Alexander Deane (born 24 June 1979) [1] is an English writer, political commentator and consultant. [2] He is a regular commentator on Sky News, GB News, and formerly of BBC Dateline London . [3]
Deane is the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Finchley and Golders Green in the next general election. [4]
Deane was educated at County Upper School, [5] a state comprehensive school in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, followed by Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature, graduating in 2000, and at Griffith University in Australia, where he was 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, he served until the 2017 City of London Corporation election. 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 and often appears in the media as a political commentator; he is a Sky News regular and a BBC Dateline London panelist. [11]
He was the executive director of the eurosceptic Grassroots Out campaign [12]
In 2018 he was shortlisted for the Ipswich seat for a prospective general election, but lost to Tom Hunt. [13]
He is the author of "Lessons From History" [14]
“More Lessons from History Uncovering the colourful characters of the past”. [15]
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 Haltemprice and Howden, formerly 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.
David William Donald Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton, is a British politician who has served as Foreign Secretary since 2023. He previously served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016, as Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016, and as Leader of the Opposition from 2005 to 2010, while serving as Member of Parliament (MP) for Witney from 2001 to 2016. He identifies as a one-nation conservative and has been associated with both economically liberal and socially liberal policies.
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 has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bromley and Chislehurst since a by-election on 29 June 2006, following the death of the previous incumbent Eric Forth. He served as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Communities and Local Government from 14 May 2010 to 4 September 2012. He is the current Chair of Parliament's Justice Select Committee.
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.
Daniel Robert Kawczynski is a British Conservative Party politician.
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.
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 who has served as Deputy Leader of Reform UK since 2021 and as Co-Deputy Leader alongside Ben Habib since 2023. He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North West England from 2019 to 2020.
Daniel Leonard James Poulter is a British politician who was elected at the 2010 UK general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich. 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.
David Cameron's tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 11 May 2010 when he accepted an invitation of Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, succeeding Gordon Brown of the Labour Party, and ended on 13 July 2016 upon his resignation following the 2016 referendum that favoured Brexit, which he had opposed. As prime minister, Cameron served simultaneously as First Lord of the Treasury and as Minister for the Civil Service.
On 23 June 2016, a referendum, commonly referred to as the EU referendum or the Brexit 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 referendum resulted in 51.9% of the votes cast being in favour of leaving the EU, 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. A member of the Conservative Party, he has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Tunbridge Wells since 2005. He is currently the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee.
Ranil Malcolm Jayawardena is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Hampshire since 2015. A member of the Conservative Party, 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.
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.
