Michael Howard

Lord Howard     (Deep politician)
Born	Michael Hecht 1941-07-07 Gorseinon, United Kingdom
Nationality	UK
Alma mater	Peterhouse (Cambridge), Inns of Court School of Law
Religion	Judaism
Children	Nicholas Larissa
Spouse	Sandra Paul
Member of	Georgetown Leadership Seminar/1983, Königswinter/Speakers, Le Cercle
Party	Conservative
United Kingdom deep politician, Georgetown Leadership Seminar/1983  UK/Leader of the Opposition  In office 6 November 2003 - 6 December 2005 Preceded by Iain Duncan Smith Succeeded by David Cameron  Leader of the Conservative Party  In office 6 November 2003 - 6 December 2005 Preceded by Iain Duncan Smith Succeeded by David Cameron  Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer  In office 18 September 2001 - 6 November 2003 Deputy John Bercow Preceded by Michael Portillo Succeeded by Oliver Letwin  Shadow Foreign Secretary  In office 11 June 1997 - 15 June 1999 Preceded by John Major  Shadow Home Secretary  In office 2 May 1997 - 11 June 1997 Preceded by Jack Straw  Home Secretary  In office 27 May 1993 - 2 May 1997 Preceded by Kenneth Clarke Succeeded by Jack Straw  Secretary of State for the Environment  In office 11 April 1992 - 27 May 1993 Preceded by Michael Heseltine  Secretary of State for Employment  In office 3 January 1990 - 11 April 1992  Member of Parliament for Folkestone and Hythe In office 10 June 1983 - 12 April 2010 Preceded by Kenneth Baker, Tony Benn, Winston Churchill II, Gwyneth Dunwoody, Clement Freud, Stephen Hastings, Nicholas Lyell, Fred Mulley, John Nott, Merlyn Rees, William Rodgers, David Waddington  Shadow Constitutional Affairs Spokesperson In office 2 May 1997 - 11 June 1997  UK/Minister for Housing In office 25 July 1989 - 3 January 1990  UK/Minister for the Environment In office 25 July 1988 - 25 July 1989  Minister of State for Local Government In office 13 June 1987 - 25 July 1988

Not to be confused with Chatham House expert Michael Howard (Historian)

Michael Howard (Baron Howard of Lympne) is a British politician who was Leader of the Conservative Party.

UK Home Secretary

Michael Howard has claimed that he could not recall the name "Baybaşin".

Shadow Home Secretary

"Did you threaten to overrule him?"

On 13 May 1997, BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman interrogated Shadow Home Secretary Michael Howard about the controversial dismissal of the head of the prison service, Derek Lewis, by repeatedly asking the same question: "Did you threaten to overrule him?" and not getting an answer.

Twenty years later in August 2017, the former Tory leader, who now sits in the House of Lords, sought to explain why he had not given Paxman a straight answer at the time:

"Look, I was being asked these questions by Jeremy years after the event.

"This interview took place during the 1997 Conservative Leadership campaign. These events had happened two years earlier. I’d been campaigning all day, I hadn’t remotely been thinking about Derek Lewis or prisons, I’d been thinking about the Tory Leadership…

"This is not an excuse but perhaps an explanation. At the end of the day, long day when you’re tried, you know what these days are like, that – I wasn’t able to go back over the history and so I answered in my own way, as the phrase goes."

Lord Howard has previously described the grilling as “not the most enjoyable experience ever” while political commentators frequently refer back to it.

When Paxman stood down from Newsnight in 2014 The Guardian called the 1997 interview "a masterclass in persistence, even if it merely led to a very uncomfortable stalemate".

 

Appointments by Michael Howard

Appointee	Job	Appointed	End
John Bercow	Shadow Minister for Overseas Development	10 November 2003	8 September 2004
Boris Johnson	Shadow Minister for the Arts	14 April 2004	17 November 2004

 

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

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