Nicholas Boles

Nicholas Boles     (politician)
Born	Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles 1965-11-02
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Winchester College, Magdalen College (Oxford), Harvard/Kennedy School
Member of	Notting Hill Set
Party	Conservative
Notting Hill Set UK politician, Director of Policy Exchange  Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Department for Communities and Local Government In office 5 September 2012 - 14 July 2014  Member of Parliament for Grantham and Stamford In office 6 May 2010 - Present  UK/Minister of State for Skills In office 14 July 2014 - 13 July 2016  Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government In office 5 September 2012 - 14 July 2014  Policy Exchange/Director In office 2002 - 2007 Succeeded by Anthony Browne

Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles, known as Nick Boles, is a Conservative MP and a former Director of Policy Exchange. He is a signatory of the statement of principles of the Henry Jackson Society Project for Democratic Geopolitics, a British neoconservative organisation. He is a former flatmate of Michael Gove.

He voted for Keir Starmer's Labour Party in the 2022 local elections.

Biography

Boles's biography on the Policy Exchange website in 2001 stated:

Nicholas Boles is the director of Policy Exchange. He was born in 1965. He read PPE at Magdalen College, Oxford and won a Kennedy Scholarship to study for a master's in public policy at the Kennedy School, Harvard University. In 1995, Nicholas founded Longwall Holdings, a small group of manufacturing businesses supplying the DIY industry; he remains non-executive chairman of Longwall. In 1998, he was elected to Westminster City Council as a representative of the West End ward. He was chairman of Westminster's Housing Committee from 1999 to 2001. In early 2002, Nicholas acted as associate producer of the West End production of The Mysteries.

Boles states on his official website that before setting up his DIY business he 'worked for a few years in Germany, Russia and Eastern Europe, helping state-owned industries prepare for private ownership.'

Boles left Policy Exchange in February 2007 to concentrate on his bid to be Mayor of London and was replaced by the Chief Political Correspondent of The Times Anthony Browne. On his time at Policy Exchange Boles has stated:

My biggest achievement in politics so far has been to set up and run Policy Exchange, which is now the largest and most influential policy research institute on the centre right. While I was its director, Policy Exchange devised policies to make police forces more accountable to local people, to expand the number of places in good schools and to give local communities incentives to build more houses. We also exposed the activities of Islamic extremists in some mosques in the UK and their effect on the attitudes of young British Muslims. Many of our ideas have been adopted by the Conservative Party under David Cameron.

Boles later withdrew from the London Mayoral race after revealing that he was suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma. After Boris Johnson was elected Mayor he appointed Boles as his Interim Chief of Staff. Other Policy Exchange appointees included his cultural advisor Munira Mirza and Dan Ritterband.

Boles was subsequently appointed head of David Cameron's Implementation Unit, where he was responsible for drawing up the Tories' plans for government with Policy Exchange founder Francis Maude. In the 2010 General Election he was elected Conservative MP for Grantham and Stamford, the home town of Margaret Thatcher.

Affiliations

• Policy Exchange, former director
• Henry Jackson Society Project for Democratic Geopolitics, signatory of statement of principles

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Leader of the Conservative Party	“All Tory leaders have surrounded themselves with an inner circle, which has given them ballast and in certain important respects defined their leadership. John Major had a winning fondness for palpable fakes, like Jeffrey Archer and David Mellor; Margaret Thatcher liked hirsute North London entrepreneurs with a ‘can-do’ attitude and heavy jewellery. Michael Howard’s chosen milieu is constructed of dapper, well-spoken men and women, many of whom live within walking distance of one another in west London. Cameron is unmistakably the leader of these Notting Hill Tories, but others include Michael Howard’s political secretary Rachel Whetstone, his speechwriter Ed Vaizey, marketing expert Steve Hilton, policy man Nick Boles, along with the newspaper columnists Edward Heathcoat Amory and his wife Alice Thomson.”	Peter Oborne	19 June 2004

 

Event Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/2012	31 May 2012	3 June 2012	US Virginia Chantilly	The 58th Bilderberg, in Chantilly, Virginia. Unusually just 4 years after an earlier Bilderberg meeting there.

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