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''This article is about the British politician William Hague; there is also a fictional character in sci-fi series Babylon 5 known as General William Hague.
| Constituency | Richmond, North Yorkshire |
| Served | 1989 — present |
| Majority | 17,807 (39.4%) |
| Political Party | Conservative |
| Portfolio | Shadow Foreign Secretary |
William Jefferson Hague (born March 26, 1961) is a British politician, the Member of Parliament for Richmond, North Yorkshire, former leader of the Conservative Party, and currently Shadow Foreign Secretary.
Initial political career
Hague was born in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, into a middle-class family in a strongly working-class area and was educated at Wath-upon-Dearne Comprehensive School in Rotherham. He made the national news at the age of sixteen by speaking at the Conservative party's 1977 national conference. In his speech he reminded the attendees that "Most of you won't be here in 30 or 40 years time" but that he would have to live with consequences of the Labour government if they stayed in power.
Subsequently, Hague went to Magdalen College, Oxford, and while there he was President of both the Conservative Association (OUCA) and the Oxford Union, a noted breeding-ground for political hopefuls and high-flyers. At Oxford, Hague studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) and graduated with first-class honours. Following Oxford Hague went on to study for an MBA at INSEAD and work as a management consultant for McKinsey.
He was the unsuccessful candidate for Wentworth in 1987, he was elected to Parliament in a byelection as member for Richmond, North Yorkshire in 1989,
After holding other ministerial positions he entered the Cabinet in 1995 as Secretary of State for Wales.
Hague made a good showing at the Welsh Office, partly because his predecessor, John Redwood, had been heavily criticised in the role. Resolving not to emulate Redwood's attempt to mime to the Welsh national anthem at a public event, Hague asked a Welsh Office civil servant, Ffion Jenkins, to teach him the words. He later married her.
Leadership of Conservative Party
In 1997, Hague was elected leader of the Conservative Party in succession to John Major. Hague beat other more senior Conservatives for the role, including Michael Howard whom he had initially agreed to run with.
Hague's leadership is seen widely as a failure; some commentators viewed him as ill-prepared for the role of Opposition Leader. He suffered from a negative public image and his attempts to woo younger voters failed to win him a popular following. Hague himself feels his image never did recover after the first few months of his leadership when various public relations exercises backfired disastrously. On one of these occasions he visited a theme park and he, his Chief of Staff Sebastian Coe and the local MP took a ride on a log flume wearing baseball caps emblazoned with the word 'HAGUE'. Cecil Parkinson described the exercise as "juvenile".
Hague's leadership came under constant attack. During the 1998 Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth, The Sun's front page read (in a parody of the famous Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" sketch), "This party is no more ... it has ceased to be ... this is an ex-party. Cause of death: suicide."
Although perception of him in the country was often said to be unfavourable, Hague gained great respect from all sides of the British House of Commons during his time as Leader of the Opposition for his brilliant performances as a debater. It has been said that Hague's critics, however vocal their opposition, were silenced every Wednesday by his performance at Prime Minister's Questions. In one particularly bitter exchange in response to the Queen's Speech of 2000 Hague ripped into the Prime Minister's record:
"In more than 20 years in politics, he has betrayed every cause he believed in, contradicted every statement he has made, broken every promise he has given and breached every agreement that he has entered into... There is a lifetime of U-turns, errors and sell-outs. All those hon. Members who sit behind the Prime Minister and wonder whether they stand for anything any longer, or whether they defend any point of principle, know who has led them to that sorry state. "
Blair's response to this was one occasion where he was credited with silencing Hague, criticising what he saw as his bandwagon policy-making.
..he started the fuel protest bandwagon, then the floods bandwagon; on defence it became armour-plated, then on air traffic control it became airborne...Yes, the right hon. Gentleman made a very witty, funny speech, but it summed up his leadership: good jokes, lousy judgment. I am afraid that in the end, if the right hon. Gentleman really aspires to stand at this Dispatch Box, he will have to get his policies sorted out and his party sorted out, and offer a vision for the country's future, not a vision that would take us backwards.
Hague's authority was put in doubt with the promotion of Michael Portillo to the role of shadow Chancellor in 2000. Within days Portillo reversed years of Conservative opposition to two of Labour's flagship policies, the minimum wage and independence of the Bank of England. From then and until the 2001 General Election Hague's supporters, primarily Amanda Platell, fought an increasingly bitter battle with those of Portillo. Platell has said that she advised Hague to abandon the "fresh start" theme and to follow his instincts. While this was not wholly unsuccessful in improving his image, some bad mistakes were made, including the claim that he used to drink '14 pints of beer a day' when he was a teenager and his much maligned "foreign-land" speech.
As Hague admitted on the morning of Labour's second landslide victory, "we have not been able to persuade a majority, or anything approaching a majority, that we are yet the alternative government that they need." The Conservatives won only one more seat in the 2001 General Election than they had in the 1997 election. Following this second consecutive landslide defeat, Hague resigned as leader, thus becoming the first full Conservative Party leader not to have become Prime Minister. (Sir Austen Chamberlain, a previous leader often cited as achieving the same dubious distinction, was in fact only Leader of the Parliamentary Party and not the whole Conservative Party.)
Backbenches
Whilst on the backbenches, he occasionally spoke in the House on the issues of the day. During a debate before the Iraq War (2003) Hague's speech in support of action proposed by Tony Blair was a typical example. During the television coverage of him speaking one could lipread the grinning Prime Minister -- whom Hague normally opposes -- saying to his colleague, then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw: "He's good, you know."
Between 1997 and 2002 William Hague was the chairman of the International Democrat Union. Since 2002 he has served as a deputy chairman to John Howard, the Prime Minister of Australia.
Since ceasing to be Leader of the Opposition, Hague has been an active media personality. He put in two much-praised performances as a guest host on the BBC topical panel show Have I Got News For You in which he was also persuaded by Ian Hislop, one of the team captains, to admit that endorsing the soon-to-be-jailed Jeffrey Archer as the Conservative candidate for the post of Mayor of London was his "biggest mistake". He is counted by "comedian" Jim Davidson as a close personal friend.
Other subsequent activities have included his in-depth biography of 18th century Prime Minister Pitt the Younger, published in 2004, and 25th anniversary programme for Radio 4 about the political television satire Yes, Minister in 2005. (The full list of his registered interests, from which he earns more than £1m a year - more than any other MP - can be found here). Partly as a result of these career moves, his profile and popularity among both Conservative Party members and the wider public have risen significantly since his spell as party leader.
Along with former Prime Minister John Major, former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke and Hague's successor as leader Iain Duncan Smith, Hague served for a time on the Conservative Leadership Council, which was set up by Michael Howard upon his unopposed election as Conservative Party Leader in 2003. In the 2005 Conservative leadership election Hague backed eventual winner David Cameron.
Return to the Shadow Cabinet
On 6 December 2005, David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative party. Hague was offered, and accepted, the role of Shadow Foreign Secretary and Senior Member of the Shadow Cabinet. He had been widely tipped to return to the front bench under either Cameron or his opponent in the leadership race David Davis.
On 30 January 2006, on David Cameron's instructions, Hague travelled to Brussels for talks on how to pull Conservative Party MEPs out of the federalist European Peoples Party, (EPP), in the European Parliament. (Daily Telegraph, 30 Jan 2006). Further, on 15 February 2006, Hague served as a 'stand in' for the leader of his party, David Cameron, at Prime Minister's Questions. This appearance gave rise to jokes at the expense of Blair, (widely expected to resign in favour Gordon Brown before the end of this parliament) along the lines that all three parties that day were being led by 'stand ins', with the Liberal Democrats represented by acting-leader Sir Menzies Campbell until the announcement of that party's new leader, and the Conservatives by Hague, deputising in the absence of Cameron, who was on paternity leave. Hague again deputised for Cameron for one session in March 2006.
Interestingly for a potential Foreign Secretary, while guest-starring on Have I Got News for You he described the French as "cheese eating surrender monkeys" and joked that a report about Germans not being able to have fun on holiday was untrue: "I'm not so sure -- if anyone has a history of making themselves at home in other people's countries, it's the Germans."
See also
External links
- Conservative Party - Rt Hon William Hague MP biography
- Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: William Hague MP
- TheyWorkForYou.com - William Hague MP
- The Public Whip - William Hague MP voting record
- BBC News - William Hague profile 10 February, 2005
Note: David Hunt briefly returned to the post of Secretary of State for Wales after John Redwood resigned to challenge John Major as Conservative leader.
Current British MPs | 1961 births | Adult learners of Welsh | Members of the United Kingdom Parliament from English constituencies | British Secretaries of State | Former students of Magdalen College, Oxford | Leaders of the British Conservative Party | Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom | Presidents of the Oxford Union | Living people
"William Hague"