Hilary Benn

Hilary James Wedgwood Benn (born 26 November 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who has served as Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland since he was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet of Keir Starmer on 4 September 2023.

During the 1975 referendum on British membership of the European Economic Community, he served on the research team for the National Referendum Campaign, which argued for a No vote.

Benn was elected as a councillor on Ealing Borough Council in 1979 and was Deputy Leader of the Council from 1986 to 1990.

In 1979, he was elected to Ealing Borough Council where he served as deputy leader from 1986 to 1990.

In 1980, he was seconded to the Labour Party to act as a joint secretary to the finance panel of the Labour Party Commission of Inquiry.

He was also the unsuccessful Labour parliamentary candidate for the Ealing North constituency at both the 1983 and 1987 general elections.

He was the Labour Party candidate for Ealing North at the 1983 and 1987 general elections.

On both occasions he was defeated by the Conservative candidate Harry Greenway.

Reflecting on the defeat at the 1983 general election, Benn said: "That was a formative experience for me because we went out on the doorstep and we didn't win the public's confidence. It made me very uncomfortable. Personally, that left a mark on me."

At the 1983 general election, Benn won 32.8% of the vote, and four years later won 27.8% of the vote.

Benn applied to become head of Labour Party research under the leadership of John Smith, but was unsuccessful.

In 1993 he became Head of Policy for Manufacturing Science and Finance.

Following the 1997 general election, Benn was appointed as a special adviser to David Blunkett before winning a by-election in Leeds Central in 1999.

At the 1997 general election, he was on the shortlist for the seat of Pontefract and Castleford, but eventually lost to Yvette Cooper.

Following the 1997 general election, Benn served as a special adviser to David Blunkett, then the Secretary of State for Education and Employment.

He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds Central since the 1999 by-election.

In 1999, Benn was selected as the Labour candidate for a by-election in Leeds Central following the untimely death of Foreign Office Minister Derek Fatchett at the age of 53 years old.

During the by-election campaign, he described himself as "a Benn, but not a Bennite".

Benn won the Leeds Central by-election on 10 June 1999 following a turnout of 19.6%, the second-smallest turnout at a by-election since the Second World War; this was beaten in the 2012 Manchester Central by-election which had a mere 18.2% turnout.

In response to the poor turnout, he said: "The turnout is very disappointing and in a democracy this is a concern for all of us."

Benn was elected with 48.2% of the vote and a majority of 2,293 votes.

Benn served as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development from 2001 to 2002 and for Prisons and Probations from 2002 to 2003.

He served in the Cabinet from 2003 to 2010, under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

He returned to DFID as Minister of State in May 2003.

In October 2003, he was appointed to Tony Blair's Cabinet as the Secretary of State for International Development.

In 2007, Benn was a candidate for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, which he lost to Harriet Harman, finishing in fourth place.

Benn later served under Gordon Brown as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2007 to 2010.

Following Labour's defeat at the 2010 general election, Benn served in Ed Miliband's Shadow cabinet as Shadow Environment Secretary in 2010 and Shadow Leader of the House of Commons from 2010 to 2011.

He then served as Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2011 to 2015.

He also served as Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2015 to 2016 and as Chairman of the Brexit Select Committee from 2016 to 2021.

Born in Hammersmith, he is the second son of veteran Labour MP Tony Benn and educationalist Caroline Benn.

He studied Russian and Eastern European Studies at the University of Sussex and went on to work as a policy researcher for two trade unions, ASTMS and MSF.

Following the 2015 general election, Benn was appointed as Shadow Foreign Secretary, retaining this role after Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour Leader.

After criticising Corbyn's leadership and phoning other Labour MPs to seek to remove Corbyn as leader, he was dismissed from this position by Corbyn on 26 June 2016, precipitating a number of shadow cabinet resignations.

Born in Hammersmith, London, Benn is the second son of former Labour Cabinet Minister Tony Benn and American-born educationalist Caroline Benn (née DeCamp).

Benn is a fourth-generation MP – his father, his paternal grandfather Lord Stansgate, and his great-grandfathers Daniel Holmes and Sir John Benn were all Members of Parliament, mostly supporting the Liberal Party.

Benn attended Norland Place School, Westminster Under School, Holland Park School, and the University of Sussex where he graduated in Russian and Eastern European Studies.

Benn has an older brother, Stephen, a younger sister Melissa and younger brother, Joshua.

Reflecting on his upbringing, he said: "I grew up in a household where we talked about the state of the world over breakfast, when we ate at night, and all points in between."

After graduation, Benn became a research officer with ASTMS.