furlough plans, the Treasury responded to the media focus on his family’s financial wealth, saying Sunak ‘followed the ministerial code to the letter’.

Where did Rishi Sunak meet his wife

Akshata Murthy first met Sunak when the couple studied at Stanford University in America in 2006. Sunak was studying for an MBA at Stanford on a Fulbright scholarship.

Murthy and Sunak were married at a two-day traditional wedding ceremony in 2009, in Bangalore.

Initially basing themselves in California, the couple now live with their two children in Yorkshire and London. Although, according to The Times, Rishi and Akshata own ‘at least four properties’. These include a five bedroom town house in London’s Kensington, a large manor house in Mr Suank’s North Yorkshire constituency near the village of Kirby Sigston, and a property in Santa Monica, California.

Allegra Stratton, the former Downing Street Press Secretary is an old-friend of Sunak, and the godparent of the family’s two children.

In 2020, Mr Sunak, had been voted Britain’s sexiest MP.

The post Akshata Murthy Net Worth appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Salmond joined the SNP as a 20-year-old in 1974. Five years later, at the 1979 General Election, the SNP returned only 2 seats. Twenty five years later, with Salmond in charge, the SNP would go on to win successive elections at Holyrood and pressure the UK government into allowing a 2014 ‘yes/no’ referendum on Scottish independence.

Having left the SNP, in March 2021, Salmond launched a new pro-independence Party, Alba.  However the party polled just 2% of the vote on the regional list in the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections.

Alex Salmond voted most unpopular politician in Scotland

As the leader of Alba, Salmond has become a fierce critic of the SNP and its leader Humza Yousaf. In December 2023, the Alba Party leader said Scotland had endured a ‘decade of drift’ under the SNP, which he said had ‘dithered and delayed forging ahead to independence’.

In November 2023, Alex Salmond announced he was launching fresh legal action against the Scottish government over its botched handling of sexual harassment complaints against him.

Salmond said that “with this court action, that evasion of responsibility ends”, saying that “the day of reckoning” for the Scottish government “will inevitably come”.

Salmond was separately acquitted of 14 charges of sexual assault following a criminal trial in Edinburgh in March 2020.

The former SNP leader’s supporters have claimed that the charges resulted from a conspiracy driven by figures close to his successor as first minister, Nicola Sturgeon.

Alex Salmond’s Political Career

Alex Salmond began his political career as a spokesperson for the 79 Group, a Republican faction in the SNP aspiring towards an independent Scottish Socialist Republic. Far too extreme for the SNP of the 1980s, Salmond and his ’79 Group’ comrades were expelled from the national party. But Salmond quickly returned to the fold, and even won the seat of Banff and Buchan in the 1987 General Election for the SNP.

In 1990, with Salmond increasingly noted as an electoral asset among working-class voters, he decided to stand for the party leadership and won.

Throughout the 1990s, Salmond constructed the SNP in his image; he created a modern, social democratic, nationalist party. Salmond stood down as SNP leader in 2000 following fall-outs with other party figures, but he would eventually take over again in 2004, with Nicola Sturgeon as his Deputy.

The Salmond led SNP powered to victory in the 2007 Holyrood Election. In this election, Salmond stood for the Scottish Parliamentary seat of Gordon, believed to be only the 18th most-winnable seat for the party. Salmond won with a margin of 6 percentage points. As the Leader of the largest party at Holyrood, and with the help of the Scottish Greens, Salmond became Scotland’s First Minister, ending eight years of Labour rule. For this, he won the Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year award.

Salmond’s profile was cemented Britain-wide with the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. To this day, Scottish independence remains Salmond’s life goal and in 2014, he came close to clinching it. Like Salmond’s previous political efforts, the campaign centred around himself and he was said to have dominated Alistair Darling of the Unionist side in the 2014 ‘Scotland Decides’ debate. However, following the 55% ‘No’ result in the referendum, Salmond resigned as Scottish First minister. His long assumed heir apparent, Nicola Sturgeon, took his place.

Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon

In 1990, Sturgeon met her mentor, Alex Salmond, during his campaign for the party leadership of that year.  Salmond describing Sturgeon at that time said, ‘she was a precocious teenage prodigy as part of my campaign, bubbling with vitality and talent’.

Sturgeon herself has said that Salmond ‘believed in me, long before I believed in myself’. Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell (himself later the SNP Chief Executive), also previously worked in Salmond’s constituency office.

From 2007 to 2014, Salmond and Sturgeon led Scotland together as First Minister and Deputy First Minister, respectively.

In 2019, Alex Salmond was arrested and charged with sexual assault and attempted rape for allegations that were said to have occurred during his time serving as Scotland’s First Minster. In March 2020, Salmond was acquitted of all charges at trial.

Mr Salmond himself resigned from the SNP in 2018. In the wake of the allegations emerging, the Sturgeon-Salmond duopoly that had dominated Scottish politics for a decade, ended.

This eventually manifested itself in the controversial Holyrood inquiry (the Salmond inquiry) overseen by a Scottish Parliament committee. It has been reported that the Sturgeon and Salmond haven’t spoken since 2018.

After the publication of the Salmond inquiry report, in March 2021, Mr Salmond announced a return to frontline politics, with the launch of a new Pro Independence Party, ALBA. The Party fielded candidates on the party list system in the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections, with Mr Salmond himself standing for the party in North East Scotland.

However his plans for a political comeback appeared to have failed spectacularly. Polling just 2.3% of the vote, Mr Salmond fell well short of the level needed for him to win a regional seat at Holyrood. Once the longest serving first minister in the scottish government, Salmond now appeared to have lost his relationship with scottish voters.

In the spring of 2021, Alex Salmond also announced plans to bring legal action in the Court of Session over the conduct of the Scottish government’s top civil servant. Salmond argued that Permanent Secretary, Leslie Evans, had failed to take responsibility for the botched handling of harassment complaints against him.

Alex Salmond – Early Political Views

As a leading member of the ’79 group from 1979-1982, Salmond marked himself out as on the left of the SNP. In 1982, Salmond gave a speech to the SNP conference arguing that to ditch the general disobedience ‘Scottish resistance’ policy (adopted in 1981) would encourage ‘a defeatist and cringing mentality’.

Later that month, Mr Salmond wrote to The Scotsman, that, ‘Only a party willing to call for civil disobedience, primarily through organized labour, will be able to effectively back a democratic Scottish majority for a parliament’. Because of this radicalism, Salmond was expelled by the SNP in 1982.

Alex Salmond – Career before politics

Alex attended Linlithgow Academy before studying at St Andrew’s University, where he graduated with a joint honours MA in Economics and History.

Mr Salmond joined the Government Economic Service as an Assistant Economist in the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland in 1978.

In 1980 he joined the Royal Bank of Scotland where he worked for seven years, first as an Assistant Economist and then as an Oil Economist.

He has also served as a visiting professor of economics at Strathclyde University.

Alex Salmond’s wife

Salmond is known for living a very private private-life. In 1981, he became married to Moira Salmond, the daughter of an auto mechanic who is 17-years older than him. The couple have no children, and live in Strichen in Aberdeenshire.

Alex Salmond – Things you may not know

Salmond joined the SNP after a row with his then girlfriend

In an argument about Labour’s commitment to Scotland in 1973, Salmond’s then-girlfriend reportedly shouted, ‘If you feel like that, go join the bloody SNP!’. Salmond took his girlfriend’s advice.

He is a racing tipster

Salmond is known to enjoy horse racing and in the past has even appeared as a pundit on Channel 4’s ‘The Morning Line’ programme. He also enjoys golf, and supports Heart of Midlothian.

He was banned from the Commons for a week

In 1988 he was issued with a week-long Commons ban after interrupting the Chancellor’s Budget speech in protest at the introduction of the poll tax in Scotland.

Social Media

Twitter – @AlexSalmond

The post Alex Salmond appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Following her resignation from Downing Street, Stratton secured a new role in the spring of 2022. It was reported that Stratton was set to return to a journalism nd join Bloomberg News.

Role as COP26 Spokesperson

In April 2021, Allegra Stratton was appointed as the Prime Minister’s spokesperson for the COP26 conference on global climate change to be held in Glasgow in November in 2021.

Prior to taking on this position Stratton served as the Downing Press Secretary from October 2020 to April 2021.

Role as Downing Street Press Secretary

Allegra Stratton assumed her role as Downing Street Press Secretary on 8 October 2020, and was expected to become a household name as the face of Downing Street in a series of regular televised press conferences.

However despite the refurbishment of a broadcast studio in Number 9 Downing Street, the plans were aborted in April 2021, and Ms Stratton moved to her new post at COP26.

Before becoming the Downing Street Press Secretary, Stratton served as Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Director of Strategic Communications between April 2020 to October 2020. During that time Sunak was said to have become far slicker in front of the cameras, and this, alongside the successful promotion of the government’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme, were largely credited to Stratton’s influence.

One person close to the government apparently claimed that the Prime Minister was slightly jealous of Sunak and ‘poached his top star’.

As the proposed face of daily government press briefings, Stratton was set to become the UK equivalent to CJ Cregg from The West Wing; with the televised press conference format clearly an import from America. In America, the White House Press Secretary is one of the most recognized figures in the land, albeit former President Donald Trump’s record of three Press Secretaries in four years, reveals the sometimes tough nature of the role.

Prior to Stratton’s appointment, the Downing Street Press Secretary salary was said to be ‘based on experience’. It has been suggested that this taxpayer funded civil servant role could pay £100,000 per year.

2020 Downing Street Christmas Party Controversy

In December 2021, Allegra Stratton was thrust into public consciousness when ITV news obtained a video of Stratton joking about an alleged Christmas party that was held in Downing Street during the December 2020 covid lockdown.

Stratton, who was at the time working as the Downing Street Press Secretary, is seen holding a mock news conference in which she responds to questions from colleagues.   Referring to the alleged Christmas gathering, Stratton is seen reacting to claims that cheese and wine was involved, commenting that, “This fictional party was a business meeting and it was not socially distanced”.

At the time, the government’s coronavirus guidance required that people did not hold Christmas parties.  Meetings of two or more people indoors in London were not permissible unless they were ‘necessary’ for work.  In response to the controversy, Downing Street has maintained that no rules were broken.

A day after the revellations on ITV news, Stratton resigned from her role as COP26 spokesperson.  In a statement she said, “To all of you who lost loved ones, endured intolerable loneliness and struggled with your business – I am sorry and this afternoon I have offered my resignation to Prime Minister.”

The Christmas party event on December 18 was subsequently one of a number of Downing Street events investigated by Sue Gray in the Gray report, and for which the police issued a range of fixed penalty notices for breaches of covid rules in the spring of 2022.

Ms Stratton worked in Downing Street at a time of a reported power struggle between different camps that included Carrie Johnson and potentially Ms Stratton on one side, and advisors Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain on the other side.  Cummings and Cain both quit Downing Street in late 2020.

Career as a Journalist

Before working for the government, Stratton was a well-known political journalist.

She made her name in the media as a political reporter and as political correspondent for the Guardian, then becoming Political Editor of Newsnight from 2011 to 2015, and national Editor of ITV News from 2015 to 2018 – where she co-presented Peston on Sunday from 2016-2018.

In fact, Stratton was reportedly considered for the post of Political Editor of BBC News back in 2015, although she was ultimately beaten out by Laura Kuenssberg.

During her stint as Political editor for Newsnight, Stratton was caught in controversy following a segment she presented for the programme in 2012.

In her report on the then-government’s proposed cuts to welfare benefits, she interviewed a single-mother who had just moved out of her parents’ two-bedroom flat. Stratton suggested that the woman had made ‘a choice’ to receive housing benefits and live in her own home, rather than stay with her mother. Stratton left out the fact that the single-mother in question was, in fact, working.

The incident provoked headlines including: ‘How Newsnight humiliated single mother Shanene Thorpe’ and ‘How Newsnight demonised a single mother’. A subsequent petition seeking an apology from Stratton and the BBC amassed around 27,000 signatures.

Allegra Stratton – Personal Background

Early Life
In her youth, Stratton attended Latymer Upper School, an independent school in West London, before studying Archeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University. After graduating, Stratton went straight into journalism-becoming a producer for the BBC before transferring to the Guardian.

Allegra Stratton and Brexit
Stratton’s career has always been one of report rather than comment, and we therefore know little of her political views.

It was previously suggested in the Evening Standard newspaper by a friend that Stratton was not ideological and that she was ‘pro-Remain but got that the EU is not great’. Contradicting this, Stratton has told the Telegraph that despite voting for Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems in the past, she voted for Brexit and is a ‘Johnson Tory’.

Allegra Stratton‘s Husband
In 2011, Stratton married James Forsyth, the editor of Spectator – a job Boris Johnson once held. Allegra Stratton and her husband are close friends with Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Sunak was indeed best man at Stratton’s wedding, and the pairings are godparents to each other’s children.

Friendships
Well-connected, Stratton is reportedly good friends with Ed Miliband and was close with the late Labour MP Jo Cox.

Allegra Stratton resigns from COP role

The post Allegra Stratton appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Following Brown’s defeat at the 2010 General Election, Balls tried to succeed Gordon Brown as Labour party leader. However, Balls finished third behind Ed and David Miliband. Under Ed Miliband, Balls became shadow Home Secretary (2010) and then shadow Chancellor (2010-2015).

Balls lost his seat at the 2015 General Election and has since become a prominent broadcaster.

In June 2023, it was announced that Balls would be co-hosting a new politics podcast with his former opposite number and sparring partner George Osborne. Osborne served as chancellor from 2010-2016. The first episode of Political Currency appeared on 14th September 2023.

What’s behind the never-ending rise of the politics podcast?

Ed Balls Wife

Ed Balls is married to the Labour MP for Pontefact and Castleford, shadow Home Secretary, and former Cabinet Minister,Yvette Cooper. Under Gordon Brown, the pair were the first married couple to sit in the Cabinet together. They have 3 children.

Even though he has not been involved in front line politics for over seven years, a YouGov poll in the first quarter of 2022 found Mr Balls to be the second most popular politician in the UK.

Ed Balls was more far popular than both Sir Keir Starmer, and his wife, Yvette Cooper, who currently serves as the Shadow Home Secretary.

Balls is married to the Labour MP, Yvette Cooper

What does Ed Balls Do now?

Having suffered a high-profile ‘Portillo Moment’ at the 2015 election, Balls has thrived in his newfound freedom.

Balls has become an accomplished broadcaster since losing his seat in Parliament.  He often appears as a presenter of ITV’s Good Morning Britain breakfast programme.  Alongside former Chancellor, George Osborne, he also appears on the Andrew Neil politics show broadcast on Sunday night on Channel 4.

In 2018, Balls fronted the BBC documentary ‘Travels in Trumpland: with Ed Balls’ which returned for a second season in 2020 as ‘Travels in Euroland with Ed Balls’.

Since 2015, he has held a variety of positions including ‘Professor of Political Economy at King’s College, London’; Research Fellow at the Harvard University’s Kennedy School; and co-Chair of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation.

Balls was also the Chairman of his boyhood Norwich City FC , before stepping down in 2018.

Famously, Balls was a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing in 2016 and was nominated for the BAFTA TV moment of the year in 2016. Balls was up against ‘Game of Thrones: Battle of the Bastards’, ‘The Late Late Show: Carpool Karaoke Michelle Obama’ and ‘Planet Earth II: Snakes vs Iguana Chase’ among others, he did not win.

The first episode of his podcast Political Currency, which he co-hosts with former chancellor George Osborne, appeared on 14th September 2023.

Ed Balls’ Political Career

Balls studied Philosophy Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford University where has was a member of the all of the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour Societies.

After graduating with a 1st, Balls became a journalist for the Financial Times (FT) in 1990. In 1992, Balls wrote an article for the Fabian Society about the future of Labour’s economic policy. He advocated for an independent Bank of England, a different approach to investment and a new means of tackling unemployment.

Gordon Brown, the recently appointed Shadow Chancellor, caught wind of the piece and invited Balls to work for him. Together, Balls and Brown helped re-imagine Labour’s economic policy and as such worked to forge the party’s ‘New Labour’ identity.

Balls became a key speechwriter for Brown. In a 1994 speech, Brown committed to following ‘post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory’, prompting Michael Heseltine’s famous retort: ‘It’s not Brown’s. It’s Balls!’.

When Gordon Brown became Chancellor in 1997, Balls became his Chief Economic Adviser, a position he held until 1999 when he was appointed Economic Adviser to the Treasury (1999-2004). In 2005, Balls was elected as the Labour MP for Normanton in Yorkshire. The seat was later renamed Morley and Outwood.

Having quickly been appointed to the government as Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 2006-2007 under Blair, Balls was promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Children, Schools, and Families under Brown. Balls held this post until 2010 when Labour was voted out of office.

In 2010, Balls announced his candidacy to succeed Brown as leader of the Labour Party. Coming third in the contest, Balls was subsequently appointed by Ed Miliband as shadow Home Secretary (2010) and then Shadow Chancellor (2010-2015).

Balls later described the tense relationship he had with Ed Miliband, relating how he was kept at a distance by Miliband saying about the 2015 campaign, that,  ‘I think we probably only spoke twice in the whole four-week election campaign’. Ultimately, Balls lost his seat at the 2015 election, which was considered a significant scalp for the Tories.

Ed Balls wouldn’t reverse anything from Osborne’s Budget

Ed Balls comeback

Despite constant suggestions, Ed Balls has continually played down speculation that he may make a comeback to front line politics.   In May 2022 he ruled himself out of the running as a potential Labour candidate in the Wakefield by-election, a seat near to the one which he used to represent at Westminster.

Political Views

Alongside Brown, Balls helped pivot Labour away from the ‘tax and spend’ policies of the 1970s and 1980s.  Balls was also central in the creation of the Minimum Wage and the establishment of an independent Bank of England.

Describing his politics to the New Statesman in 2006, Balls said: ‘I care about inequality and social justice, if it means that I believe we can build a sense of community by acting together, then I am happy to call myself a socialist’. Nonetheless, Balls has always been associated with the soft-left, Brownite wing of the Labour party.

In 2016, Balls described Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership as a ‘leftist utopian fantasy’.

How old is Ed Balls?

Edward Michael Balls was born on the 25th of February 1967. He grew up in a working-class community in Norwich.

Things you might not know about Ed Balls

He has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro
In 2019, Balls celebrated his 52nd birthday at the top of the 14,000ft high Mount Kilimanjaro. He did so to raise money for Comic relief. Balls also ran the London Marathon as shadow Chancellor in 2013. Chancellor George Osbourne was one of many who donated to his fundraising efforts.

He has overcome a stammer
As shadow Chancellor, Balls frequently spoke about his stammer. In 2012, Balls admitted his stammer ‘got the better of him’ when he faltered in his response to George Osborne’s autumn statement. Although Balls maintains he has largely ‘overcome’ the condition.

He likes baking
Balls has been open about his love of baking. In 2016, he appeared on a celebrity version of ‘The Great British Bake-Off’ show for Comic Relief.

Ed Balls Day
On the 28th of April 2011, then-shadow Chancellor Ed Balls typed his name into Twitter, trying to search for an article about himself.  Every year since, on the 28th of April, Twitter users commemorate the moment with the hashtag #EdBallsDay.

Social Media 

Twitter – @edballs

11 year anniversary of Ed Balls Day celebrated

Ed Balls slams Sunak non-dom revelations

The post Balls, Ed appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

As Commons Speaker through one of British politics’ most turbulent periods, Bercow is widely acknowledged as the most ‘political’ Speaker since the Second World War.  Since leaving office, his ten year speakership has been the centre of a number of bullying allegations.

Depending on whom you ask, Bercow is either a national icon, or simply the worst Speaker in modern British history.

In September 2023, it was announced that Bercow would be appearing in the upcoming series of reality TV show The Traitors US, alongside Love Island winner Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu and Marcus Jordan, the son of basketball ace Michael Jordan, among others.

Bercow has also been a consistent critic of the Conservative government since leaving frontline politics. In December 2023, he told The News Agents podcast that the Conservative Party is heading an “absurd clapped-out spectacle of a non-government”.

John Bercow and the Labour Party 

In May 2021, John Bercow told ITV‘s ‘Good Morning Britain’ that he no longer considered himself a Conservative, saying, “I have gone from being a rabid rightist to being a soft leftist.”

Continuing, he said he could list a number of examples of then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, “not telling the truth”.  He also confirmed that he had voted for the Labour candidate for Mayor, Sadiq Khan, in that month’s London mayoral elections.

These comments were notable, given that after leaving office, former House of Commons Speakers have traditionally refrained from either commenting on, or becoming involved at all, in party politics.

In mid June 2021, John Bercow went a step further.  Breaking with tradition, he announced that he had now joined the Labour Party.  Speaking to the Observer newspaper, Bercow said that, “I am motivated by support for equality, social justice and internationalism. That is the Labour brand”.

Following the report by the House of Commons standards watchdog that found Bercow to have bullied staff during his time as Speaker, in March 2022, Bercow was administratively suspended from the Labour Party pending an investigation.

Bercow’s suspension from Labour does not though seem to have detracted from his support for the party.  In February 2023, he was quoted as praising Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, saying, “I think he’s forensic, I think he’s incisive in debate, and I also think he’s upright. I think he’s got good values, and I think he’s in a very strong position”.

Bercow’s wife, Sally Bercow, is herself a long standing Labour Party member, and once stood for the party for Westminster Council.

Should he ever receive a peerage, it has to be assumed that Bercow will now sit as Labour Peer.  In this regard, Bercow will differ from past Speakers like Betty Boothroyd and Michael Martin. Although once both Labour MPs, they became independent Crossbench peers in the House of Lords, having continued the political impartiality associated with their former position as Speaker after leaving office.

What does John Bercow do now?

Since January 2020, Bercow has been a part-time Professor of politics at Royal Holloway University. In 2020, Bercow published his biography, ‘Unspeakable’.

In July 2017, Bercow was appointed Chancellor of Essex University, where he had previously studied as an undergraduate.  He is also available for paid public speaking engagements.

In 2021, Bercow could be found on the greetings website, ‘Cameo’.  Monetizing his celebrity status, he was available for bookings for £82.50.  He will accordingly record a very short video message for you. Nigel Farage can also be found on the site, but he is cheaper than Bercow, at £75.

On his Cameo profile, Bercow states, “I served as Chief Officer of the House of Commons. Among many other duties my job was to maintain order, which sometimes meant punishing members who broke the rules of the House!”.

Critics have suggested that such an approach is not befitting of the former office of Speaker.  Others maintain Bercow has every right to earn a living.  Should demand soar, and he record thirty short messages in a day, it is assumed that this could become quite a lucrative little sideline for Bercow.  Satisfied customers can even also leave Mr Bercow a tip.

Bercow appeared on the 2023 series of reality TV show The Traitors US.

John Bercow – Bullying claims

In May 2018, Bercow’s former Private Secretary Angus Sinclair accused the Speaker of bullying behaviour.

In January 2020, an official complaint was filed to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards in relation to allegations that Bercow had bullied his staff.  Mr Bercow refuted the claims.

In 2022, the parliamentary commissioner for standards upheld 21 allegations against Mr Bercow across the three complainants, relating to the period 2009 to 2014.  The Independent Expert Panel stated that Bercow “has been a serial liar” and “a serial bully”.

It added that his behaviour “fell very far below that which public has a right to expect from any member of parliament” and that were he still a sitting MP, it would have been recommended that “he should be expelled by resolution of the House”.

The report concluded that the former Speaker, should never again be permitted a pass to the parliamentary estate.

Mr Bercow has described the report as a ‘travesty of justice’.  He has pointed out that he can still attend debates at Westminster as a member of the public, although this would mean he would now have to join the public queue outside the building….

Panel says John Bercow should have parliamentary pass revoked for ‘serial bullying’

Things you may not know about John Bercow

He is a seriously good tennis player
First picking up a racket at eight-years-old, Bercow became Middlesex under-12s tennis champion.  By all accounts John Bercow was very talented at tennis, and to this day he remains a qualified tennis coach.  During his time as Speaker, Bercow was frequently to be seen each year, seated in the Royal Box at Wimbledon.  He also really enjoys the Davis Cup.  In 2015 he travelled to Ghent in Belgium, to watch Britain win the Davis Cup.

Bercow has even written a book on tennis in which he ranks his top-20 best male players. Number 1 is Roger Federer.

He has a season ticket at Arsenal
Bercow is a supporter of Arsenal, so often it seems, the political team of choice.  Alongside, Sir Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn, and ITV’s political editor, Robert Peston, Bercow is a season ticket holder at the club.

He has a phobia of wasps
Bercow has a crippling phobia of wasps. According to the Daily Mail, Bercow was mercilessly bullied for this during his years at Primary school.

He doesn’t like heights
Bercow apparently doesn’t like heights.   He is a friend of the Conservative MP, Gillian Keegan and her husband, with whom he has previously been skiing.   According to Mrs Keegan, Bercow had a problem with chairlifts.

He is teetotal
Both Bercow and his wife are teetotal.

Bercow defects to Labour, but denies peerage speculation

John Bercow as Commons Speaker

After making his pitch as a ‘reforming candidate’ following the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal, Bercow was elected the 157^th Speaker of the House of Commons.

Although he was once a Conservative MP, Bercow was elected to this role mainly through the votes of Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs.  Bercow was soon resented by many of his former Conservative colleagues and tensions with the Speaker’s Chair were high from the outset.  In 2010, then Conservative MP Simon Burns called Bercow a ‘stupid, sanctimonious dwarf’.

In 2015, there was an abortive attempt by the then Leader of the House, William Hague, to remove Bercow as Speaker. After surviving the attempted putsch, Bercow was visibly moved; calls of ‘resign’ nonetheless echoed from the Tory benches.

Bercow proudly championed the voices of backbench MPs during his time as Speaker.   One of his primary vehicles for doing this was in permitting Urgent Questions. Through Urgent Questions, Ministers have to drop whatever they are working on, and attend the House of Commons to explain themselves. During the 2007-08 Parliamentary session, only 4 ‘Urgent Questions’ were asked of Ministers.  However under Speaker Bercow, during the 2017-19 session, some 307 Urgent Questions were asked of Ministers.

Bercow was frequently accused of bias during his time as Speaker.  These accusations of partiality peaked in January 2019 when Bercow broke with convention to allow an amendment on a government motion. The amendment required then Prime Minister, Theresa May, to propose alternative Brexit plans within 3 days if her Brexit deal was rejected.

When Bercow retired as Speaker in 2019, the Government broke with convention by refusing to appoint Bercow to the House of Lords.  This was widely seen as an act of revenge by the Government, one designed to cause Mr Bercow maximum annoyance.

Bercow’s successor as Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, appeared to announce a more low key approach upon taking office, commenting, “I’ve come into this job as a referee”, adding that, ‘It shouldn’t be about me, it’s about the Chamber’.

John Bercow and Brexit

Despite being Commons Speaker, a non-party political role in which its occupants have traditionally remained impartial for life, Bercow has publicly revealed that he voted ‘Remain’ in the 2016 EU referendum.

Indeed, after leaving office, Bercow described Brexit as ‘the biggest foreign policy mistake in the post-war period’. This comment further reignited questions over Bercow’s impartiality during his time as Speaker.

The irony of John Bercow becoming the darling of the country’s liberal pro-European political class is not something that would be lost on those that knew John Bercow in his younger years.

Bercow had previously been a member of the Monday Club, an internal grouping which sat on the far right of the Conservative Party.  Indeed, Bercow had been Secretary of the Monday Club’s Repatriation and Immigration Committee.

In his younger days, Bercow’s political heroes were Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell.  John Bercow later said: ‘Powell convinced me that it was right to fear large-scale immigration. This was 1981, the year of the inner-city riots, and my fear was that we were in a politically explosive situation’.

In 1985, Bercow became the Chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students (FCS), doing so at a time when the group was attracting attention for its hard-right opinions.   In 1986, Bercow was the FCS Chairman when the Conservative right winger, Norman Tebbit, actually shut the organisation down.

Political career

Bercow was first elected as the MP for Buckingham in 1997.  Bercow was at first seen as a Thatcherite ‘attack dog’, a man to watch among the new Parliamentary intake.

In 2000, Bercow was appointed as the Conservative Party’s Home office spokesman, before becoming Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Michael Portillo in 2001.

However, Bercow quickly became uninspired by Iain Duncan-Smith’s leadership of the party and resigned from his frontbench role in 2002. It was around this time that Bercow began to move away from his former political beliefs.

Commenting on his ideological evolution, Bercow told the Independent in 2004: ‘It started with one issue. I voted for a differential age of consent for heterosexuals and gays and lesbians, but I wasn’t sure I was right. I decided…talk to gay people, church leaders and parents to gain their impressions. I came to the conclusion that there was no reason for statutory discrimination and told the Commons I had changed my mind’.

Although he rejoined the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for International Development under Michael Howard in 2003, Bercow was removed a year later in a reshuffle. This gave way to speculation that Bercow might soon defect to the Labour Party. This speculation was heightened after Bercow praised Tony Blair’s ‘outstanding statesmanship’ during the Iraq War.

In 2005, Bercow won Channel Four’s ‘Opposition MP of the Year’ award.  In the same year he voted for Ken Clarke, rather than his once tennis doubles partner, David Cameron, to become Conservative Party Leader.

By this point, Bercow had already considered a run for Speaker. An anonymous ‘Bercow for Speaker’ website had reportedly appeared online as early as 2000.  Former Labour MP Stephen Pound said: “He gave many of us the impression that he wanted this job before he became an MP.”  Not surprisingly, when the moment came, Bercow jumped at the opportunity to replace Michael Martin in 2009.

By convention, major parties do not stand against the apolitical Speaker in General Elections. However, as if he had some kind of premonition of the Brexit controversy that would one day come, UKIP’s Nigel Farage decided to stand against Bercow in the 2010 General Election.  Farage said at the time: ‘This man represents all that is wrong with British politics today. He was embroiled in the expenses saga and he presides over a Parliament that virtually does nothing’. Farage came third in the contest.

Outside politics

How old is John Bercow?
John Simon Bercow was born to a taxi-driving father on the 19th of January 1963.  He grew up in north London.

What did John Bercow do before politics?
After graduating from Essex University, Bercow initially embarked upon on a career in public relations. He worked for the lobbying agency Saatchi and Saatchi. After an unsuccessful run for Parliament in 1992, Bercow worked as a Special Adviser to Jonathan Aitken, then-Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Bercow has always been a naturally-gifted orator.  As a young man, and not even yet an MP, Bercow was said to provide training in public speaking to some existing Tory MPs.

Is John Bercow married?
Bercow married Sally Illman in 2002.  The new Mrs Bercow had herself once been the Social Secretary of the Oxford University Conservative Association, but later joined the Labour Party.  In that sense, the political journey of John Bercow’s wife was similar to the one later undertaken by her husband.

Mrs Bercow appeared on ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ in 2011, but was the first to be voted off the show.

How tall is John Bercow?
John Bercow is 1.68 metres tall, otherwise known as 5 foot and 6 inches.

Bercow resignation: He was the right man in the right place at the right time

The post Bercow, John appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Tracy Brabin has been the Labour Mayor of West Yorkshire since 2021. She is the first woman to serve as UK Met Mayor.

Brabin was born on 9 May 1961. She grew up in Batley in Yorkshire’s West Riding and attended Heckmondwike Grammar School.

Growing up, she received free school meals and her first job was as a hairdresser.

She has said that watching headline acts at the Batley Variety Club, including Louis Armstrong, Eartha Kitt and Shirley Basse, inspired her to work in the entertainment industry. She was well known for her role as Coronation Street actress.

She married actor and director Richard Platt in 2005.

Brabin’s mother still lives on the Birstall council estate where she was raised.

Mayor of West Yorkshire

Ahead of her election to the mayoralty of her home county, Brabin said that her priorities as Mayor would be “protecting and creating good, well-paid jobs… alongside the green economy; safer streets and community policing; expanding clean and green transport, including a mass transit system for the region and ensuring a fair recovery from the COVID19 pandemic.”

She also said that social housing was a priority for her agenda, telling the Telegraph & Argus: “There’s shovel-ready projects such as retrofitting homes ready to go, and I will be getting social housing building up and running again. I absolutely understand the value of social housing, and while I can’t yet give specific numbers I will commit to social housing as a way forward because families like mine were saved by social housing and because of the opportunities it gave me.”

She also said that the crime rates in the area needed to be partly remedied by prevention, vowing to install a Domestic Violence Perpetrator Pilot.

Like the Mayors of London and Greater Manchester respectively, the mayoralty of West Yorkshire incorporates the functions of the police and crime commissioner. The mayor can appoint a deputy mayor for policing and crime. Both are responsible for outlining plans for West Yorkshire Police to tackle crime.

The devolution settlement agreed for the region in 2020 will involve a £38 million-per-year investment over 30 years.

The mayor is responsible for regional transport, elements of housing and land and adult skills.

West Yorkshire‘s five metropolitan borough councils, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds and Wakefield are under the mayor‘s oversight.

In the role, Brabin receives a salary of £105,000. Her office is in Wellington House, Leeds.

Political Career

Tracy Brabin served as ‌the‌ Labour MP‌ ‌for Batley and Spen‌ until 2021. She was ‌first‌ ‌elected‌ ‌to‌ ‌Parliament‌ ‌in‌ a 2016 by-election, after the murder of the former Labour MP, Jo Cox.

In 2019 Brabin said the Labour party should support its MPs at risk of deselection after they spoke up about allegations of antisemitism under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

She also suggested misogyny was a factor in the criticism of the female MPs, including Jewish MPs Margaret Hodge and Louise Ellman.

Brabin served as Shadow Culture Minister after her predecessor Tom Watson stood down at the 2019 election.

In February 2020 she sparked criticism after wearing a top that left one shoulder exposed during a House of Commons debate.

She defended her clothing choice, and brushed off the backlash, telling MailOnline: “Twas ever thus. Women are judged continually by how they look… it is unacceptable that we are raising our daughters to be looking inwards rather than outwards. They are anonymous people often, keyboard warriors sat in their mum’s back bedroom eating Pot Noodles and having a pop at people they don’t know anything about.”

Brabin supported Keir Starmer in the 2020 Labour leadership contest and was appointed Shadow Minister for Cultural Industries following his ascension to the party leadership.

She stepped down from her Batley and Spen seat in 2021 after winning the West Yorkshire mayoral election.

Was Tracy Brabin in Coronation Street?

Born‌ ‌in 1961 in Batley, Brabin studied drama at Loughborough University and gained a Master of Arts degree in screenwriting from the London College of Communication of the University of the Arts London in 2001.

She subsequently worked as an actress and a television writer.

She played Tricia Armstrong in Coronation Street and Roxy in EastEnders.

She also went on to appear in soaps Casualty, Emmerdale, Holby City and Doctors, and dramas The Ghost Hunter, Love + Hate, Midsomer Murders and Law & Order: UK.

Brabin has written for Heartbeat, Family Affairs, Crossroads, The Story of Tracy Beaker, Hollyoaks, and Shameless.

In 2008 she played mother-of-two Sarah in several Sainsbury’s TV adverts.

In her youth, Brabin marched on Greenham Common and organised donations during the miners’ strike.

Before her election, Brabin had been a public supporter of the Labour Party, endorsing them ahead of the 1997 general election, after penning a piece for the Daily Mirror in which she described how her father-in-law had passed away on a hospital trolley while waiting to be consulted by a doctor.

In March 2005 she and eight other actors penned a letter to The Observer in which they said they opposed the Iraq War but still supported Tony Blair’s re-election.

Social media

Website‌ ‌-‌ ‌ ‌https://www.tracybrabinmp.com/

Twitter‌ ‌-‌ ‌ ‌ @TracyBrabin

The post Brabin, Tracy appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Alongside James Callaghan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, he never won a General Election as Prime Minister.

Prime Minister

In 2007, after much speculation, Tony Blair stepped down as Prime Minister and Labour leader, opening the door for Gordon Brown – his Chancellor and heir-apparent. Brown was elected unopposed as Labour leader and was asked by the Queen to form a government shortly after.

Initial opinion-polls favoured Brown’s leadership and there was much speculation that he would call a snap General Election. But after much delay Brown decided against the idea.

Early in 2008, Brown experienced the first of many major financial crises during his premiership, with the run on Northern Rock. Brown responded by nationalising the bank.

After the financial crisis of 2008/9, Brown introduced a number a rescue packages to keep the banks and the economy afloat. Brown’s reaction to the crisis was hailed as the model to follow. But in an infamous slip he claimed to have ‘saved the world’.

Despite his gaffes, Brown’s managerial style proved reassuring in the face of global chaos. But the ‘Brown Bounce’ was not sustained for long and following the 2010 General Election he was ousted from 10 Downing Street by the first coalition government in 70 years.

How old is Gordon Brown?

Grodon Brown was born in Scotland in 1951, Gordon Brown wis 71 years old.

What is Gordon Brown doing now?

After leaving Downing Street, Gordon Brown stayed on as a Member of Parliament until stepping down in 2015.  His Parliamentary seat was subsequently captured by the Scottish National Party.

In July 2012, Brown was named by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon as a United Nations Special Envoy on Global Education. In this role, he chaired the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity.

In 2014, Brown played a prominent role in the campaign to maintain the Union during the 2014 Scottish referendum, and frequently still comments on the matter. In late 2020, Brown declared that it would soon be impossible to hold the UK together within the ‘straitjacket of a centralised state’.

Political career

Brown was first elected to the safe Labour seat of Dunfermline East at the 1983 General Election. At this election, Labour had won their lowest share of seats for 60 years and were now facing up against Margaret Thatcher with a formidable majority.

However, Brown soon found comfort in his friendship with another young MP ands his office-partner: the newly-elected MP for Sedgefield, a 30-year-old Tony Blair.

Together, Brown and Blair formed a formidable partnership which saw them rise through the ranks of the party in the late eighties and early nineties.

Brown joined the shadow Cabinet in 1989 as Shadow Secretary of State for Trade, and was promoted to Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1992.

When then-Labour leader, John Smith, died of a heart attack in 1994, Brown and Blair vied for the leadership. However – as the legend goes – a deal was struck in a restaurant in Islington called Granita, that said Blair would run for the leadership in exchange for powers which would make Brown the strongest Chancellor in history.

In 1997, ‘New Labour’ were swept into power in a landslide. As Chancellor, Brown announced the independence of the Bank of England. He forged a reputation as an ‘iron chancellor’ determined to end what he described as cycles of ‘boom and bust’.

But cracks were beginning to show in the Brown-Blair duopoly. The first major splitting point was over over Britain’s entry into the Euro. Blair allegedly supported Britain’s entry, Brown did not. This gap between Number 11 and 10 Downing Street grew steadily over time and, by 2006/2007, Brown’s supporters increasingly asked for Blair to give a timeline for his inevitable exit .

In 2007, Blair resigned, and Brown became Prime Minister on 27 June 2007.

Before politics

Brown read History at the University of Edinburgh. Having gained a First Class honours degree and a number of prizes for his studies, Mr Brown became the youngest ever Rector of Edinburgh University in 1972.

In his early working life, Mr Brown spent time as a university and college lecturer and also wrote a number of books. His book on James Maxton is about the early Labour MPs and their struggles. ‘Values, Visions and Voices’ is a study of the idealism and zeal of Labour’s early thinkers. And ‘The Real Divide’, written with Robin Cook, was a study of poverty and inequality.

He later worked as a television journalist before being elected to Parliament.

Personal life

Gordon Brown is the second of three sons. He grew up in the town of Kirkcaldy, an industrial centre famed for its linoleum and mining industries.  Like many other boys in Scotland, football was Mr Brown’s passion. A keen Raith Rovers supporter from childhood, he earned pocket money by selling programmes for the team. He also produced a newspaper with his brothers, which they sold for charity.

Just before he went to university, Mr Brown injured his eye playing for his school team at rugby which eventually resulted in detached retinas in both eyes. He spent much of his early years at university in hospital or recuperating.

Brown married Sarah in 2000. The couple’s relationship started after sharing a flight from London to Scotland for the Scottish Labour Party conference in 1994. They have two sons.

Things you might not know about Gordon Brown

He once courted with royalty

For a time at University, Brown was romantically involved with an exiled Romanian princess, Margarita du Romaine.

‘The Brown Sugars’

After graduating in 1972, Brown was elected as Edinburgh University’s rector. His campaign was bolstered by the ‘Brown Sugars’ – three mini-skirted fans who followed him to photo-shoots wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan ‘Gordon for me’.

Further details

Twitter — @OfficeGSBrown

Personal Website: http://www.gordonandsarahbrown.com/

Gordon Brown slams COP draft agreement as ‘admission of failure’

Gordon Brown was passionate, but the Yes campaign is shouting louder

The post Brown, Gordon appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham was born in Culcheth, Cheshire.  His father was a telephone engineer father and his mother a receptionist. Burnham frequently references his working-class upbringing.

Having been ‘radicalised‘ by the miners’ strike, Burnham joined the Labour Party at 14 and he began his working-life as a researcher to Labour Party politicians.

Upon becoming a Labour MP in 2001, Mr Burnham took on junior Government roles and soon rose up the ranks. By the time Gordon Brown became PM, Burnham was Chief Secretary to the Treasury (2007-2008).  He then became Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (2008-2009) and, finally, Secretary of Health (2009-2010).

Following two failed runs for the Labour Leadership in 2010 and 2015, Burnham became shadow Home Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn before resigning in 2016 to run for Mayor of Greater Manchester.

Burnham first won election as Greater Manchester Mayor in 2017, a position through which he has increased his national political status significantly.   He was re-elected in 2021 securing 67.3% of the vote.

Andy Burnham – Self styled King of the North

King of the North

Following the 2019 election, greater attention was paid to the communities of Northern England who had placed their trust in the Conservative party – often for the first time. With this new framing of politics in the north, the country was soon engulfed by the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Coronavirus pandemic – particularly following the introduction of the regional tiers system – had the unexpected effect of boosting the name-recognition of those politicians representing different parts of the UK, and highlighted the role of metro mayors. All of sudden, local leaders like Burnham became more important national figures.

Following the announcement that Manchester was to be moved into ‘Tier 3’ (then the highest tier) in October 2020, Burnham led negotiations for further funding for the region. Burnham insisted that new tier 3 restrictions to control the virus must come with significant financial packages for regional governments. Burnham requested £65 million for his region, albeit the Prime Minister was only willing to offer £60 million. Burnham was outraged.

The mayor led a subsequent press-conference giving his version of events as to why talks collapse. Mid-press-conference, Burnham was shown an email detailing that-after all the negotiations – only £22 million was to be allocated to his region. Going off-script, Burnham called the move ‘brutal’ and ‘frankly disgraceful’.

Since first becoming Manchester Mayor in 2017, Burnham has donated 15% of his annual £110,000 salary to tackling homelessness.

Speeding conviction

In March 2023, Andy Burnham was fined for speeding after admitting driving at 78 mph on a stretch of the M62 Motorway at a time that there was a 40 mph speed limit in operation.

Mr Burnham was fined some £2,000 by the court and given 6 penalty points.

Future Labour Leader?

Following his convincing election victory in the Manchester mayoral elections in May 2021, and against the background of continuing struggles by the Labour Party in the North and Midlands, Andy Burnham became the bookmaker’s favourite to become the next Labour leader.

Under the Labour Party’s rules, a candidate for the party leadership needs to be a Member of Parliament, which is clearly currently a barrier for Mr Burnham.

Nevertheless, and despite having twice stood unsuccessfully for the party leadership, in May 2021 Mr Burnham suggested he was still very much interested in the possibility, suggestively commenting that the Labour Party should “get in touch” if it were “ever to feel it needed me”.

Bookmakers seem to have heard Mr Burnham’s statements, and despite him not being an MP, regularly place him as the favourite to succeed Sir Keir Starmer.

Political Views

In his unsuccessful 2010 bid for the Labour leadership, Burnham emphasised his philosophy of ‘aspirational socialism‘, which he described as redistributive and internationalist.

In the 2015 leadership election, in a move that appeared to misread the Labour Party’s mood, Burnham launched his campaign in front of an audience of accountants at Ernst & Young. In his speech, Burnham stressed that the entrepreneur should be ‘as much our hero as the nurse‘.

During the campaign, Burnham was subsequently accused of pivoting to the left in order gain votes from Jeremy Corbyn. Burnham came out in favour of renationalising the railway system. Burnham was never overly comfortable with Corbyn’s politics; he is very much on the soft-left of the Labour Party.

Burnham was opposed to the idea of a mansion tax, saying his mother had persuaded him to turn against it. He is however, in favour of a higher minimum wage; the banning of zero-hours contracts; and in his role as Greater Manchester Mayor, Burnham has argued in favour of further devolution.

Burnham is associated with plans for a ‘death tax’, in the form of an increase in inheritance tax in order to pay for social care.

Things you may not know about Andy Burnham

How old is Andy Burnham?

Andrew Murray Burnham was born on the 7th January 1970 in Aintree, Liverpool.

What did Andy Burnham do before entering Politics?
Before becoming a Labour MP, Burnham worked as a researcher for Tessa Jowell MP.  He also had jobs with the NHS Confederation and the Football Task Force.  As something of a “professional politician”, he has  worked in and around politics through the course of his adult life.

Is Andy Burnham Married?
Mayor Burnham met his future wife, Marie-France van Heel, at Cambridge University. They tied the knot in 2000. Van Heel has been CEO of the London-based firm Heavenly, which is said to have designed logos for HSBC, England Rugby and the BBC. She reportedly appeared on ‘Blind Date’ while she and Burnham were still courting.

Andy Burnham and Football
Burnham is a big Everton fan. Former Everton Goalkeeper, Neville Southall supported his bid for the Labour leadership in 2015, writing to Burnham on Twitter: ‘You are the best man for the job.  Top blue and top guy’.

Suggesting that he is capable of bridging the footballing divide in Liverpool, Jamie Carragher the former Liverpool defender and now Sky football pundit, reportedly donated £10,000 to Burnham’s 2010 Labour Leadership campaign.

Burnham has dabbled in football himself and played as a striker in Labour’s Demon Eyes football team. People have suggested that Burnham can be a little bit of a goal hanger

Early Political Career

Having entered Parliament representing the North West constituency of Leigh at the 2001 General Election, Burnham became a member of the Parliamentary Health Select Committee, a position he held until 2003. Burnham then served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Home Secretary Liam Blunkett (2003-2004) and then Education Secretary Ruth Kelly (2004-2005).

Burnham first entered government as junior Minister at the Home Office and quickly climbed the Ministerial ladder. When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, Burnham was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury (2007-2008) and then Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (2008-2009). In 2009, Burnham was promoted to Health Secretary – a position which he held until the 2010 General Election. This raised Burnham’s political profile, but he struggled to stand out against the Milibands and Ed Balls in the subsequent Labour Party leadership election.

Having finished in fourth place during the 2010 leadership election, above only Diane Abbot, Burnham stood again for the party leadership in 2015. This time Burnham managed a slightly better finish, coming in second. However his mere 19% of the vote was eclipsed by Jeremy Corbyn’s 60%.

Further Information

Twitter Handle – @AndyBurnhamGM

Facebook Address – @BurnhamGM

Personal Website – https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/the-mayor/

Andy Burnham to pitch himself as Starmer’s successor

The post Burnham, Andy appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Jim Callaghan was Britain’s longest-lived Prime Minister, he died on the eve of his 93rd birthday on 26th March 2005. He was known by the nickname ‘sunny jim‘.

Callaghan grew up in Cardiff. His childhood was dominated by poverty after his father died when Callaghan was only nine. Before going into politics, Callaghan worked as a clerk in an Inland Revenue office and in 1936 he became a full-time trade union official. During the Second World War, Callaghan volunteered for the Royal Navy. At the end of the war he stood in the 1945 General Election and became the Labour MP for Cardiff South.

Having previously held junior positions in Clement Attlee’s government (1945-51), Callaghan became Harold Wilson‘s Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1964-1967. Callaghan would go on to become Home Secretary (1967-1970), Foreign Secretary (1974-1976) and, finally, Prime Minister (1976-79). To this day, Callaghan is the only person in British history to have ever held all four ‘great offices’ of the British state.

Upon leaving the Commons, Callaghan sat as Baron Callaghan in the House of Lords. After his death, Callaghan’s ashes were scattered in the flowerbed around the Peter Pan statue at Great Ormand Street Hospital in London.

James Callaghan was defeated by Margaret Thatcher in 1979. He resigned as Labour party leader and was succeeded by Michael Foot.

Cabinet Career

After the Labour Party‘s narrow victory at the 1964 General Election, Jim Callaghan became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Callaghan’s period at the Treasury was a difficult one and culminated in him being forced to oversee the devaluation of the pound by 14% in 1967. This was done to make British exports cheaper abroad, but Callaghan’s delay on the matter led to significant scrutiny. Callaghan offered his resignation but this was initially rejected by then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson. However, Callaghan insisted he be moved from the Treasury and so Wilson made him Home Secretary.

As Home Secretary, Callaghan played a key role in the passing of the Race Relations Act 1968, which made it illegal to refuse housing, employment or public services because of an individual’s race. Presenting the Bill to Parliament, Callaghan said, ‘the House has rarely faced an issue of greater social significance for our country and our children’.

Callaghan left government following Labour’s defeat at the 1970 Election, but he returned as Foreign Secretary following the General Election of February 1974. As Foreign Secretary, Callaghan helped engineer the 1975 referendum ‘yes’ result which confirmed Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community (later the EU).

Following Harold Wilson‘s unexpected resignation in 1976, Callaghan, as his heir apparent, was elected Leader of the Labour Party, and hence Prime Minister. ‘Prime minister! And I never went to university!’ Callaghan is said to have exclaimed when he heard the result.

Callaghan outlined his plans for office in his 1976 speech at the Labour Party conference.

As prime minister Callaghan enjoyed strong personal relationships with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and the Democrat President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

Winter of Discontent Crisis

Economic difficulties and societal tension dominated Callaghan’s tenure as Prime Minister. Callaghan’s government responded to the issues of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ with pay restraint and general austerity measures. By the time Mr Callaghan became Prime Minister, the Labour government had already lost its narrow majority.

In 1977, with further by-election losses, Callaghan was forced into a deal with David Steel’s Liberal Party. The alliance was unstable and in 1979 he became the first Prime Minister since the Duke of Wellington to resign after losing a vote of confidence.

Callaghan’s subsequent electoral defeat in 1979 saw the rise of Margaret Thatcher and the beginning of the Labour Party‘s eighteen year spell in the political wilderness. Callaghan soon resigned as Labour Party leader.

Interesting Anecdotes

Callaghan was prime minister at a time of heightened tension with the Soviet Union. Speaking in 1988 to a BBC documentary, Jim Callaghan made his opinion on ordering a retaliatory nuclear attack known: ‘if we had got to that point, where it was, I felt, necessary to do it, then I would have done it. I’ve had terrible doubts, of course, about this. I say to you, if I had lived after having pressed that button, I could never, ever have forgiven myself’.

In his diary entry of 3 April 1997, Tony Benn recorded that Callaghan received a call from a Labour Party volunteer asking if he wanted to become more active in the Party. According to Benn, Callaghan said ‘Well I was a Labour Prime Minister – what more could I do?’.

In 1999, Callaghan told The Oldie Magazine, ‘I should not be the slightest bit surprised if there is another evaluation after I die and people come to the conclusion that I was the worst British prime minister since Walpole’.

After leaving office, James Callaghan became Lord Callaghan. He retired to a farm he bought near Ringmer in East Sussex. The area became popular with other former leading labour figures of the time such as Denis Healey and George Brown, both of whom almost retired nearby.

Family

Leonard James Callaghan met his future wife, Audrey Moulton, during his time working as a tax inspector in the early-1930s. They were married in July 1938. The couple had three children, one of whom, Margaret Jay, went on to become a British politician. Baroness Jay become a Labour Cabinet Minister herself, and Leader of the House of Lords in the Blair government.

The post Callaghan, James appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Lord Cameron is the foreign secretary, having been appointed to the role in Rishi Sunak’s November 2023 cabinet reshuffle. He replaced James Cleverly in the post, who was moved to the Home Office after Suella Braverman was sacked.

In order to take up the post, David Cameron was made Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton by King Charles III on the request of the government.

Why David Cameron is back

Cameron’s shock appointment made him just the second former prime minister since the second world war to return to cabinet.

Cameron’s only post-war forebear is Alec Douglas-Home, prime minister from 1963 to 1964. He also became foreign secretary, serving under Edward Heath from 1970 to 1974.

Cameron served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 2010 to 2016. 

He led Britain’s first Coalition Government for 70 years and, following the 2015 General Election, formed the first Conservative majority Government for over two decades.

Addressing the House of Lords for the first time following his appointment as foreign secretary in November 2023, Lord Cameron quipped: “It was a surprise to be asked.

“I have not been sitting like some latter day de Gaulle … waiting to be asked, how should I put it, to ‘take back control’. Nor am I Cincinnatus, hovering over my plough”.

In a further reference to fellow former PM Boris Johnson, Lord Cameron added: “I leave all classical allusions, and indeed illusions for that matter, to another former prime minister with whom I shared a number of educational experiences”.

Prime Minister

Following the 2010 General Election and the resulting Hung Parliament, Cameron entered into negotiations with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. A formal coalition government resulted, with Cameron as Prime Minister and Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister.

The coalition government was marked by the ongoing effects of the financial crisis; Cameron responding with austerity policies designed to rebalance the nation’s finances. In his premiership, Cameron also enforced stricter immigration policies, oversaw the 2012 London Olympics, privatised Royal Mail and legalised same-sex marriage in England and Wales.

In 2011, Cameron held a referendum on replacing First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) with the ‘Alternative vote’ (AV) – a product of the coalition agreements. Cameron backed FPTP while Clegg supported the switch to AV. Cameron’s side of the argument won decisively. 

In 2014, Cameron announced the holding of another referendum on Scottish Independence. Again, Cameron backed the ‘No’ argument. And, again, he won. 

Cameron’s Conservatives secured a majority in the 2015 General Election and he continued in Downing Street. To fulfil a manifesto pledge, Cameron announced a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union to be held in 2016. 

Cameron supported continued membership, but this time his winning run in referendums came to an end. Cameronresigned as PM the morning after the Brexit result was announced.

What is David Cameron doing now?

David Cameron stood down as a Member of Parliament in 2016 very soon after resigning as Prime Minister.  Cameroninitially maintained a low-profile after leaving Downing Street and during the subsequent Brexit negotiations. 

While stating that he did not regret calling the 2016 referendum, he has told The Times it had left him ‘hugely depressed’ and understands that ‘some people will never forgive me’. 

In 2016, Cameron became Chairman of Patrons at National Citizen Service (NCS), a youth development programme. He is also President of Alzheimer’s Research UK.

Further to these roles, Cameron advised a number of international businesses – concentrating on innovative technology-driven sectors, including Fin-Tech, Medi-Tech and Artificial Intelligence.

In March 2021, it was revealed that Cameron was employed by Greensill Capital, a firm that has subsequently collapsed. It was reported that Mr Cameron sent several texts to Chancellor Rishi Sunak and held a number of virtual meetings with permanent secretaries in Whitehall to try and secure coronavirus support payments for Greensill.  

Cameron, who following the 2009 controversy around MPs expense claims, had mused that lobbying would be the next big political scandal, was now himself in a lobbying furore.

David Cameron references ‘friend’ Nick Clegg and takes swipe at Boris Johnson in maiden Lords speech

Political career

Cameron was first elected the Conservative MP for the rural constituency of Witney in West Oxfordshire in 2001. From 2001-2003, Cameron was a member of the influential House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee. He then occupied a number of shadow Cabinet jobs. After the 2005 General Election, he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills.

When Michael Howard announced his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party following Labour’s third consecutive General Election victory in 2005, Cameron declared his candidacy in the subsequent leadership election. Some of his high-profile supporters included Boris Johnson, George Osbourne, Michael Ancram, Oliver Letwin and former party leader William Hague. 

Cameron beat David Davis to claim the Conservative party’s leadership. He then worked to modernise the party, setting it on its path to government.

Rishi Sunak asked to name David Cameron’s ‘finest foreign policy achievement’

Before politics

David Cameron was born on 9th October 1966. He was educated at Eton College and Brasenose College at Oxford University.

Before becoming an MP, Cameron worked as a Special Adviser in government, first to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont and then to the Home Secretary Michael Howard. Afterwards he spent several years at Carlton Communications, one of the UK’s leading media companies, and served on the management Board.

Personal life

Cameron and his wife, Samantha, have three children: Nancy, Elwen, and Florence. In 2009, their eldest child, Ivan, who suffered with a combination of cerebral palsy and a form of severe epilepsy called Ohtahara Syndrome, died aged six.

Contact details

Twitter – @David_Cameron

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/DavidCameronOfficial?fref=ts

The Cameroons and Covid — what’s the connection?

The post Cameron, David appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

In 2003 Campbell left his position as Downing Street Director of Communications, but he has hardly left politics.

He worked as Campaign Director for Labour’s winning 2005 election campaign, and acted as an advisor to Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband during their roles as PM and leaders of the Labour Party respectively.

In 2014, Campbell joined GQ and has been an interviewer for the magazine ever since. Campbell has also served as the editor-at-large of The New European newspaper, a position he held since 2017.

Campbell has been reported as having provided advice to Emmanuel Macron’s victorious En Marche party in relation to the successful 2017 French Presidential election campaign. In a subsequent article for The New European, Campbell labeled Macron ‘the real heir to Tony Blair’.  He has also reportedly worked as a communications advisor to the Albanian prime minister.

In May 2022, Campbell wrote a foreword for a report by Labour in Communications urging Sir Keir Starmer to revamp his approach to PR ahead of the next election. The report suggests Starmer ‘offer a new approach to politics’ and ‘address the Hung Parliament question,’ outlining Labour’s position on a deal with the SNP well ahead of any election.

In March 2022, Campbell launched ‘The Rest is Politics’ podcast with the former Conservative cabinet minister, Rory Stewart.  The podcast has since become the top UK politics podcast in Apple’s rankings and amongst the best performing overall podcasts in the UK.

Tony Blair’s Press Secretary

Shortly after his victory in the 1994 Labour Party leadership election, Tony Blair appointed Alastair Campbell as his Press Secretary. Among his many contributions during the period 1994-1997, Campbell was said to have coined the name ‘New Labour’; drafted the speech that led to the symbolic rewriting of Clause IV in the Labour Party constitution; and worked to court Rupert Murdoch and persuade the Sun newspaper to support Labour in the 1997 General Election.

For all this, Tony Blair later labeled Campbell ‘a genius‘. Alongside Peter Mandelson, Campbell was pivotal in organizing the party’s 1997 General Election campaign.

Downing Street Director of Communications

By the time Labour won a landslide victory in the 1997 General Election, Campbell was well-known as a master ‘spin-doctor’. Campbell continued to be very influential as 10 Downing Street’s Director of Communications.

Notably Campbell was a key figure in the government’s handling of the death of Princess Diana, helping coin the phrase the ‘People’s Princess’.

Within Downing Street, Mr Campbell quickly assumed a role more beyond that of managing the media for the Prime Minister, having in 1998 played a key role in the negations that led to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

However, Campbell was not always so successful in applying his skills. He is alleged to have mishandled Robin Cook’s resignation, and Campbell failed to effectively manage the media response to the news of Bernie Ecclestone’s controversial £1 million donation to the Labour Party.

Early Journalist Career

After graduating from Cambridge University with a 2:1 in French and German, Campbell held a variety of journalistic jobs. One such job apparently saw him write adult content for Forum Magazine under the pseudonym Riviera Gigolo.

In 1982, Campbell was employed at the London Office of the Daily Mirror, then the only major Labour-supporting paper. Campbell later worked as a political journalist at the Today newspaper before rising to become the Political Editor of the Mirror. At certain times during his journalistic career, Campbell is said to have had battles with alcoholism.

Controversies and Campaigns

Iraq Dossier

In the period before the second Gulf War, Alastair Campbell was said to have been involved with an Iraq Dossier (commonly referred to as the ‘Dodgy Dossier’). It has been suggested that this dossier overstated intelligence findings and in particular, the time that it might have taken for Iraq to acquire nuclear weapons. Campbell has always strongly denied these claims.

Mental Health

Campbell has been very open about his mental health struggles and battles with depression both in and out of office. As a consultant strategist and ambassador for Time to Change, Campbell has encouraged those struggling with their mental health to seek clinical help.

Supporting mental health charities, Campbell has argued that for too long mental illness has been something that people do not want to talk about, and pretending it is not there, leads to ‘taboo, stigma and discrimination‘.

In 2019 Campbell was appointed Global Ambassador to Australians for Mental Health, and he was the focus of the 2008 BBC mental health documentary ‘Cracking Up’.

Brexit

Campbell was a very vocal opponent of Brexit, and he became an advisor to the People’s Vote campaign – the organization demanding a second public vote on the issue.

Immediately after the 2016 referendum, Campbell declared the Brexit result to be ‘the worst decision Britain has made in my lifetime’.

Labour Party Membership

On May 2019, Campbell was thrown out of the Labour Party for stating that he would be voting for the Liberal Democrats in that year’s European elections. Campbell insisted this was simply a protest vote – he was a prominent critic of Labour’s Brexit strategy.

Background

How old is Alastair Campbell

Campbell was born on 25 May 1957 in Keighley, Yorkshire.

Family

Campbell met his partner, Fiona Millar, while he was working for the Tavistock Times in the late 1980s. Fiona Millar is known for her campaigning against Grammar Schools. The couple never married and have 3 children together.

Alistair Campbell – Things you may not know

He plays the bagpipes in his spare time

Campbell is one of a few famous bagpipers out there. He has been known to show off his bagpipe talents at concerts including one in Glasgow in 2019.

He is a triathlete

Campbell has often appeared in endurance running events, raising money for charity along the way. He raised over half a million pounds running the London Marathon in 2003. Alongside being a triathlete and marathon runner, in his 60s Campbell took up cold water swimming.

Burnley FC’s most famous fan

Campbell is also a staunch supporter of Burnley Football Club. Since the age of 4, Campbell has regularly attended matches-both home and away.

The post Campbell, Alistair appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

The only Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas claims to have been politically awoken by the Falklands War in 1982, the issueof nuclear weapons, and Jonathon Porritt’s book ‘Seeing Green’.

Caroline Lucas joined the Green Party in 1986. From 1987-89, Lucas served as the Party’s National Press Officer and then Co-Chair (1989-90). In 1993, Lucas won the Green Party’s second-ever council seat.

Elected under a proportional representation system, Lucas then became one of the Party’s first Members of the European Parliament in 1999. Lucas served as an MEP for 11 years until the 2010 General Election when she then became Parliament’s first Green Party MP.

Lucas has served as the Green Party’s Leader (2008-2012), Co-leader (2016-2018) and Principal Speaker (2003-2006, 2007-2008).

In June 2023, Lucas announced that she will stand down at the next general election. She said it had been the “privilege of my life to serve this extraordinary constituency and community”.

In a letter sent to her Brighton Pavilion constituents, Lucas said the “threats to our precious planet” had become “ever more urgent”, but that her role in parliament as the Green Party’s only MP meant she was “ironically” unable to devote more attention to “accelerating crises” facing climate and nature.

“I have therefore decided not to stand again as your MP at the next election”, she said.

Green party MP Caroline Lucas to stand down at next election

Political Career

While studying for her PhD in 1986, Lucas happened upon Jonathon Porritt’s environmental manifesto, ‘Seeing Green’.  Lucas said later of her experience with the book: ‘it was one of those books that completely change your life within the space of time it takes to read 250 pages’.

After winning a seat on Oxfordshire County Council for the Greens in 1993, Lucas stood as a Green candidate for the South East region of England at the 1999 European elections. As an MEP for South East England, Lucas was a member of the European Parliament’s Committee for Trade, Industry, Energy and Research; the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy; the Committee on International Trade; and the Temporary Committee on Climate Change.

Lucas successfully stood for the constituency of Brighton Pavilion at the 2010 General Election, becoming the Green Party’s first ever MP.

Lucas has won many awards for her work as an MP, including: being named the ‘Most Influential MP’ in 2012 by the Political Studies Association; ‘MP of the Year’; and ‘Newcomer of the Year’ in the Spectator’s 2010 Parliamentarian awards.

In June 2023, Caroline Lucas announced that she would be standing down as an MP at the next election.

Political Views

Lucas is outspoken about the climate crisis, a climate emergency, and its implications for humanity. She has co-written a book on the topic. The book was entitled, ‘Green Alternatives to Globalisation: A Manifesto’.

Alongside pushing Climate legislation in parliament, Lucas frequently campaigns beyond Westminster. In 2013, Lucas was arrested at an anti-fracking demonstration outside energy company Cuadrilla’s exploratory oil drilling site in West Sussex.

‘It’s good to be Green!’ – Why does Brighton vote Green?

Lucas said at the time that, ‘exploiting new sources of fossil fuel such as shale gas will fatally undermine the government’s stated ambition to protect Britain from the worst impacts of the climate crisis, to meet our international obligations, and to reduce emissions’. She was later found not guilty of obstructing the public highway and public order offences.

Lucas was an influential member of the ‘People’s Vote’ organisation which campaigned for a second referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. Lucas told attendees at the organisation’s launch: ‘[Brexit is] not inevitable … We’ll do everything we can in Parliament for a people’s vote. This issue is far too important to leave to the politicians’.

Lucas supports the introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), even tabling a motion in the Commons calling for the Government to examine its feasibility.

She has also campaigned for Parliamentary reform and a change from the current first past the post electoral voting system.

As a politician, Lucas is also a prominent campaigner for animal rights. She received the Michael Kay Award from the RSPCA in 2006 for her contribution to European animal welfare – Lucas is now Vice President of the organisation.

BBC Wildlife listed Lucas in their ‘Top 50 Conservationists’.

Background

Caroline Patricia Lucas was born on 9th December 1960 to a small businessperson father and stay-at-home mother. Lucas is married to former cricketer Richard Savage, the couple have two sons – one of whom is an academic at the University of California.

Caroline studied an English degree at Exeter University before a year spent studying Buddhist philosophy and the History of Art in America.

Having returned to complete a PhD, Lucas spent 10 years working for Oxfam in various roles whilst campaigning in her spare time as a Green Party activist.

Caroline Lucas – Things you might know

Her husband was a professional cricketer
Richard Savage, Lucas’ husband, is a former professional cricketer. Savage played for one year with Warwickshire County Cricket Club.

She backed Jeremy Corbyn to be Labour Leader
The green politician endorsed Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign to be Labour Leader in 2015. She wrote in the Independent ‘I’ve never felt so optimistic about a potential Leader of the Labour Party. For the first time in my memory, the party of Keir Hardie and Clement Attlee looks likely to be led again by someone who dares to stand up for the radical changes demanded by the challenges we face’.

She wrote a PhD on Elizabethan Romance
Describing her PhD later in life, Lucas told the Guardian that, ‘My interest was in renaissance literature, looking at how men were writing for women in the 1590s, a time when many women were being taught to read but not to write’. Lucas PhD thesis is entitled ‘Writing for Women: The Example of Woman As Reader in Elizabethan Romance. by Caroline Lucas, Milton Keynes’. It can be read here .

Further Details

Twitter Handle – @CarloineLucas

Facebook Address – @carolinelucas.page

Personal Website – www.carolinelucas.com

Lucas introduces ‘Green New Deal’ bill

Caroline Lucas: I’ll do what other leaders won’t – stand up for free movement

Interview: Caroline Lucas

The post Caroline Lucas appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

After Laura Kuenssberg announced her intention to step down as the BBC’s political editor, Chris Mason initially suggested that he did not want the role.

The Sunday Times newspaper subsequently suggested that BBC bosses encouraged Mason to apply, after conducting their initial round of interviews from an all-female shortlist. These were said to have included Sophy Ridge from Sky News, Anushka Asthana from ITV News, Pippa Crerar from the Daily Mirror, and BBC political correspondent Alex Forsyth.

In any event, Mason was appointed as BBC Political Editor in April 2022.

Mason was very much seen as a safe appointment for the BBC. Mason has been characterised as a ‘wise statesman who is good at analysing events’.

How old is Chris Mason?

Christopher Mason was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire in 1980. His parents were primary school teachers.

Mason grew up in Grassington and attended Ermysted’s Grammar School in Skipton. Referencing his upbringing in the Yorkshire Dales, he frequently describes himself as a ‘dalesman’.

During his childhood, Mason has said that he was an avid listener of BBC Radio Lancashire, and that from an early age, it was his ambition to present his own radio programme.

RF83HP Chris Mason political journalist for the BBC pictured in Westminster, London, UK. Brexit Cast BBC TV programme. Russell Moore portfolio page.

Where did Chris Mason work before?

Chris Mason graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge University, after reading geography. During his undergraduate days, he was heavily involved in student media, co-founding The Cambridge Student newspaper in 1999.

Mason then gained a postgraduate diploma in journalism from City University in London.

In 2001 he cut his teeth as a trainee journalist with ITN, moving to BBC Radio Newcastle the following year.

During a twenty year career at the BBC, Mason has worked as a Europe correspondent for BBC News and as a reporter for BBC Radio 5 Live. He became a political correspondent for BBC News in 2012. Covering British politics on national TV for over a decade, Mason has developed his distinctive ‘earnest yet informal’ style in front of the camera.

From 2017 Mason presented the Brexitcast podcast initially with Adam Fleming, and later with Laura Kuenssberg and Katya Adler.

In October 2019, Mason became chair of BBC Radio 4‘s Any Questions? Programme. He took over from Jonathan Dimbleby who had spent 32 years in the job. Mason has also previously done a stint as a presenter of BBC One’s Breakfast News.

Mason has argued that the lack of regional accents in news is “absolutely absurd”.

Mason has though suggested that being from the north of England has aided his career. In 2009 he commented that it, “probably been an advantage to me because I have come of age journalistically in an era where there’s a far greater awareness that the BBC in particular, and broadcasting in general, needs to sound like the audience it’s broadcasting to.”

Continuing he said, “I’m a white, middle-aged, heterosexual bloke, for goodness’ sake! Here’s me banging on about diversity”.

It was reported that Mason was offered a fresh gig by Times Radio ahead of its 2020 launch, but he went on to decline the offer.

Chris Mason Salary

Details of Mason’s salary in the BBC political editor role have not been publicly confirmed.

However, in 2020, Mason’s predecessor at BBC News, Ms Kuennsberg, was earning £290,000 per year. This was before she took over her new role succeeding Andrew Marr.

Back in 2017 Mr Mason had publicly stated that his annual salary as a BBC political correspondent was £60,000. Even with his other BBC roles he was not earning in excess of the £150,000 a year mark, after which the corporation must declare an individual’s pay packet.

It is almost certain that Mr Mason has received a substantial pay hike by taking on his new role.

Chris Mason Political Views

While Chris Mason is yet to provoke as many (and varying) different claims of bias as his predecessor, his broadcasting career to date has not been shy of controversy.

Following news of Mason’s appointment as the BBC’s political editor, the Independent newspaper unearthed a 2000 interview with the former Chancellor, Norman Lamont. During the interview, published during Mason’s student days and before he became subject to BBC impartiality considerations, Mason blasted the Lords as a “talking shop for past-it politicians and do-gooders in high places”.

However, those on the left of the political spectrum have also had their disagreements with Mason.

In December 2021, Mason hosted an episode of BBC Breakfast in which he questioned the Labour Shadow Cabinet minister, Baroness Chapman. This was soon after the resignation of the Conservative MP, Owen Paterson, following a sleaze scandal. Mason asked the Shadow Cabinet Office minister why her party was not “further ahead” in the polls as the Conservatives battled bad headlines. Chapman accused Mason of posing a question that was not “credible”. A number of twitter users inevitably then attacked Mason for not concentrating on the Paterson story itself…

In 2021, another bias row erupted when Mason intervened during a live recording of Any Questions hosted at the Landmark Theatre in Ilfracombe, Devon. The audience jeered and booed when Boris Johnson was mentioned and heckled former Conservative shadow minister Ann Widdecombe who claimed the success of the UK’s vaccine rollout was “thanks to Boris”.

Is Chris Mason married?

Mr Mason is married and lives in London with his wife and their two children. His wife works as a primary school teacher.

Between July and September 2019 he took parental leave. Like Laura Kuennsberg before him, Mason has a track record of keeping his private life, private.

Social Media

Twitter – @ChrisMasonBBC

Laura Kuenssberg

BBC Bias

The post Chris Mason appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Now Lord Clarke of Nottingham, Kenneth Clarke first entered parliament as a 29-year-old at the 1970 General Election.

Since the 1970s, Clarke has served in the governments of Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron. Clarke’s pro-European views often put him at odds his party.

Clarke made his ‘one-nation’ pitch for leader on three occasions (1997, 2001 and 2005) but was unsuccessful in each attempt. Nonetheless, Clarke’s esteemed CV includes the posts of Chancellor, Home Secretary, Health Secretary, Education Secretary, Justice Secretary and Paymaster General.

Undoubtedly, Clarke is one of the most important political figures of the past 50 years.

What is he doing now?

In February 2020, Clarke was nominated for a life peerage. He now sits in the House of Lords as a Conservative.

In November 2023, he backed shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, labelling her “reassuring” and “responsible”.

He revealed to the i’s podcast, “Labour’s Plan for Power”, that he has been impressed by Labour’s shadow chancellor.

Speaking to the i, he said he supported Reeves’ “uncompromising” approach to her economy brief, which has included spearheading the decision to water down Labour’s flagship £28 billion green prosperity plan.

Clarke also suggested that Reeves and chancellor Jeremy Hunt represented the same view of how to run the Treasury. He said the shadow chancellor’s macroeconomic policy “matches” Hunt’s.

Former Conservative chancellor Ken Clarke backs ‘reassuring’, ‘responsible’ Rachel Reeves

Political Career

First elected in 1970 for the constituency of Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire, Clarke served a total of 49 years in the House of Commons. He was Father of the House (the longest-serving parliamentarian) through the 2017 to 2019 Parliament.

Clarke was given his first Government role in 1972 as an Assistant Whip by then Prime Minister, Edward Heath.  From 1974-1988, Clarke held junior ministerial roles, before being promoted to Secretary of State for Health under Margaret Thatcher. As a Europhile and ‘One-Nation’ Tory, Clarke became a notorious ‘wet’ (critic of the Thatcher); Clarke recalls having many arguments with the then Prime Minister.

Under John Major, with whom Clarke was more ideologically aligned, Clarke became Secretary of State for Education and Science (1990-1992), Home Secretary (1992-1993) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (1993-1997).

In the coalition government (2010-2015), Clarke served as the Secretary of State for Justice (2010-2012) and then as a Cabinet Minister without portfolio (2012-2014). Nick Clegg has joked that he relied on Clarke as a sixth Liberal Democrat Cabinet in the coalition government.

Clarke ran for Tory leadership in 1997, 2001 and 2005, but was outmanoeuvred by William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smithand David Cameron respectively.

Kenneth Clarke and Brexit

Clarke has long-standing pro-European views dating back to his earliest days as a Cabinet Minister. Clarke was bitterly opposed to holding the EU referendum and was a prominent Remain voice during the campaign.

Following the ‘Leave’ result, Clarke was the only Conservative MP to oppose triggering Article 50 and he continued to oppose both May’s and then Johnson’s approach to Brexit.

In August 2019, there was speculation that Clarke could be appointed as an interim Prime Minister as the Head of an anti-‘no-deal’ government of national unity. After Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson floated the idea, Clarke responded saying he would ‘not object’.

In September 2019, Clarke had the Conservative Whip removed alongside 20 other MPs after voting to block a ‘no-deal’ Brexit. After losing the whip, Clarke referred to the Tory party—which he had been representing since 1970—as the ‘Brexit Party rebadged’. Clarke retired from the Commons at the 2019 General Election.

Ken Clarke attacks ‘eurosceptic extremism’

Early Life and Family

Kenneth Harry Clarke was born on the 2nd of July 1940. After graduating from Cambridge University, Clarke was called to the bar in 1963 and became a QC (Queen’s council) in 1980. In 1964, Clarke married Gillian Edwards; they had two children. Edwards died of cancer in 2015.

Kenneth Clarke – 3 Things you may not know

He attended the 1966 World Cup Final
Clarke was working as a barrister in Birmingham when he won tickets for the 1966 World Cup Final. Clarke duly berated the Russian linesman when he hesitated to award a Geoff Hurst shot that may-or-may-not have crossed the goal-line. Clarke has jokingly said his ‘rudimentary’ Russian was enough to persuade the linesman to make the right decision.

He is a keen birdwatcher
Clarke is well-known for his love of cigars, jazz and classic cars, but he is also partial to birdwatching.

He is not an active user of digital technology
Clarke was initially unsure whether he had lost the Conservative whip in September 2019.  He was notorious for only using my mobile phone for outgoing calls, saying ‘nobody knows’ my number and I certainly don’t do anything online’.

Contact Details

House of Lords — https://members.parliament.uk/member/366/contact

The post Clarke, Kenneth appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

‘A Liberal by temperament, instinct and upbringing’, Sir Nick Clegg was a leading British politician in the years 2007 to 2015.

As the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Clegg took the party into Government for the first time in their history, and served as Deputy Prime Minister between 2010-2015.

However, following the Liberal Democrats’ crushing losses at the 2015 election, Clegg resigned as Leader before eventually being unseated himself at the subsequent 2017 poll.

Clegg has since reappeared in public consciousness as the President of Global Affairs for Facebook, a position to which he was promoted in February 2022.  He originally joined Facebook as the joint global Head of Policy and Communication.  Clegg has been charged with trying to improve Facebook’s public image and ward off media criticisms.

In the 2018 New Year’s honours list, Nick Clegg was knighted for political and public service.

Nick Clegg now works for Facebook.

What does Nick Clegg do at Facebook?

In October 2018, Clegg was appointed Facebook’s joint Head of Policy and Communications. Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, criticism of the Company in its handling of the European Commission on its WhatsApp takeover, and subsequent ‘fake news spreader’ allegations, Facebook was in a tough spot.

As the Head of Policy and Communications, it has been Clegg’s job to improve Facebook’s image and help the company respond to criticism. Clegg was influential in setting up Facebook’s independent oversight board to police content on the platform.

In February 2022, Clegg was promoted to the position of President of Global Affairs for Facebook.

Commenting on Clegg’s promotion, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote that Clegg will “lead our company on all our policy matters“, including forming policies with international governments and “making the case publicly for our products and our work”. He added that the new role would put Clegg “at the level” of himself and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

As for his salary, Clegg was initially said to be earning $650,000 a year in his previous role as Head of Policy and Communications for Facebook. It has since been reported in the media that Clegg is now earning over £2.8 million per year.

In any event, Clegg’s success in silicon valley has enabled him to purchase a $9 million Californian mansion.

Deputy Prime Minister

In the lead up to the 2010 General Election, Clegg threatened to break up Britain’s ‘two-party system’ once and for all. During the country’s first ever TV election debate, David Cameron and Gordon Brown battled to cosy up to the then Liberal Democrat Leader.

Following Clegg’s successful performance in that debate, “I agree with Nick” became the election’s most used phrase

In the hung parliament that resulted, Nick Clegg became king-maker. The Parliamentary arithmetic made a Lib-Lab coalition difficult and so Clegg threw his lot in with Cameron’s Conservatives. As part of a new coalition government, Nick Clegg then became Britain’s deputy PM.

Clegg’s time in Government was controversial. After signing a pledge prior to the election to not raise student tuition fees, Mr Clegg voted for their tripling in 2010. Disgruntled Lib Dem voters began to lose trust in Clegg and a subsequent ‘apology’ video did little to appease them.

A passionate campaigner for electoral reform, Clegg had his chance with the 2011 ‘Alternative Vote referendum’. However, the ‘alternative vote’ was rejected decisively by 68% of voters. Following this, Clegg told the BBC: the Lib Dems must ‘get up, dust ourselves down and move on’.

The Liberal Democrats were punished at the 2015 General Election and Clegg led the party to almost total electoral wipeout. Having won 57 seats in the 2010 election, the Lib Dems now only had 8.

Political Career

First elected to the European Parliament in the 1999 European elections, Nick Clegg MEP became the Trade and Industry Spokesman for the Liberal group of MEPs.

In 2005, Clegg was elected to Westminster as the MP for Sheffield Hallam in South Yorkshire. From 2005-2007, Clegg served in a variety of Lib Dem spokesperson roles – most notably with the Home Affairs brief (2006-2007).

Clegg was elected as leader of the Liberal Democrats in 2007, taking the party into government after the 2010 election.

Before losing his seat at the 2017 General Election in a high-profile ‘Portillo’ style moment’, Clegg was the Lib Dem spokesperson for Exiting the European Union (2016-2017).

During his time at Cambridge University, Clegg was said to have been a member of the Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA). In some irony, this would have made Clegg the first member of CUCA to have made it to the post of deputy prime minister or prime minister since the second world war.

How old is Nick Clegg?

Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg was born on the 7th of January 1967. Clegg was educated at the prestigious Westminster private school in London. He then studied anthropology at Cambridge University (1986-1989), and political philosophy at the University of Minnesota (1989-1990).

Nick Clegg – Early Career

Mr Clegg worked as a trainee journalist at the US magazine The Nation and won a national prize for first time writers at the Financial Times.

He then worked as a Development Aid and Trade expert in the European Union, including managing aid projects in the poorest parts of the former Soviet Union. He was involved in the EU’s negotiations for China and Russia to join the World Trade Organisation.

Nick Clegg – Family

Clegg is married to international trade lawyer Miriam Gonzalez. The couple have three children.

Nick is an avid lover of the outdoors. He has been said to be an expert skier and keen mountaineer.

Things you may not know about Nick Clegg

He speaks 5 languages

Clegg is multilingual. He speaks five European languages, including German, French, Spanish and English, in addition to his mother’s Dutch.

His mother was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp

Clegg’s Dutch mother spent five years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Clegg’s paternal grandmother fled the Russian Revolution.

He attracted the nickname Nick Cleggover

In a 2008 interview with Piers Morgan in GQ magazine, Clegg revealed he had slept with ‘no more than 30’ women. The comment prompted the nickname ‘Cleggover’.

Even after everything, Lib Dems still love Nick Clegg

The post Clegg, Nick appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Yvette Cooper is the current Shadow Home Secretary, and Labour MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, having first been elected as part of Labour’s landslide victory in 1997.

Previously a very safe-seat, at the 2019 election Cooper only won with a 1,276 majority-making the seat appear something of a marginal constituency. Throughout her time in Parliament, Cooper has been an important voice on the soft-left of the Labour Party. She held Cabinet posts in Gordon Brown’s government and was previously the head of the influential Commons Home Affairs Select Committee.

Cooper has been a member of the Labour Party since she was a teenager

Yvette Cooper is married to fellow former Labour Cabinet Minister, Ed Balls.

Who is Yvettte Cooper married to?

Cooper is married to former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls.  In the first quarter of 2022, YouGov ranked Ed Balls as the second most popular politician in Britain, despite him having quit frontline politics some 7 years earlier.

Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper first met in the mid 1990s.  Their romance was said to have begun when the pair were respectively working for Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman in the shadow treasury team.

Later under Gordon Brown, Cooper and Balls were the first ever husband and wife to sit in the cabinet together. The couple have three children.

In an interview Balls described Cooper as “extremely untidy” being quoted, saying, “Today I have picked up three towels from her shower, cleared up her lunch, the stuff she brought home from work and moved 14 bags, one for each of the last 14 times she walked into the hall”.

Yvette Cooper – Things you may not know

Her father was a Trade Union leader
Yvette Cooper’s father, Tony Cooper, once served as the Joint General Secretary of the trade union ‘Prospect’.

Andrew Marr attended her wedding to Ed Balls
Andrew Marr, the former BBC political editor and current host of the Andrew Marr Show on BBC 1, attended Cooper’s and Ed Balls’ wedding. Marr was Cooper’s former boss at the ‘Independent’ – Marr was editor and Cooper was an economics correspondent.

She had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for a year in her 20s
In her 20s, Cooper suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and had to take a year out of work because of the condition.

She worked for Bill Clinton’s campaign to become American President
As a student studying at Yale, Cooper volunteered for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign in Arkansas. Cooper remembers seeing Clinton in an ‘I’m backing Hillary’s husband’ badge- Cooper has jokingly used this to explain her and Ed Balls’ similar relationship.

Political Career

After working as a political adviser to former Labour Leader John Smith, and then to Harriet Harman, Cooper entered Parliament herself at the 1997 election.

Having held junior government roles under Tony Blair, Cooper was promoted under Gordon Brown to become Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2008. From 2009 to Labour’s 2010 General Election loss, Cooper was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

Under Ed Miliband, Cooper served as shadow Foreign Secretary from 2010 to 2011 and shadow Home Secretary from 2011 to 2015.

After declining to stand in the 2010 Labour leadership election, Cooper threw her hat in the ring for the 2015 contest. As part of her campaign, Cooper made a commitment to restore the old Brown-Blair target to end child poverty by 2020. Cooper ultimately lost out to Jeremy Corbyn who she had been immensely critical of during the campaign.

After his election, Cooper remained something of a Corbyn critic from the back-benches.

In 2016, Labour’s Yvette Cooper was elected Chair of the influential Home Affairs Select Committee, a post she held for three years.

In November 2021, Yvette Cooper returned to the Shadow Cabinet for her second stint as Shadow Home Secretary, the post she previously held under Ed Miliband,

Cooper was a prominent opponent of Brexit both before and after the referendum. In April 2019, Cooper tabled a Private Members Bill which proposed making a no deal Brexit, effectively, illegal. MP’s voted 312 to 311 in favour the legislation and it received Royal Assent on 8 April 2019.

Early Career

Born in Inverness in 1969, Yvette studied at Oxford, Harvard and The LSE.

Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer

A figure of the Labour Party’s soft-left, Cooper backed Keir Starmer in the 2019 Labour leadership election.

Commenting on her choice, Cooper said: ‘I have always argued it’s time we had a Labour woman leader [but] … I nominated Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner because I think they are the best people to get us out of the hole that we’re in’.

Following a tricky set of results for Labour in the 2021 local elections, speculation resurfaced that Yvette Cooper might one day be a potential candidate for the Labour leadership.   Cooper has been careful not to publicly rule out the idea.   Regarded as an effective media performer, Starmer brought her back to frontline Labour politics in late 2021.

Further Information

Twitter – @YvetteCooperMP

Personal website – https://yvettecooper.com

Yvette Cooper blasts home secretary for ‘incompetence’

The post Cooper, Yvette appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Jeremy Corbyn was first elected as the Labour MP for Islington North in 1983, being reelected in 2019 with a majority of 26,188. He served as Leader of the Labour Party between 2015 and 2020.

Having led Labour to their worst election performance since 1935 at the 2019 General Election, Corbyn stood down as Labour leader.

Corbyn had the Labour Party Commons Whip removed in 2020 following his response to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s report on anti-Semitism in the Labour party.

Labour Party Leader

With Labour’s defeat at the 2015 General Election and Ed Miliband’s subsequent resignation, a leadership race was announced.

Corbyn declared his candidacy and his campaign became a surprise hit. He took his left-wing, anti-war, anti-austerity, pro-nationalisation values to rallies across the United Kingdom.

Corbyn won the leadership with ease, securing 59.5 % of the party membership – three times that of any other candidate.

Many ‘soft-left’ Labour MPs expressed reservations with Corbyn and his views. Indeed, he only reached the 35 MP level required to become a leadership candidate because at least 14 MPs nominated him against their own first preference so to ensure a ‘broad debate’. Throughout his time as Labour Leader, Corbyn struggled to form a unified shadow Cabinet.

In the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum, shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn was sacked after it was revealed that he had been organising a mass resignation from the shadow Cabinet.

By 27 June 2016, 23 of 31 Shadow Cabinet members had resigned in protest at Corbyn’s leadership. Mr Corbyn faced a leadership contest against challenger Owen Smith, but he won this comfortably with 61.8% of the vote.

With the endorsement of his party members, Corbyn went into Theresa May’s snap 2017 General Election with the hardest left-leaning manifesto seen in many decades, including free tuition for higher education, re-nationalisation programmes and tax increases.

In Corbyn’s first General election, Labour avoided the humiliating defeat many pundits predicted. Indeed, in the hung parliament that resulted, Theresa May’s power was substantially reduced – and Corbyn and the Labour Party became more significant players in the Brexit negotiations that followed.

Corbyn’s internal Labour Party issues were not over here, however, and in February 2019 eight Labour MPs left the party in protest at his handling of Brexit and antisemitism. In May 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a formal investigation into the party’s handling of antisemitism accusations.

After initially advocating a ‘soft Brexit’ with a customs Union with the EU, party policy switched in 2019 in favour of advocating for a second referendum. The 2019 Labour manifesto included a ‘second referendum’ proposal. But in the 2019 election, Corbyn struggled to inspire the enthusiasm of 2017 and he led the party to its worst General Election defeat since 1935. Corbyn then resigned as opposition leader.

What is Jeremy Corbyn doing now?

In October 2020, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission announced that its investigation had found 23 instances of ‘inappropriate involvement’ by Corbyn’s staff in antisemitism complaints during his time as Labour Party leader.

In response, Corbyn said his team had ‘acted to speed up, not hinder the process’, that he did not accept all of the EHRC’s findings, and that while ‘one antisemite is one too many’, the scale of antisemitism within Labour had been ‘dramatically overstated’.

This response resulted in Corbyn losing the Labour Party whip at Westminster.

Still the Member of Parliament for Islington North in London, Corbyn announced a Project for Peace and Justice in January 2021. The organization aims to ‘bring people together for social and economic justice, peace, and human rights, in Britain and across the world’.

Political career

First elected to parliament at the 1983 General Election, Corbyn soon established himself on the left wing of the Labour Party.  He is a committed supporter of a United Ireland. Corbyn took on significant criticism when he and Ken Livingstone invited the then Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, to speak in London in 1984.

Corbyn has always been on the hard left of the Labour Party.  A long standing member of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, he previously wrote a weekly column in The Morning Star newspaper.

Corbyn was fiercely opposed to the Iraq War and has spoken at many anti-war rallies in the UK and abroad. He was an elected member of the Stop the War Coalition steering committee as well as being Vice-Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. On 31 October 2006, Mr Corbyn was one of 12 Labour MPs to back Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party’s call for an inquiry into the Iraq war.

Before becoming leader, Corbyn had never served on the Labour Party’s frontbench. Corbyn never sought high office – and was never offered it. In fact, from 1997-2010 he rebelled against the Labour Whip 428 times – making him by far the most rebellious Labour Member of Parliament..

Before Politics

Jeremy Corbyn was born in Wiltshire but spent much of his childhood in Shropshire.  He attended the Castle House School (an independent prep school near Newport), before becoming a day student at Adams Grammar School in Newport.

After a brief spell as a journalist, Mr Corbyn worked a trade union organiser for the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) and Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, before becoming an MP.

Before his election to parliament in 1983, Corbyn was an elected councillor in the London Borough of Haringey (1974-83).

Personal life

Corbyn lives in Finsbury Park, London. He has been married three times, and has three sons.

Things you might not know

‘Beard of the Year’
Corbyn has won the Parliamentary ‘Beard of the Year Award’ a record six times. In 2001, Corbyn described his beard as ‘a form of dissent’ against ‘New Labour’.

‘Kerrang!’ for Corbyn
One of the most surprising endorsements for Corbyn at the 2017 General Election came from ‘Kerrang!’, the heavy metal magazine.

Contact details

Twitter – @jeremycorbyn
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/JeremyCorbynMP/

The post Corbyn, Jeremy appeared first on Politics.co.uk.

Born Arlene Kelly in Enniskillen in 1970, Dame Arlene Foster grew up on a farm in County Fermanagh, close to the Irish border.

In her youth, Foster experienced two separate IRA attacks. This first-hand involvement in the ‘Irish Troubles’ has seen many speculate that the attacks were the motivating force in her political career, and they have surely had a lasting impact on Foster’s political outlook.

In her teens, Foster began involving herself in Unionist politics – initially with the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).  However, it wasn’t long before Foster switched to the Democratic Unionist Party (the DUP).

As a DUP Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Foster quickly rose up the ranks of her new party. Arlene Foster is best known around Westminster for her role in the DUP‘s post-2017 Confidence and-Supply arrangement with Theresa May’s Conservative government.

First Minister Arlene Foster.

What is Dame Arlene Foster doing now

Arlene Foster stood down from the Northern Ireland Assembly in late 2022.

Since that time the former DUP leader has been appointed as a director of a peace-building charity, Co-operation Ireland.  Other board members include former DUP leader Peter Robinson, ex-Taoiseach John Bruton, Baroness Margaret Ritchie and former PSNI chief constable Sir George Hamilton.

Since standing down as First Minister, Arlene Foster has also been a regular contributor on the TV Channel, GB News.

Arlene Foster was appointed a Dame in the June 2022 honours list.

Foster served as the leader of the DUP between 2015 and 2021, and First Minister on two separate occasions: once from 2016 to January 2017 and, then from January 2020 to June 2021.

In her first stint as Northern Ireland‘s First Minister, Foster served alongside Deputy First Minister Martin McGuiness, the then-leader of Sinn Fein. This ‘power-sharing’ is necessitated by the Good Friday Agreement of 1999 and the arrangements therein.

The Good Friday Agreement states that the First and Deputy First Ministers are equal. Given this, Foster was forced to resign from her role as First Minister in 2017 following McGuiness’ own resignation. McGuiness resigned over the Renewable Heat Energy scandal (covered below).

In the years after McGuiness’ 2017 resignation, Northern Irish politics spiraled into a state of political paralysis. The deadlock was finally overcome in January 2020, when a power-sharing agreement was reached between the DUP and Sinn Fein. Foster returned to the post of First Minister, this time serving alongside Sinn Fein leader, Michelle O’Neill, who holds the post of Deputy First Minister.

Upon the agreement of the new power-sharing deal, Northern Ireland, like the rest of the world, was hit by the coronavirus pandemic. In her capacity as First Minister, Arlene Foster has led the response of the Northern Irish Executive – given COVID 19 restrictions are a devolved matter. Like the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland moved in and out of lockdown for almost a year. And like the rest of Britain’s leaders, Northern Irelands leaders were at times criticised for their response.

Heat Incentive Scandal

As the Northern Irish Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment in 2012, Foster oversaw the implementation of the infamous Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme. The scheme was designed to encourage Northern Irish businesses to opt for renewable energy sources, but its operation became majorly flawed and the scheme ran vastly over-budget.

With fears that it encouraged businesses to ‘burn to earn’, it was predicted that overspending could reach as much as £700m over 20 years. Having overseen the implementation of the RHI in her capacity Enterprise Minister, Foster was blamed for the failure.

The Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme was eventually closed to new applicants in February 2016 by DUP minister Jonathan Bell, Foster’s successor in the DETI department. In an interview with the BBC 10 months later, Bell claimed Foster had tried to overrule this decision and was verbally abusive in the process. Foster has denied these accusations, saying that it was she who ‘felt intimidated by Jonathan Bell’.

Foster henceforth faced calls for resignation over her role in the perceived Renewable Heat Incentive Scandal, but she resisted . Instead, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuiness chose to resign and, due to the nature of the ‘joint’ First-Minster office, Foster was forced to resign as well.

The collapse of the government led to an election in 2017, following which the DUP lost 10 seats. Power-sharing was not renewed until January 2020.

DUP Leader

When Arlene Foster first involved herself in politics she was a member of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). As a solicitor, Foster quickly rose through the ranks of the party and was elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 2003.

Foster was on the right-wing of the party and a frequent thorn in the UUP‘s leadership team. In 2004, Foster left the UUP for the DUP.

As a DUP MLA, Foster moved into the Northern Irish Executive branch, becoming the Minister for the Environment from 2007-2008, Minister for Enterprise from 2008-2015 and Minister for Finance from 2015-2016.

Foster quickly established herself as a star in the party and in 2010 when the then-DUP leader and First Minister Peter Robinson temporarily stepped aside, Foster took over. Although Robinson returned quickly, he eventually resigned in late 2015 and Foster then took over his responsibilities permanently. Foster was the first female leader of the DUP.

Foster led the DUP into the 2017 UK General Election and in the resulting hung-parliament, Foster became king-maker, forging a confidence-and-supply deal with Theresa May.

In April 2021, Foster fell foul to an internal coup within the Democratic Unionist Party.   Some four fifths of the DUP’s MPs and Members of the Norther Ireland Assembly signed a letter of no confidence in  Mrs Foster’s leadership, amongst suggestions that Arlene Foster had become too moderate for many in the party’s liking.

Lacking sufficient party support, Arlene Foster announced her resignation as party leader and First Minister in late April 2021.

Political Views

Dame Arlene Foster is a proud unionist and she aims to keep Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the UK. It for this reason that Foster deemed Theresa May’s ‘Northern Irish Backstop’ “toxic”.

The DUP voted against May’s and subsequently Johnson’s Brexit deal on three occasions, citing concerns about the creation of a border in the Irish Sea . However, the DUP’s Arlene Foster and the DUP as a whole were vocal supporters of Brexit.

A social conservative, Foster voted consistently against gay marriage. Foster is also anti-abortion, describing it as a DUP ‘red-line’.

Experience of IRA Violence

Former DUP Leader Dame Arlene Foster has been at the centre of two IRA attacks in her life, both coming at a young age.

When Foster was 8 years old, the IRA tried to kill her father (a reservist police officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary). Foster has a vivid memory of the event, and in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph in 2015 said, ‘My father came in on all fours crawling, with blood coming from his head’.

About ten years later, the IRA set off a bomb on her school bus in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the driver. Foster later said, ‘I was actually sitting beside a friend’s sister and I was in the inside and she was in the aisle. She was very badly injured’.

Family

Arlene Foster grew up in a conservative, unionist household. Her father was a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Her parents met at a football match between Lisburn Distillery and Linfield, where they supported opposing teams.

Mrs Foster was the first in her family to go to University; she is a graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast.

At age 25, on 24 August 1995, Foster married Brain Foster-the nephew of UUP politician, Sam Foster. The couple have three children.

Social Media

Twitter – @DUPleader

Meet Northern Ireland’s new first minister: A wildcard in Britain’s EU referendum

The post Dame Arlene Foster appeared first on Politics.co.uk.