Kenneth Clarke

Kenneth Harry Clarke, Baron Clarke of Nottingham, (born 2 July 1940), is a British politician who served as Home Secretary from 1992 to 1993 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1993 to 1997.

Clarke is deemed one of the Cambridge Mafia, a group of prominent Conservative politicians who were educated at Cambridge in the 1960s.

Howard then defeated Clarke in one election for the presidency of the Cambridge Union, but Clarke became President of the Cambridge Union a year later, being elected on 6 March 1963 by a majority of 56 votes.

Clarke opposed the admission of women to the Union, and is quoted as saying upon his election, "The fact that Oxford has admitted them does not impress me at all. Cambridge should wait a year to see what happens before any decision is taken on admitting them."

After leaving Cambridge, Clarke was called to the bar in 1963 at Gray's Inn, and was made Queen's Counsel in 1980.

Clarke sought election to the House of Commons almost immediately after leaving university.

His political career began by contesting the Labour stronghold of Mansfield at the 1964 and 1966 elections.

A member of the Conservative Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Rushcliffe from 1970 to 2019 and was Father of the House of Commons between 2017 and 2019.

In June 1970, just before his 30th birthday, he won the East Midlands constituency of Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire, south of Nottingham, from Labour MP Tony Gardner.

Clarke was soon appointed a Government whip, and served as such from 1972 to 1974; he, with the assistance of Labour rebels, helped ensure Edward Heath's government won key votes on British entry into the European Communities (which later evolved into the European Union).

Even though Clarke opposed the election of Margaret Thatcher as Conservative Party Leader in 1975, he was appointed as her Industry Spokesman from 1976 to 1979, and then occupied a range of ministerial positions during her premiership.

He is the subject of a portrait in oil commissioned by Parliament.

While in that position, Clarke announced the sale to British Aerospace of the Rover Group, a new name for British Leyland, which had been nationalised in 1975 by the Government of Harold Wilson.

Clarke first served in the government of Margaret Thatcher as Parliamentary Secretary for Transport (1979–81) and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (1981–82), and then Minister of State for Health (1982–85).

Clarke joined the Cabinet as Paymaster General and Employment Minister (1985–87) (his Secretary of State, Lord Young of Graffham, sat in the Lords), and served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister of the DTI (1987–88) with responsibility for Inner Cities.

Clarke served in the Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster from 1987 to 1988, Health Secretary from 1988 to 1990, and Education Secretary from 1990 to 1992.

He held two of the Great Offices of State as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Clarke was appointed the first Secretary of State for Health when the department was created out of the former Department of Health and Social Security in July 1988.

Clarke, with backing from John Major, persuaded Thatcher to accept the controversial "internal market" concept to the NHS.

Clarke claimed that he had persuaded Thatcher to introduce internal competition in the NHS as an alternative to her preference for introducing a system of compulsory health insurance, which he opposed.

He told his biographer Malcolm Balen: "John Moore was pursuing a line which Margaret [Thatcher] was very keen on, which made everything compulsory medical insurance. I was bitterly opposed to that...The American system is...the world's worst health service – expensive, inadequate and with a lot of rich doctors".

In her memoirs Thatcher claimed that Clarke, although "a firm believer in state provision", was "an extremely effective Health minister – tough in dealing with vested interests and trade unions, direct and persuasive in his exposition of government policy".

In an early-1990s documentary, journalist Michael Cockerell played to Clarke some tape recordings of Clarke speaking at the Cambridge Union as a young man, and he displayed amusement at hearing his then-stereotypical upper class accent.

The President of the Tory Reform Group since 1997, he is a one-nation conservative who identifies with economically and socially liberal views.

He contested the Conservative Party leadership three times—in 1997, 2001 and 2005—being defeated each time.

Opinion polls indicated he was more popular with the general public than with his party, whose generally Eurosceptic stance did not chime with his pro-European views.

Under the coalition government of David Cameron, he returned to the Cabinet as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor from 2010 to 2012 and Minister without Portfolio from 2012 to 2014.

He was also the United Kingdom Anti-Corruption Champion from 2010 to 2014.

From 2017 to 2019 he was Father of the House.

He was one of only five ministers (Tony Newton, Malcolm Rifkind, Patrick Mayhew and Lynda Chalker are the others) to serve throughout the whole 18 years of the Thatcher—Major Governments, which represents the longest uninterrupted ministerial service in Britain since Lord Palmerston in the early 19th century.

Clarke was born in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, and was christened with the same name as his father, Kenneth Clarke, a Nottinghamshire mining electrician and later a watchmaker and jeweller.

He won a scholarship to attend the independent Nottingham High School before going to read for a law degree at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated with an upper second honours degree.

Clarke initially held Labour sympathies, and his grandfather was a Communist, but while at Cambridge he joined the Conservative Party.

As Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA), Clarke invited former British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley to speak for two years in succession, prompting some Jewish students (including his future successor at the Home Office, Michael Howard) to resign from CUCA in protest.

The Conservative whip was withdrawn from him in September 2019 because he and 20 other MPs voted with the Opposition on a motion; for the remainder of his time in Parliament he sat as an independent, though still on the government benches.

He stood down as an MP at the 2019 general election and was thereafter appointed by Boris Johnson as a Conservative Member of the House of Lords in September 2020.

Clarke is President of the Conservative Europe Group, Co-President of the pro-EU body British Influence and Vice-President of the European Movement UK.

Described by the press as a 'Big Beast' of British politics, his total time as a minister is the fifth-longest in the modern era.

He has spent over 20 years serving under Prime Ministers Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron.

Following his expulsion from the Conservative Party in September 2019, he became the first Independent MP to hold the position of Father of the House since Clement Tudway, who died in office as MP For Wells in 1815.