Richard Corbett

Richard Graham Corbett CBE (born 6 January 1955) is a former British politician who served as the final Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party (EPLP), from 2017 to 2020.

He was for decades one of the leading political and academic participants in the debates over British membership of the EU and of reforming the EU.

He co-ordinated the Oxford student 'Yes' campaign in the 1975 referendum on membership of the European Community.

He also skied for Oxford against Cambridge.

Corbett later completed a doctorate in political science at the University of Hull.

Corbett was secretary-general of the European Co-ordination Bureau of International Non-Governmental Youth Organisations from 1977 to 1981, representing youth organisations in the Council of Europe's European Youth Foundation and European Youth Centre.

He also helped to set up the Youth Forum of the European Communities, the predecessor of the European Youth Forum, and represented Western European youth organisations in negotiations with Eastern European organisations pursuant to the Helsinki Treaty (as well as at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana in 1978, along with Charles Clarke and Peter Mandelson).

Richard Corbett's activities in the European Students at Oxford led on to him being elected first to the youth board of the European Movement in Britain and then to the international presidency of the youth wing of the European Movement and of the Union of European Federalists, the Young European Federalists (JEF), a post he held from 1979 to 1981, drafting their manifesto, which was the first to coin the phrase "democratic deficit" in relation to the European Parliament's then lack of power over European legislation.

He worked with Altiero Spinelli MEP on the latter's proposal for a draft treaty establishing a European Union, adopted by the European Parliament in 1984.

Before being elected to the European Parliament, Corbett worked in the voluntary sector and as a civil servant, later becoming a policy advisor to and then Deputy Secretary General of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament.

He worked on drafting the parts of the treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam that increased the powers of the Parliament, notably helping to draft the "codecision procedure" which now applies for adopting European legislation through successive readings of the Parliament and the Council.

In 1992, Corbett was made Ambassador of Goodwill of the US State of Arkansas, by its then Governor Bill Clinton.

He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Merseyside West from 1996 to 1999 (under the system that predated the proportional representation regional system) and then for Yorkshire and the Humber from 1999 to 2009, when he lost his seat, and again from 2014 to 2020.

As Labour Leader in the European Parliament, he attended Shadow Cabinet meetings and was a member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, where he played a key role in Labour's decision to back a second referendum on Brexit once the actual terms of the Brexit deal were known.

Corbett was a member of the Parliament's Constitutional Affairs committee and from 1999 to 2009 was the spokesman for the Labour Party, as well as the whole of the wider Group of the Party of European Socialists, on European constitutional affairs.

In 2003, Corbett became the first MEP to write a regular personal blog, and in 2015 he became the first British politician to develop and release a phone app.

Corbett was born in Southport, Lancashire, to parents of working-class background from Wales and London.

He attended primary school at Farnborough Road School in Southport.

When his father was offered a post as a statistician at the World Health Organization, the family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, and Corbett attended the International School of Geneva (attended at the time mostly by children from UN Agencies in Geneva), where he obtained the International Baccalaureate.

He was captain of the football team and also played for the junior team of a Swiss second division club.

He won a place at Trinity College, Oxford, the first generation of his family to be able to go to university, and obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

He was the Secretary of the Labour Club and chairman of the Oxford Committee for Europe.

In 2003, his proposals to re-write the European Parliament's Rules of Procedure were largely accepted.

In 2004–2005, he was the co-rapporteur (with Iñigo Méndez de Vigo) for Parliament on the Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe.

This report formed the basis of Parliament's official position on the treaty, which he was then invited to present to several national parliaments.

In 2005, he was appointed as Parliament's negotiator (along with Joseph Daul MEP) to broker a new system of parliamentary scrutiny over Commission implementing measures (under the previously much-criticised "comitology" procedure), which led to an agreement among the Council of ministers, the Commission and the Parliament in 2006 giving Parliament the right to veto quasi-legislative implementing measures.

This represented a major increase in Parliament's powers over the Commission.

In 2006, he was elected Deputy Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party, which he remained until the end of his first period as an MEP, declining (to some surprise) to challenge for the leadership when Gary Titley stood down in 2008.

In 2007–08, he was again co-rapporteur with Iñigo Méndez de Vigo for Parliament on the Treaty of Lisbon, (which replaced the constitutional treaty after two member states had declined to ratify it) and was again rapporteur for a new overhaul of Parliament's procedures in 2009, 2016 and 2018.

Throughout his career, Corbett has been a strong advocate of EU reform and has a particular interest in improving democratic accountability by continuing to increase the European Parliament's power within the EU institutional system.

Professor Juliet Lodge of Leeds University has named Corbett as one of five "movers and shakers" in the European Parliament who "have brought the European Parliament from being a mere talking shop to a legislature with genuine power".

Corbett's voting record and other parliamentary activities can be found on the VoteWatch website.

In December 2009, Corbett was invited to join the private office (cabinet) of the first full-time President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, as his advisor on constitutional issues, but also handling his relations with the European Parliament and national parliaments, with the European Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee as well as helping on relations with some governments, including the UK.

Between January 2010 and February 2014, Corbett was an advisor to the first full-time and long-term President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy.

In this capacity, and as a frequent writer and commentator on European affairs, he was voted by a panel of retired diplomats, journalists, academics and think-tankers on 14 November 2012 as the fourth most influential Briton on EU policy, ahead of the Prime Minister.

Corbett left the Van Rompuy cabinet in March 2014, in order to stand for election in the 2014 European Parliament elections as the Labour party's second candidate in Yorkshire & Humber.

In Labour's internal ballot of party members to choose their candidates, Corbett came first (with the highest proportion of first preference votes of all new candidates in the country) securing him second spot on the list of Labour candidates, behind the sitting MEP Linda McAvan.

Labour won two seats in the election in Yorkshire, and so Corbett was returned to the Parliament.

In Parliament, Corbett returned to the Constitutional Committee and served also on the Fisheries Committee (as a full member) and the Economic Committee (as a substitute).

He was elected again as Deputy Leader of the Labour MEPs in September 2014.