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Alan Duncan

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Alan James Carter Duncan MP (born March 31, 1957) is a British Conservative politician, and Member of Parliament for Rutland and Melton. He was educated at Merchant Taylors School, where he was Head Monitor (head boy), and St John's College, Oxford, where he coxed the college's first eight rowing crew and was elected President of the Oxford Union. He went on to win a Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard.

Alan Duncan was born in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, and before beginning his political career he worked as a trader of oil and refined products, first with Shell and then with an independent commodity company, but he remained involved in politics as an active member of Battersea Conservative Association except in 1984 to 1986, when he lived in Singapore.

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Member of Parliament

Duncan first stood for Parliament in the 1987 general election as the Conservative candidate for Barnsley West and Penistone. He did not win this Labour Party stronghold. For the 1992 general election he was selected to be the Conservative candidate for Rutland and Melton, a safe seat in rural Leicestershire, which he duly won with 59% of the vote. In the Labour landslide of 1997 his share of the vote was cut back to 45.8% but he has since built it back up to 48.1% in 2001 and 51.2% in 2005.

In Government

From 1993 to 1995 Duncan sat on the Social Security Select Committee. His first governmental position was as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Health, a position he obtained in December 1993 and resigned from in January 1994. In July 1995 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Dr Brian Mawhinney.

Shadow Cabinet

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 1999 he was made Shadow Trade and Industry spokesman. In September 2001 he was appointed a Front Bench Spokesman on Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. In November 2003 he became Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. In September 2004 he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. From May 2005 until December 2005 he sat on the front bench as Shadow Secretary of State for Transport. After David Cameron MP won the party leadership in December 2005 he appointed Duncan Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

Ideology

Duncan is a libertarian, wishing to minimise the role of the state. In his book 'Saturn’s Children: How the State Devours Liberty, Prosperity and Virtue' he wrote a chapter on why he supported the legalisation of all drugs. He is on the council of the Conservative Way Forward group. He was the first sitting Conservative MP to openly and voluntarily acknowledge being gay; he did this in an interview with The Times on 29 July 2002, although he is said to have been open about the matter in private for several years before this.

Bid for the Party leadership

On 10 June 2005 Duncan became the first Conservative to publicy declare that he wished to win the 2005 leadership election. [link]. However, on 18 July 2005 Duncan withdrew from the race and cited in an article in the Guardian a lack of key supporters to act as "active lieutenants". He also urged the party not to listen to those promoting "censorious judgementalism". Duncan wrote that: "We should take J. S. Mill as our lodestar, and allow people to live as they choose until they actually harm someone. If the Tory Taliban can't get that, they'll condemn us all to oblivion. Thank heavens for the new intake of MPs who do."

See also

Works

External links

 

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