Michael Howard

The Rt Hon. Michael Howard

Michael Howard, QC (born 7 July 1941) is a British politician and was Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party from November 2003 to December 2005. Since becoming an MP at the 1983 General Election, he held a number of positions in successive Conservative governments until their loss of power in 1997, most notably Home Secretary under John Major.Howard will step down from the Commons at the next General Election.

Early life

Howard was born in Llanelli, Wales, where his Romanian Jewish shopkeeper father Bernard Hecht had moved as an asylum seeker [1]. His mother, Hilda Kershion, was Welsh-born and of Eastern European Jewish ancestry. When Howard was six, the family name of Hecht was anglicised to become Howard [2]. He attended Llanelli Grammar School and Peterhouse, Cambridge and was President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1962. Howard was one of a cluster of bright Conservative students at Cambridge around this time, sometimes referred to as the Cambridge Mafia, many of whom went on to hold high government office under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. (See Cambridge University Conservative Association)

He was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1964 and specialised in employment law and planning issues. In the 1966 election he fought the safe Labour seat of Liverpool Edge Hill, which led to his support for Liverpool F.C.. The late 1960s saw his promotion within the Bow Group where he became Chairman in 1970 shortly after the general election in which he was again defeated at Edge Hill. At the Conservative Party conference of 1970, he made a speech commending the government for curbing trade union power.

At this time Howard was a leading advocate of British membership of the Common Market (EEC) and served on the board of the cross-party Britain in Europe group.

Howard was named as co-respondent in the high profile divorce case of former 1960s model Sandra Paul. She and Howard subsequently married in 1975 (her fourth marriage); their son Nicholas was born in 1976 and daughter Larissa in 1977. Unlike his many Cambridge contemporaries, Howard found difficulty being selected for a winnable seat and so continued his career at the Bar where he became a Queen's Counsel in 1982. In June 1982, Howard was finally selected for the constituency of Folkestone and Hythe in succession to Sir Albert Costain, who was retiring. He won his seat in the general election of 1983 without difficulty.

Career in Government

Howard very quickly rose in the ranks of Government, becoming Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry in 1985 with responsibility for regulating the financial dealings of the City of London. This junior post became very important, as he oversaw the Big Bang introduction of new technology in 1986. After the 1987 election he became Minister for Local Government and was soon involved in some political controversy. On behalf of the Government, he accepted the amendment which would become Section 28, and defended its inclusion.

Howard then guided through the House of Commons the Local Government Finance Act 1988. This act brought in Margaret Thatcher's new system of local taxation, officially known as the Community Charge but almost universally nicknamed the poll tax. Howard personally supported the tax and won the respect of Mrs Thatcher for minimising the rebellion against it within the Conservative Party. After a period as Minister for Water and Planning in 1988/89 during which he was responsible for implementing water privatization in England and Wales, Howard was promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Employment in January 1990 with the resignation of Norman Fowler (who left "to spend more time with his family"). Howard therefore took on responsibility for legislation abolishing the closed shop, and campaigned vigorously for Mrs Thatcher in the first ballot of the leadership contest in November 1990. He retained his cabinet post under John Major and campaigned against trade-union power during the 1992 general election campaign.

His work in the campaign led to his appointment as Secretary of State for the Environment in the reshuffle after the election. He undertook some diplomacy to encourage the United States to participate in the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, but was soon after appointed as Home Secretary in a 1993 reshuffle initiated by the sacking of Norman Lamont. His tenure as Home Secretary was especially notable for his tough approach to crime, which he summed up in the soundbite, "prison works". Howard repeatedly clashed with judges and prison reformers as he sought to clamp down on crime through a series of "tough" measures. Under his tenure, recorded crime fell for the first time in over 30 years.

Infamous interview on Newsnight

His reputation was dented on 13 May 1997 when a critical inquiry into a series of prison escapes was published. In advance of the publication Howard made statements to assign blame to the prison service. A further controversy came when a television interviewer, Jeremy Paxman, relentlessly asked him the same question (12 times in all, and not the widely believed 14 times) during an edition of the Newsnight programme [3]. Asking whether Howard had intervened when Derek Lewis sacked a prison governor, Paxman asked: "Did you threaten to overrule him?" Howard did not give a direct answer, instead repeatedly saying that he "did not overrule him", and ignoring the "threaten" part of the question. The BBC subsequently revealed that the prolonged period where the question was repeated was in fact a "filler" to extend the interview, as technical reasons meant the next segment of that night's Newsnight was not ready for broadcast. While some praised the interview for journalistic toughness, others, including some in the BBC, criticised it as a theatrical stunt. The interview remains one of the most infamous in broadcasting history. In the longer term its precise impact on Howard's reputation remains disputed. Some suggest that it highlighted his arrogant refusal to answer the question; others suggest that it highlighted his resilience and refusal to be bullied, even by one of Britain's toughest interviewers. In a November 2004 interview (see below) Paxman returned to his question from 1997. Mr Howard was surprised, remarking: "Come on Jeremy, are you really going back over that again? As it happens, I didn't. Are you satisfied now?" [4] The truth came out in 2005, when under the Freedom of Information Act the Conservative Party obtained documents proving that Howard did not threaten to overrule Derek Lewis.

First attempt to become Conservative leader

After the 1997 resignation of John Major, Howard and William Hague announced they would be running on the same ticket, with Howard as leader and Hague as Deputy Leader and Party Chairman. However, the day after they agreed this, Hague decided to run his own campaign. Howard also stood but his campaign was marred by attacks on his record as Home Secretary.

When the first round of polling occurred in the leadership election, Howard came a disappointing fifth out of five candidates with the support of only twenty-three MPs. He withdrew from the race and endorsed William Hague, who was eventually elected leader. Howard served as Shadow Foreign Secretary for the next two years but would retire from the Shadow Cabinet in 1999, though remaining an MP.

"Something of the night about him," claims Widdecombe

Six days after the Derek Lewis incident on Newsnight, Ann Widdecombe, his former minister of state in the Home Office, made a statement in the House of Commons about the dismissal of then director of the Prison Service, Derek Lewis, and famously remarked of Howard that "there is something of the night about him", a bitter and widely quoted comment that fatally damaged his 1997 bid for the Conservative Party leadership. The comment was taken as a reference to his dour demeanour, which she was implying was sinister and almost Dracula-like, related to his Romanian ancestry. Some commentators felt there was a hint of anti-semitism about the remarkThe chosen person, Melanie Phillips, Jewish World Review, November 10, 2003.

Conservative Leader

After the 2001 General Election Howard was recalled to frontline politics when the Conservatives' new leader Iain Duncan Smith appointed him as Shadow Chancellor. His performances as Shadow Chancellor won him much praise, indeed under his guidance the Conservatives decided to debate the economy on an 'Opposition Day' for the first time since coming to power. After Duncan Smith was removed from the leadership, Howard was elected unopposed as leader of the party in November 2003. As leader, he faced much less discontent within the party than any of his three predecessors and was seen as a steady hand. He avoided managerial missteps such as Duncan Smith's firing of David Davis as Conservative Party Chairman, and imposed discipline quickly and firmly; he removed the party whip from Ann Winterton following her telling of a racist joke. He was perhaps helped in all this by the Conservatives' exhaustion after thirteen years of party turmoil after Mrs Thatcher's overthrow, which left the party more willing to rally round a leader.

In February 2004, Howard called on PM Tony Blair to resign over the Iraq war, for failing to ask "basic questions" regarding WMD claims and misleading Parliament [5]. In July the Conservative leader stated that he would not have voted for the motion that authorised the Iraq war had he known the quality of intelligence information on which the WMD claims were based. At the same time, he said he still believed in the Iraq invasion was right because "the prize of a stable Iraq was worth striving for". [6] His criticism of Blair did not earn Howard sympathies in Washington DC, where President Bush refused to meet him. Karl Rove is reported to have told Howard, "you can forget about meeting the president. Don't bother coming." [7]

Michael Howard was named Parliamentarian of the Year for 2003 by The Spectator and Zurich UK. This was in recognition of his performance at the despatch box in his previous role as Shadow Chancellor.

Crossing swords with Paxman

In November 2004, Newsnight again concentrated on Howard with coverage of a campaign trip to Cornwall and an interview with Jeremy Paxman. The piece, which purported to show that members of the public were unable to identify Howard and that those who recognized him did not support him, was the subject of an official complaint from the Conservative Party. The complaint claimed that the Newsnight team only spoke to people who held opinions against either Michael Howard or the Conservatives, and that Paxman's style was bullying and unnecessarily aggressive.

2005 Election

In the May 2005 general election Michael Howard's party failed to unseat the Labour Government, although the Conservatives did gain 33 seats and Labour's majority shrank from 167 to 66. The Conservatives also took five seats from the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative share of the national vote was only up 0.6% from 2001 and 1.6% from 1997, however. The seats gained did not reflect the overall share of the national vote. Commentators pointed to the state of Britain's constituency boundaries that heavily discriminated in favour of the Labour Party. It is estimated that changes proposed by the Boundary Commission for England would result in a gain of 10-20 seats for the Conservatives without any change in the vote.

The day after the election, Howard stated in a speech in the newly-gained Conservative seat in Putney that he would not lead the party into the next General Election as he would be "too old", and that he would stand down "sooner rather than later", following a revision of the Conservative leadership electoral process. Despite the election of a third consecutive Labour government, Howard described the election as "the beginning of a recovery" for the Conservative party after Labour's landslide victories in 1997 and 2001.

Howard's own constituency of Folkestone and Hythe had been heavily targeted by the Liberal Democrats as the most sought after prize of their "decapitation" strategy of seeking to gain the seats of prominent Conservatives. In the event Howard almost doubled his majority to 11,680, whilst the Liberal Democrats saw their vote fall.

Criticism of 2005 campaign

During the 2005 campaign, Howard was criticised by some commentators for alleged hypocrisy in conducting a campaign which addressed the issues of immigration, asylum seekers and travellers, when he was himself the descendant of immigrants. Others point out that the continued media coverage of such issues created most of the controversy and that Howard merely defended his views when questioned at unrelated policy launches. Ironically, the public generally supported Conservative policies when they were not told which party had proposed them. This support fell when they were told they were Conservative, indicating that the Party still had an image problem.

The focus on immigration was widely believed to be influenced by Howard's election adviser Lynton Crosby, who has been described as using similar tactics in Australian elections. [8]Whether this was a good idea or not in hindsight, his organisation of the campaign was credited with making the Conservative election drive much more professional and organised than at the last election.

During the campaign, Howard continued to impose strong party discipline, controversially forcing the deselection of Danny Kruger (Sedgefield), Adrian Hilton (Slough) and Howard Flight (Arundel & South Downs).

Final months as party leader

Despite announcing after the 2005 General Election that he would vacate the role of party leader, Howard performed a substantial reshuffle of the party's front bench on the 10th May in which several rising star MPs were given their first shadow portfolios, in particular George Osborne and David Cameron. This move cleared the way for David Cameron (who had worked for Howard as Policy Advisor when Howard was Home Secretary) to run for the Conservative Party leadership.

The reforms to the party's election process took a number of months and Howard held power as leader for six months of the new parliament. During that period, he enjoyed a fairly pressure-free time, often making joking comparisons between himself and Tony Blair, both of whom had declared they would not stand at the next General Election. He also oversaw Blair's first parliamentary defeat, when the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats and sufficient Labour Party rebels voted against government proposals to extend to 90 days the period that terror suspects could be held for without charge. Howard stood down in December of 2005 and was replaced by David Cameron.

Howard announced on 17th March 2006 that he will be standing down as MP for Folkestone and Hythe at the next election, expected to be held in 2009 or 2010 [9].

Trivia: Howard shares a birthday with British MP Michael Ancram, his deputy when he was Leader of the Conservative Party. [edit]Electoral history