Tony Lloyd

Sir Anthony Joseph Lloyd (25 February 1950 – 17 January 2024) was a British Labour politician.

He served as a member of Parliament (MP) for 36 years, making him one of the longest-serving MPs in recent history.

Lloyd was born in Stretford on 25 February 1950, the fourth of five children of Sydney Lloyd and his wife, Cecily (née Boatte).

He was raised in Stretford, and attended Stretford Grammar School for Boys, the University of Nottingham (where he gained a BSc degree in mathematics in 1972), and Manchester Business School (where he studied for an MBA degree), before becoming a lecturer in Business Studies at the University of Salford.

Lloyd's father died when he was 13, leaving his mother Cecily, a staunch supporter of the Labour Party, to shape his values.

Lloyd said: "My mother had friends who died in the Spanish Civil War. I saw that as a simple battle of good versus evil and in that sense the basic morality of politics was instilled in me. I have always thought if not fighting for what's right and just, then what is politics for?"

Born in Stretford, Lloyd served as a Trafford councillor from 1979 to 1984.

Lloyd was first elected to public office when he stood as a Labour Party candidate in the 1979 Trafford Council election, winning a seat on Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council representing the Clifford ward on 4May 1979 (the day Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom).

He served as MP for Stretford from 1983 to 1997, Manchester Central from 1997 to 2012, and represented Rochdale from 2017 until his death in 2024.

In 1983 he was elected MP for Stretford, representing the constituency until it was abolished in 1997, at which time he was elected for Manchester Central.

Lloyd entered the House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Stretford on 9June 1983, after the 1983 general election.

Lloyd remained a Trafford councillor until 1984, rising to the rank of Deputy Labour Council Leader.

He was an opposition whip between 1986 and 1987, and became the opposition spokesman for transport (1987–1992), employment (1992–1994), the environment (1994–1995), and foreign affairs (1995–1997).

As an MP, Lloyd was an opposition spokesman between 1987 and 1997, a minister of state in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office between 1997 and 1999, and Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party from 2006 to 2012.

Lloyd voted for Bryan Gould and John Prescott respectively in the Labour Party leadership elections of 1992 and 1994.

Although the TheyWorkForYou political activities website declares that Lloyd "hardly ever rebels", he voted against Labour's national agenda in key areas while an MP.

He joined rebel Labour MPs by voting against government policy regarding the Iraq War, and rebelled against government policy to detain terror suspects for 90 days without trial.

Constituency boundaries were reformed for the 1997 general election, and Lloyd was selected for the Manchester Central constituency, where he was returned at each subsequent general election up to and including 2010.

Following the 1997 general election which returned Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Lloyd was appointed a junior Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office under Robin Cook, beginning on 5May 1997.

In 1998, an inquiry by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee into the supply of arms from Sandline International to Africa during the Sierra Leone Civil War led to accusations that Lloyd had been dishonest and lacked depth over the trade of illicit weaponry.

Lloyd's position at the Foreign Office ended in a government reshuffle on 28 July 1999.

Lloyd remained a "powerful" backbencher, and on 5December 2006 became Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party – a post which leads all Labour MPs, both government and backbench MPs – by defeating the incumbent, Ann Clwyd, who was perceived as being too close to Blair.

When he unseated Clwyd, the feud between Blair and Gordon Brown was much reported – Lloyd, was described by journalist Michael White as a "Brownite ally", and Labour advisor Jonathan Powell wrote that Lloyd was a key member of Brown's "team of henchmen on the Labour backbenches to oppose Tony [Blair]".

Lloyd was strongly in favour of and voted for the reform of the House of Lords, the Identity Cards Act 2006, and the expansion of London Heathrow Airport.

Lloyd supported the bid for a proposed supercasino for East Manchester, and was furious with the House of Lords and Gordon Brown for axing the scheme, adding it was "grossly unfair and outrageous" and that "those who kicked it into touch deprived a community with one of the highest levels of unemployment the opportunity to access well paid jobs and proper training".

He voted against government policy to introduce student tuition fees, and as an "anti-nuclear and anti-war campaigner", voted against the renewal or replacement of the UK Trident programme in 2007.

He supported the proposed Greater Manchester congestion charge, and campaigned in its favour in the 2008 referendum on the Greater Manchester Transport Innovation Fund, which was "overwhelmingly rejected" by voters.

Lloyd was the leader of the British delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and one of its vice-presidents, a leader of the British delegation to the Western European Union, and leader of the British delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Lloyd was a Member of the North West Regional Select Committee from 4March 2009 to 11 May 2010.

After revelations arising from the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, Lloyd was forced to apologise for over-claiming £2,210 in rent on his flat in London, adding it was "a genuine error".

As Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Lloyd wrote to Labour MPs urging them to publish all expenses claims.

He was head of the OSCE at a time when it was monitoring the 2010 Belarusian presidential election, which it denounced as fraudulent; Lloyd said the "election failed to give Belarus the new start it needed", adding "the people of Belarus deserved better".

In 2011, the Manchester Evening News listed Lloyd among its 250 Most Influential People in Greater Manchester, describing him as "a major figure on Labour politics in Greater Manchester", and "the most powerful man in Greater Manchester" on his election as police and crime commissioner in 2012.

In a directory of MPs produced by The Guardian, Andrew Roth described Lloyd as "well informed, thoughtful and realistic regionalist and internationalist".

He was Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner between 2012 and 2017 and served as the interim Mayor of Greater Manchester in his last two years in the role.

Lloyd continued as a constituency MP until October 2012, when he stepped down to contest the 2012 police and crime commissioner elections for the Greater Manchester Police area.

He was elected and assumed the position in November 2012.

Lloyd, appointed interim mayor of Greater Manchester in 2015, announced in 2016 that he would be seeking to become the Labour Party candidate in the Greater Manchester mayoral election, but lost the nomination to Andy Burnham before being elected as MP for Rochdale in 2017.

Lloyd served as Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland between 2018 and 2020, resigning to recover from his illness of COVID-19.

He was also Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland between 2019 and 2020.