ALAN DUNCAN

'Alan James Carter Duncan' (born March 31, 1957) is a British Conservative politician, and Member of Parliament for Rutland and Melton. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, where he was Head Monitor (head boy), and St John's College, Oxford, where he coxed the college first eight and was elected President of the Oxford Union. He went on to win a Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard.
Alan Duncan was born in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, and before beginning his political career he worked as a trader of oil and refined products, first with Shell, then from 1982 to 1988 for Marc Rich. From 1988 to 1992 Duncan was self-employed acting as a consultant and adviser to foreign governments on oil supplies, shipping and refining. [1] [2] He remained involved in politics as an active member of Battersea Conservative Association, except from 1984 to 1986 when he lived in Singapore.

Contents

Member of Parliament

In Government

Onto the Front Bench

Shadow Cabinet

Political views

Failed leadership bid

Trivia

See also

Works

External links

Member of Parliament

Duncan first stood for Parliament as a Conservative candidate in the 1987 general election, unsuccessfully contesting the safe Labour seat of Barnsley West and Penistone. For the 1992 general election he was selected as the Conservative candidate for Rutland and Melton, a safe Conservative seat, which he won with 59% of the vote. In the Labour landslide of 1997 his share of the vote was cut back to 45.8% but has since increased to 48.1% in 2001 and 51.2% in 2005.

In Government

From 1993 to 1995 Duncan sat on the Social Security Select Committee. His first governmental position was as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Health, a position he obtained in December 1993 and resigned from in January 1994. Gyles Brandreth describes this event in his famous diaries, 'little Alan Duncan has fallen on his sword. He did it swiftly and with good grace.'[3]
In July 1995 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Dr Brian Mawhinney.
In November 1995 Mr Duncan performed a citizen's arrest on an Asylum Bill protester who threw paint and flour at Brian Mawhinney on College Green.

Onto the Front Bench

In June 1997 Duncan was entrusted with the positions of Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party and Parliamentary Political Secretary to the Party Leader. In June 1998 he became Shadow Health Minister. In June 1999 he was made Shadow Trade and Industry spokesman. In September 2001 he was appointed a Front Bench Spokesman on Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

Shadow Cabinet

When Michael Howard became Conservative party leader in November 2003, Duncan became Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, but as Howard had significantly reduced the size of the Shadow Cabinet, he was not promoted to the top table. This continued to be the case when he was moved to become Shadow Secretary of State for International Development in September 2004. However, following the 2005 general election, the Shadow Cabinet was expanded to its usual size once more, and Duncan joined it as Shadow Secretary of State for Transport.
He held this position for just seven months, becoming Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on 7 December 2005, after David Cameron's election to the party leadership the previous day. On 2 July 2007, he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, as new prime minister Gordon Brown had abolished the Department for Trade and Industry the previous week, replacing it with the aforementioned new department.

Political views

Duncan claims to be a libertarian. One of the chapters in his book ''Saturn's Children'' is devoted to an explanation of his support for the legalisation of all drugs. However this chapter was removed when the paperback edition was published later to prevent embarrassment to the Party leadership. Duncan was the first sitting Conservative MP voluntarily to acknowledge that he is gay; he did this in an interview with ''The Times'' on 29 July 2002, although he was open about the matter in private for several years before this.
Duncan is also a Thatcherite on some matters. He believes in minimising the size of government, and in ''Saturn’s Children'' advocated limiting government responsibility to essential services such as defence, policing and health. He is on the council of the Conservative Way Forward group.

Failed leadership bid

On 10 June 2005 Duncan became the first Conservative to publicy declare his intention of standing in the 2005 leadership election. [4]. However, on 18 July 2005 he withdrew from the race. Duncan later admitted in ''The Guardian'' that his withdrawal was due to a lack of "active lieutenants". He also urged the party not to listen to those promoting "censorious judgementalism". Duncan wrote in ''The Times'' that: "We should take J. S. Mill as our lodestar, and allow people to live as they choose until they actually harm someone. If the Tory Taliban can't get that, they'll condemn us all to oblivion. Thank heavens for the new intake of MPs who do."[5]

Trivia

Duncan was voted third most eligible bachelor and best looking male politician by the gay news website Pink News in a 2005 poll of their readers.
Duncan has appeared twice on legendary satirical news quiz Have I Got News For You, his most recent being on October 20 2006.

See also

★ Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet (UK)

Works

★ ''An End To Illusions'' (Demos, 1993) ISBN 1-898309-05-1

★ ''Saturn’s Children: How the State Devours Liberty, Prosperity and Virtue'' [with Dominic Hobson], (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995) ISBN 1-85619-605-4

External links

★ Alan Duncan MP official site

★ ePolitix.com - Alan Duncan profile

★ Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Alan Duncan MP

★ TheyWorkForYou.com - Alan Duncan MP

★ The Public Whip - Alan Duncan MP voting record

★ Open Directory Project - Alan Duncan directory category