Kenneth Harry Clarke

Kenneth Harry Clarke (born July 2, 1940, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England) is a British Conservative politician who served as a cabinet official in the governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and David Cameron, including as Major’s chancellor of the Exchequer (1993–97) and as Cameron’s lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice (2010–12). He also served as a minister without portfolio (2012–14) in Cameron’s cabinet. A major figure in the Conservative Party for several decades, he unsuccessfully ran for leadership of the party on several occasions.

In the 1960s Clarke was one of a group of University of Cambridge undergraduates, including Michael Howard, who became close friends and rose to positions of prominence. Clarke subsequently became a barrister (1963) before entering the House of Commons in 1970 as member for Rushcliffe, near Nottingham. He quickly established himself on the liberal, pro-European wing of the Conservative Party and was a junior whip in the government of Edward Heath. Although at odds on some issues with Margaret Thatcher, when she became prime minister in 1979 Clarke was immediately given a junior government post, working for a friend from his student days, Norman Fowler, at the Ministry of Transport.

Six years later Clarke was promoted to the cabinet as deputy employment secretary. In 1988 he was switched to health secretary, a post that gave him a chance to prove his fighting spirit. In the autumn of 1989 he imposed a pay settlement on ambulance workers, rejecting their demands for arbitration. They went on strike, refusing to respond to all nonemergency calls. He resisted calls for compromise, and eventually the strike was abandoned. Clarke won high praise from inside his party for successfully standing firm; in particular, the Conservative right wing warmed to his style.

In November 1990, following Sir Geoffrey Howe’s resignation from the cabinet, Thatcher moved Clarke to education. Four weeks later Major became prime minister and kept Clarke in the same job until April 1992, when he appointed Clarke as home secretary—one of the few Conservative opponents of capital punishment to hold the job. Following Norman Lamont’s dismissal in May 1993, Clarke was appointed chancellor of the Exchequer. In his first budget, in November 1993, Clarke increased taxation, in contrast to his party’s 1992 election pledge to keep taxes down. His measures were unpopular with voters, but they earned him accolades from other Conservative MPs. The British economy, in recession since the late 1980s, rebounded during Clarke’s term as chancellor, and unemployment, interest rates, and inflation fell.

After the Conservative electoral defeat in 1997, Major resigned as party leader, and Clarke was quick to assert himself for the position. Clarke’s pro-European leanings cost him the support of the party’s right wing, however, and he was beaten by William Hague. With the Conservatives in opposition, Clarke returned to the backbench, emerging for unsuccessful runs for party leader in 2001 and 2005.

In 2009 he returned to frontline politics when Conservative Party leader David Cameron named him shadow business secretary. In the months leading up to the 2010 general election, Clarke bolstered his position as the Conservatives’ elder statesman on financial matters. He handily retained his Rushcliffe seat in the election, and, in the Conservative–Liberal Democrats coalition that was formed, he was appointed lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice. Clarke served in that position until 2012, when he became a minister without portfolio. In 2014 he left the cabinet and returned to the backbench. He was reelected to the House of Commons in 2015.