Catherine Ashton

Catherine Margaret Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, (born 20 March 1956) is a British Labour politician who served as the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and First Vice President of the European Commission in the Barroso Commission from 2009 to 2014.

Catherine Ashton was born at Upholland, Lancashire, on 20 March 1956.

She comes from a working-class family, with a background in coal mining.

Ashton attended Upholland Grammar School in Billinge Higher End, Lancashire, then Wigan Mining and Technical College, Wigan.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology in 1977 from Bedford College, London (now part of Royal Holloway, University of London).

Ashton was the first person in her family to attend university.

Between 1977 and 1983, Ashton worked for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) as an administrator and in 1982 was elected as its national treasurer and subsequently as one of its vice-chairs.

From 1979 to 1981 she was business manager of the Coverdale Organisation, a management consultancy.

As of 1983 she worked for the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work.

From 1983 to 1989 she was director of Business in the Community, working with business to tackle inequality, and she established the Employers' Forum on Disability, Opportunity Now, and the Windsor Fellowship.

For most of the 1990s, she was a freelance policy adviser.

She chaired the Health Authority in Hertfordshire from 1998 to 2001 and she became a vice-president of the National Council for One-Parent Families.

Her political career began in 1999 when she was created a life peer as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, of St Albans in the County of Hertfordshire, by Tony Blair's Labour government.

She was created a Labour Life Peer as Baroness Ashton of Upholland in 1999, under Prime Minister Tony Blair.

She became the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills in 2001 and subsequently in the Ministry of Justice in 2004.

In June 2001 she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills.

In 2002 she became Minister responsible for Sure Start in the same department, and in September 2004 she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Constitutional Affairs, with responsibilities including the National Archives and the Public Guardianship Office.

In 2005 she was voted "Minister of the Year" by The House magazine and "Peer of the Year" by Channel 4.

She was appointed a Privy Councillor in May 2006 and Lady Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter in April 2023.

Ashton was sworn of the Privy Council in 2006, and she became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the new Ministry of Justice in May 2007.

In 2006 she won the "Politician of the Year" award at the annual Stonewall Awards, made to those who had a positive impact on the lives of British LGBT people.

Ashton became Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council in Gordon Brown's first Cabinet in June 2007.

She was instrumental in steering the EU's Treaty of Lisbon through the UK Parliament's upper chamber.

On 28 June 2007, Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed Ashton to HM Cabinet as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council.

As Government Leader in the House of Lords, she was responsible for steering the Lisbon Treaty through the Upper House.

In 2008, she was appointed as the British European Commissioner and became the Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission.

On 3 October 2008, Ashton was nominated by the UK to replace Peter Mandelson as the European Commissioner for Trade.

Because European Commissioners may not engage in any other occupation during their term of office, whether gainful or not, she used the procedural device previously adopted in 1984 by Lord Cockfield and took a leave of absence from the House of Lords on 14 October 2008, retaining her peerage but not her seat.

In December 2009, she became the inaugural High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy that was created by the Treaty of Lisbon.

As High Representative, Ashton served as the EU's foreign policy chief.

During her term, Ashton represented the EU in negotiations related to a long-running dispute over beef with the United States (May 2009), led the EU delegation in an agreement with South Korea that removed virtually all tariffs between the two economies (October 2009) and represented the EU in ending a long-running dispute over banana imports, principally involving Latin America and the EU.

On 19 November 2009, Ashton was appointed the EU's first High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security policy.

Her appointment was agreed at a summit by 27 European Union leaders in Brussels.

Having initially pushed for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to become President of the European Council, Gordon Brown eventually relented on the condition that the post of High Representative be awarded to a Briton.

Ashton's relative obscurity prior to her appointment prompted comment in the media.

The Guardian newspaper reported that her appointment as High Representative had received a "cautious welcome... from international relations experts".

The Economist described her as being a virtual unknown with paltry political experience, having no foreign-policy background and never having been elected to anything.

The magazine credited her, however, with piloting the Lisbon Treaty through the House of Lords, handling the European Commission's Trade Portfolio without disagreement with her colleagues, and being suited to consensus-building.

Despite being criticised by some, particularly at the time of her appointment and in the early stages of her term of office, for her limited previous experience of international diplomacy, Ashton subsequently won praise for her work as a negotiator in difficult international situations, in particular for her role in bringing Serbia and Kosovo to an agreement in April 2013 that normalised their ties, and in the P5+1 talks with Iran which led to the November 2013 Geneva interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme.

In January 2017, Ashton became Chancellor of the University of Warwick, succeeding Sir Richard Lambert and becoming Warwick's first female chancellor.