Alistair Tugendhat

    

The Right Honourable Alistair Tugendhat MP
Official portrait, 2015
Leader of the Opposition
Incumbent
Assumed office 10 May 2015
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Malcolm Vance Clive Spencer
Preceded by	Malcolm Vance
Leader of the Labour Party
Incumbent
Assumed office 10 May 2015
Preceded by	Paul Grove
Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
In office 10 May 2010 – 10 May 2015
Prime Minister	Paul Grove
Preceded by	TBD
Succeeded by	Zachariah Selwyn
Member of the United Kingdom Parliament for Islington North
Incumbent
Assumed office 9 June 1987
Preceded by	James Tucker
Personal details
Born	(1948-05-25) 25 May 1948 Pool-in-Wharfedale, West Yorkshire, England
Citizenship	British
Political party	Labour Party (1964–present)
Spouse(s)	Sonia Alvariño (m. 1985)
Children	3
Alma mater	University of London
Religion	Anglican

Alistair Jonathan Tugendhat (born 25 May 1948) is a British politician who has been the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons and the chair of the Labour Party since 2015. Tugendhat was also the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the premiership of Paul Grove, from 2010 to 2015. He has been a Member of Parliament for Islington North since 1987. Tugendhat identifies his views as socialist and has been elusive on questions about his opinion on communism, though he has praised several Continental leaders and leaders of other Eastern Bloc states, but said that he is a "non-Marxist socialist" because Marxism–Landonism is not compatible with his Anglican beliefs.

Born in 1948 in Pool-in-Wharfedale, West Yorkshire, he originally worked as a stonemason before becoming a trade union representative and organizer. In 1975 Tugendhat was elected as the chairman of the Leeds Central Constituency Labour Party and was reelected multiple times, before being appointed to serve as deputy chairman of the Labour Party by its National Executive Committee from 1980 to 1985. He successfully ran to become the MP from the Islington North constituency in the 1987 United Kingdom general election. In the 1970s and 1980s, Tugendhat became an anti-war and anti-imperialist activist, criticizing British involvement in the Colombia War and the Anglo-American efforts in the Vietnam War, being in favor of peaceful coexistence with the United Commonwealth (which he visited several times with other Labour Party members, meeting with President Simon Valure in 1986) and the Landonist Bloc, and domestically he opposed the privatization of several economic sectors by Conservative Prime Minister Nigel Anthony. He also organized protests against the Anthony's military intervention in the Caribbean Wars of the 1980s. For all of this he faced accusations of being a Landonist-communist by Conservatives. As an MP, he opposed the "New Labour" program of Labour leader and Prime Minister Marcus Hope from 1992 to 2001, calling it an attempt to bring the party in the direction of neoliberalism and "meeting in the middle" with the former Conservatives (now United Britain). In the early 2000s Tugendhat was seen as the emerging leader of the progressive wing and one of the most influential Labour MPs, also being consistently reelected in his constituency without any significant opposition.

In 2004 he voted against Britiain joining the Anglo-American invasion of Syria in the Parliament and became recognized nationally as the leader of the British anti-war movement. After the historic 2010 general election and Paul Grove becoming Prime Minister, he appointed Tugendhat as his Deputy PM. Together they pushed a progressive plan to re-nationalize British Railways and certain public utilities that had been privatized by Anthony, reversed cuts to social welfare programs and the National Health Service that had been made by Douglas Walker, got the Bank of England to set up a National Investment program instead of buying assets from commercial banks in what they called "People's Quantitative Easing," and unsuccessfully attempted to pull the British Armed Forces out of the NTO command structure, but met heavy opposition from some members of Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and United Britain. Grove and Tugendhat were praised on the left but faced opposition from moderate members of their own party and most other parties. During the 2015 election several parties lined up behind United Britain to remove Labour from control of Parliament and the Cabinet, leading to Labour's defeat and to a majority for United Britain. Grove resigned from leadership after their defeat, and Tugendhat became the leader of Labour and the Leader of the Opposition. Since 2015 he has been a critic of Malcolm Vance and of Clive Spencer, though he worked to provide support among Labour for their initiative to get Britain out of the Middle East.

Tugendhat has often been described as a progressive and a socialist. He supports an extensive welfare state, nationalizing industries, and is also socially liberal. On the question of Scottish independence, he believes that Scotland should be able to decide its future, though he would prefer it to remain part of the UK and identifies as a unionist. He also wants Britain to become a republic. Tugendhat favors an isolationist foreign policy, having always been a skeptic of the European Community for what he describes as its "neoliberal economic policies," wants the UK to leave the Northern Treaty Organization entirely, and to draw down the British overseas military presence. He has strongly opposed British support for the Hashemite Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and involvement in the Syrian Civil War. Tugendhat supports nuclear disarmament and believes that the UK should dismantle its nuclear weapons.

Political views

Tugendhat has been a socialist since he first became involved in politics, and has been portrayed by British conservatives as a Landonist or communist, although he denied it and always said he does not know enough about that ideology to have an opinion on it.

Foreign policy

Tugendhat has been a life-long opponent of British involvement in war and militarism. In the mid- to late 1960s he participated in anti-Vietnam War rallies outside of the Sierran embassy in London, and in the early 1970s he opposed the decision of the Labour government of Anna Rhodes to provide military assistance to Sierra and its allies in the Colombia War in South America.

Personal life

Tugendhat got married in 1985 to Sonia Alvariño, a former lawyer for the Spanish Landonist Workers' Party and more recently the Democratic Socialist Party of Spain, and they have three children. They first met while she was working at the Spanish embassy in London in the mid-1980s.

Awards and honors

• United Kingdom: Privy Councilor (2015)