Alexander John Cameron Deane (born 24 June 1979) [1] is a British writer, political commentator and consultant. [2] He is a regular commentator on Sky News and GB News, and formerly on BBC Dateline London . [3]
Deane was the defeated Conservative parliamentary candidate for Finchley and Golders Green in the 2024 general election. [4]
The son of Paul Deane and Jacqueline née Osborne, he was educated at County Upper School, [5] a state comprehensive school in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, before going to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature, graduating in 2000. He then studied at Griffith University in Australia, as a Rotary Scholar and graduated with an MA in International Relations in 2002. [6] .
During his time training to be a barrister at Middle Temple he won the 2004 World Universities Debating Championship.
Deane was called to the bar at Middle Temple in 2005. [7] He served as Chief of Staff to David Cameron and Tim Collins during their respective periods as Shadow Secretary of State for Education. [3] He served as the founding director of Big Brother Watch from 2009 to 2011. [8]
In 2011 Deane was elected as Commoner (the City equivalent of a Councillor) to the Court of Common Council [9] for the ward of Farringdon Without and was reelected at the 2013 City of London Corporation election, serving until the 2017 City of London Corporation election. A liveryman of the Curriers' Company, he is a current member of The Freedom Association's management committee. [10]
His main role is Senior Managing Director, Head of UK Public Affairs for FTI Consulting having joined the company in 2014. He often appears in the media as a political commentator, is a Sky News regular and a BBC Dateline London panelist. [11]
He was the executive director of the eurosceptic Grassroots Out campaign [12]
Commentating on allegations that Boris Johnson groped Charlotte Edwardes, Deane quoted Alan Clark who said: "How do I know my advances are unwanted until I've made them?". [13]
In 2018 he was shortlisted to be prospective Parliamentary candidate for the Ipswich seat, but lost to Tom Hunt. [14]
Deane is the author of Lessons From History [15] and More Lessons from History Uncovering the colourful characters of the past. [16]
Sir David Michael Davis is a British politician who served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2003 to 2008 and Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union from 2016 to 2018. A member of the Conservative Party, he has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Goole and Pocklington, formerly Haltemprice and Howden and Boothferry, since 1987. Davis was sworn of the Privy Council in the 1997 New Year Honours, having previously been Minister of State for Europe from 1994 to 1997.
Mark Christopher Field is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Cities of London and Westminster from 2001 to 2019. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as a Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 2017 to 2019. A prominent supporter of the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union during the Brexit referendum and of Jeremy Hunt in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election, he left his post as a Foreign Office Minister when Boris Johnson's premiership began. He stood down from the British House of Commons at the 2019 United Kingdom general election.
Dominic Charles Roberts Grieve is a British barrister and former politician who served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Attorney General for England and Wales from 2010 to 2014. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Beaconsfield from 1997 to 2019 and was the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee from 2015 to 2019.
Sir Robert James MacGillivray Neill KC (Hon) is a British barrister and Conservative Party politician. He served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bromley and Chislehurst from 2006 to 2024.
Gregory William Hands is a British politician who served as Minister for London and Minister of State for Trade Policy from November 2023 to July 2024. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chelsea and Fulham, previously Hammersmith and Fulham, from 2005 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as its Chairman from February to November 2023. Hands has served as Minister of State for Trade Policy under four prime ministers, holding the office on four occasions, and also served as Minister of State for Business, Energy and Clean Growth from 2021 to 2022.
Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles is a British politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Grantham and Stamford from 2010 to 2019. He was a member of the Conservative Party until 2019.
Sir Lynton Keith Crosby is an Australian political strategist who has managed election campaigns for right-of-centre parties in several countries.
John Douglas Wilson Carswell is a British former politician who served as a Member of Parliament from 2005 to 2017, co-founded Vote Leave and currently serves as president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.
Shailesh Lakhman Vara is a Ugandan-British Conservative former politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for North West Cambridgeshire from 2005 until he lost his seat in 2024. He also served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from July to September 2022.
David Michael Gauke is a British political commentator, solicitor and former politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for South West Hertfordshire from 2005 to 2019. He served in the Cabinet under Theresa May, most notably as Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor from 2018 to 2019. First elected as a Conservative, Gauke had the Conservative whip removed on 3 September 2019 and until the dissolution sat as an independent politician.
David Richard Bull is an English television presenter, author and politician. Since 2023 he has been Reform UK's Co-Deputy Leader, alongside Ben Habib, and its health spokesman. He was previously a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North West England from 2019 to 2020.
Daniel Leonard James Poulter is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich from 2010 to 2024. Poulter is a psychiatrist, and served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Health between September 2012 and May 2015. Initially elected as a Conservative, he defected to Labour in April 2024.
On 23 June 2016, a referendum took place in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to ask the electorate whether the country should remain a member of, or leave, the European Union (EU). The result was to leave, triggering calls to begin the process of the country's withdrawal from the EU commonly termed "Brexit".
Andrew Timothy Cooper, Baron Cooper of Windrush is a British politician and former Director of Strategy in the Cameron–Clegg coalition. He entered the House of Lords as a Conservative peer, but was suspended from the party whip for endorsing the Liberal Democrats in the 2019 European Parliament elections.
Gregory David Clark is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 2016 to 2019. He also was Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2015 to 2016 and Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities from July to September 2022. Later, he was the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Tunbridge Wells from 2005 until 2024.
Ranil Malcolm Jayawardena is a British Conservative politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Hampshire from 2015 until 2024, when he lost his seat to the Liberal Democrats. He served under Prime Minister Liz Truss as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from September to October 2022. He previously served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade from 2020 to 2022.
A number of politicians, public figures, newspapers and magazines, businesses and other organisations endorsed either the United Kingdom remaining in the EU or the United Kingdom leaving the EU during the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.
After the British EU membership referendum held on 23 June 2016, in which a majority voted to leave the European Union, the United Kingdom experienced political and economic upsets, with spillover effects across the rest of the European Union and the wider world. Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned for Remain, announced his resignation on 24 June, triggering a Conservative leadership election, won by Home Secretary Theresa May. Following Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn's loss of a motion of no confidence among the Parliamentary Labour Party, he also faced a leadership challenge, which he won. Nigel Farage stepped down from leadership of the pro-Leave party UKIP in July. After the elected party leader resigned, Farage then became the party's interim leader on 5 October until Paul Nuttall was elected leader on 28 November.
Bepi Pezzulli is a British-Italian business lawyer, corporate executive, columnist and writer. He is an expert in finance, especially in capital markets, investment management and M&A. He is also a foreign policy adviser, with a focus on Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States, and – specifically – a Brexit pundit.
Brexit was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020. As of 2020, the UK is the only member state to have left the EU. Britain entered the predecessor to the EU, the European Communities (EC), on 1 January 1973. Following this, Eurosceptic groups grew in popularity in the UK, opposing aspects of both the EC and the EU. As Euroscepticism increased during the early 2010s, Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a speech in January 2013 at Bloomberg London, in which he called for reform of the EU and promised an in–out referendum on the UK's membership if the Conservative Party won a majority at the 2015 general election. The Conservatives won 330 seats at the election, giving Cameron a majority of 12, and a bill to hold a referendum was introduced to Parliament that month.
