Just who is Alex Burghart? And have the Tories found a new rising star?
Alex who? As veteran MPs like to joke about young upstarts in politics who are largely unknown, he’s not even a household name in his own home.
But he has long been a member of Kemi’s gang and resigned from Boris Johnson’s government along with the future Tory leader over the Chris Pincher scandal in 2022.
Mr Burghart is 47, but looks younger, and succeeded Tory big beast Eric Pickles as Conservative MP for Brentwood and Ongar, on London’s border with Essex, in 2017.
Rayner faces hostile crowd as she stands in for Starmer p Politics latest
Educated at Millfield public school, he’s a brainy historian with an Oxford BA and a PhD from King’s College, London, and has written for BBC History and the Times Literary Supplement.
But until his impressive debut as Kemi Badenoch’s stand-in against Angela Rayner at PMQs, his climb up the greasy pole of politics had been worthy but unspectacular.
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He was initially a history teacher and university tutor, before working for Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice thinktank and writing a book about vulnerable children.
He also worked for the Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, before becoming Theresa May’s special adviser on social policy when she became prime minister in 2016.
Once in parliament, he was a parliamentary private secretary – unpaid bag-carrier – to attorney generals Geoffrey Cox and Jeremy Wright and Karen Bradley, then Northern Ireland secretary.
His big break came when Boris Johnson became prime minister in 2019 and made him his PPS (parliamentary private secretary) and two years later he became a junior education minister, responsible for apprenticeships.
But his own apprenticeship for the big jobs came to a halt when along with Kemi Badenoch and her other close allies Neil O’Brien, Lee Rowley and Julia Lopez he quit in protest against the Pincher sleaze scandal.
Rishi Sunak appointed him to the unglamorous jobs of junior pensions minister and then junior Cabinet Office minister and it was only after this year’s 4 July election that he joined the shadow cabinet.
Like many up-and-coming Conservative MPs, Mr Burghart married into a Tory dynasty. His wife is journalist and author Hermione Gingold, daughter of late Tory MP Sir Reg Eyre, who served in the governments of Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher.
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But after a low-profile career until now, Mr Burghart’s fellow MPs certainly know who he is after a direct and punchy performance at PMQs in which he accused Labour of broken promises and declaring war on farmers.
Some insiders claimed that he had been more effective than Ms Badenoch, whose performances in her first two PMQs clashes with Sir Keir Starmer have been less than startling.
After this debut he’s clearly one to watch. Some Tories even suggested that on this showing he’s future party leader if Kemikaze, as her detractors unkindly call her, falters.
Praise indeed. However, Alex Burghart v Labour rising star Darren Jones in a battle for No. 10 in a future general election, anyone?
