WikiPortallus: Alan Duncan.html

Duncan began his career in the oil industry with Royal Dutch Shell, and was first elected to the House of Commons in the 1992 general election. After several minor positions in the government of John Major, he played a key role in William Hague's successful bid for the Conservative leadership in 1997. He received several promotions to the Conservative front bench until he eventually joined the Shadow Cabinet after the 2005 general election and stood for the Conservative leadership in 2005 but withdrew early on due to a lack of support. Eventual winner David Cameron appointed him Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in December 2005, the title of which was changed to its current form in July 2007.

He is known as one of the most strident and ideological libertarians within the leading ranks of the Conservative Party, and is a leading member of the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward grouping. He is also well known as the first openly gay Conservative Member of Parliament, having publicly come out in 2002.

Early life

Education

Business career

He worked as a trader of oil and refined products, first with Royal Dutch Shell (1979–1981) and from 1982 to 1988 for Marc Rich, working in London and Singapore.⁵ From 1988 to 1992 Duncan was self-employed acting as a consultant and adviser to foreign governments on oil supplies, shipping and refining.¹ He made over a million pounds after profiting from the need to supply oil to Pakistan after Kuwait's supplies had been disrupted in the Gulf War.

Political career

Duncan was an active member of the Battersea Conservative Association from 1979 until 1984,² when he moved to live in Singapore, from which he returned in 1986. After Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigned in November 1990, he offered his home in Westminster as the headquarters of John Major's leadership campaign.¹

Member of Parliament

From 1993 to 1995, Duncan sat on the Social Security Select Committee.² His first governmental position was as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Health, a position he obtained in December 1993. He resigned from the position within a month after it emerged that he had used the right-to-buy programme to make profits on property deals.⁶ Gyles Brandreth describes this event in his famous diary as '...little Alan Duncan has fallen on his sword. He did it swiftly and with good grace.'⁷

After returning to the backbenches, he became Chairman of the Conservative Backbenches Constitutional Affairs Committee.² He returned to government in July 1995, when he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Brian Mawhinney.² In November 1995, Duncan performed a citizen's arrest on an Asylum Bill protester who threw paint and flour at Mawhinney on College Green.⁸

Duncan was a key player in the 1997 leadership contest, being the right-hand man of William Hague, the eventual winner. In this capacity, he was called 'the closest thing [the Conservatives] have to Peter Mandelson'.⁸ Duncan and Hague had been at Oxford at the same time, both been Presidents of the Oxford Union, and had been close, both politically and personally, since at least the early 1980s.⁸

Front bench career

As a reward for his loyalty to Hague during the leadership contest,⁸ in June 1997, Duncan was entrusted with the positions of Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party and Parliamentary Political Secretary to the Party Leader. In June 1998 he became Shadow Health Minister.⁹ In June 1999 he was made Shadow Trade and Industry spokesman. In September 2001 he was appointed a Front Bench Spokesman on Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

He held this position for just seven months, becoming Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on 7 December 2005, after David Cameron's election to the party leadership the previous day. On 2 July 2007, he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, as new prime minister Gordon Brown had abolished the Department for Trade and Industry the previous week, replacing it with the aforementioned new department.

Failed leadership bid

Before the 2005 general election, Duncan was rumoured to be planning a leadership campaign in the event that then-leader Michael Howard stepped down after a (then-likely and later actual) election defeat.¹⁰ On 10 June 2005, Duncan publicly declared his intention of standing in the 2005 leadership election.¹¹ However, on 18 July 2005, he withdrew from the race, admitting in The Guardian that his withdrawal was due to a lack of 'active lieutenants', and urged the party to abandon those that he dubbed the 'Tory Taliban':

Political views

Duncan is a libertarian.¹³ The Guardian has variously described him as 'economically libertarian'¹⁴ and 'socially libertarian'.¹⁰ He has been described as the 'liberal, urbane face of the Conservative Party'.¹⁵ He is considered to be one of the modernisers in the Conservative Party.¹⁶

One of the chapters in his book Saturn's Children is devoted to an explanation of his support for the legalisation of all drugs. However this chapter was removed when the paperback edition was published to prevent embarrassment to the Party leadership.¹⁷ The omitted chapter is available on Duncan's personal website.¹⁸ He believes in minimising the size of government,¹⁹ and in Saturn’s Children advocated limiting government responsibility to essential services such as defence, policing and health. He has been described as a "staunch" Eurosceptic.¹⁹

Personal life

Duncan was the first sitting Conservative MP voluntarily to acknowledge that he is gay;²² he did this in an interview with The Times on 29 July 2002, although he has said that this came as no surprise to friends.²³ Indeed, in an editorial published on the news of Duncan's coming out, The Daily Telegraph reported, "The news that Alan Duncan is gay will come as a surprise only to those who have never met him. The bantam Tory frontbencher can hardly be accused of having hidden his homosexuality."²⁴

On 3 March 2008 it was announced in the Court & Social page of The Daily Telegraph that Duncan would be entering into a civil partnership with his partner James Dunseath,²⁵ which would make him the first member of either the Cabinet or the Shadow Cabinet to enter into a civil partnership.²⁶ The two were joined as civil partners on 2008-07-24.²⁷

Duncan has a committed following in the gay community and is active in speaking up for gay rights.²⁶ He was responsible for formulating the Conservatives' policy response to the introduction of civil partnership legislation in 2004,²⁵ which he considered his proudest achievement of the Parliament between 2001 and 2005.²⁸ Duncan was voted third most eligible bachelor and best looking male politician by the gay news website Pink News in a 2005 poll of their readers.^{citation needed} In 2007, the same publication named him the 15th-most powerful LGBT person in the UK.²⁶

Works and appearances

Styles

Alan Duncan.html

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