Liam Byrne: future leader?
At 39, Liam Byrne is the youngest member of the Cabinet. He has been since June last year when he moved up to take the place of James Purnell, the previous youngest Cabinet Minister, who resigned to try to force Prime Minister Gordon Brown from office.
Liam Byrne’s promotion has been rapid. He only entered Parliament in July 2004, in a closefought by-election in Hodge Hill, Birmingham, a city he quickly made his own – to the extent of moving his wife and three young children there from Hertfordshire. Only Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, both elected in the 2005 general election, made it to the Cabinet more quickly. And they had both been Brown’s advisers, whereas Byrne has risen by sheer competence and in spite of his reputation as something of a Blairite.
His parents were Sixties student radicals who met at university in Durham. “They believed in changing the world through public service,” says Byrne. “My mum was a science teacher at the school I went to in Harlow, then head of science at a school in Cheshunt. My dad was a local government officer, and the son of Irish immigrants who came to Britain just before the war. My parents were active in Anti-Apartheid. We talked about politics, about what Thatcher was doing to public services. My dad had to make hundreds of people redundant, which was terrible. Acid was thrown over our car.”
Byrne joined the Labour Party when he was “about 15” and lied about his age. Despite being active in politics at Manchester University and being seconded to Tony Blair’s office as a management consultant from Andersen Consulting in the run-up to the 1997 election, he says he did not think of going into politics himself until 2000. His mother died of cancer at the age of 52, in 1997, which had a big effect on him: “It made me realise that time is short.” He went to Harvard Business School to gain an MBA and it was there that “I decided I wanted to be an MP”. After a spell at merchant banking group, NM Rothschild he set up his own business providing computer services to government.
The high point of his career, “by far”, was his election: “It was a very tough night; it was an important by-election.” Unlike many Labour MPs, he had some experience of running things, and he quickly acquired a reputation as a minister that delivered results in junior posts at the Department of Health and the Home Office. John Reid, as Home Secretary, switched his junior ministers, Byrne and Tony McNulty, because he thought Byrne more likely to deliver the urgent reforms to the immigration service that were needed.
As Chief Secretary, he will be one of Labour’s key faces in an election campaign focused more than ever on questions of taxes and spending. And it is likely that his calm, classless and businesslike manner will come across well on television. No wonder he is already being spoken of as a leadership contender for the future.
