Douglas Alexander

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The Right Honourable Douglas Garven Alexander, (October 26, 1967-) British Politician. The current British Member of Parliament for Paisley and Renfrewshire South in Scotland. He is a member of the Labour Party, and serves as the Minister of State for Europe in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, attending Cabinet.

Born in Glasgow, the son of a Church of Scotland minister and a doctor, Alexander attended Park Mains High School in Erskine in Renfrewshire, from where he joined the Labour Party as a school boy in 1982. In 1984 he won a Scottish scholarship to attend the Lester B. Pearson College in Vancouver where he gained the International Baccalaureate Diploma, returning to Scotland to study politics and modern history at the University of Edinburgh. He won a further scholarship in 1988 to study at the University Of Pennsylvania one of the major American Ivy League institutions. Whilst studying in America, he worked for Michael Dukakis during the 1988 American Presidential Election campaign, he also worked for a Democrat senator in Washington, D.C..

In 1990 he worked as a speech-writer and parliamentary researcher for Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary, Gordon Brown. He returned to Edinburgh to qualify as a solicitor.

Whilst still studying, in 1995, with friends in the local party, he was selected to be the Labour Party candidate at the Perth and Kinross Parliamentary By-election caused by the death of the long serving flamboyant Conservative MP Nicholas Fairbairn. The by-election came in the middle of the Major government and was won by Roseanna Cunningham of the Scottish National Party, but Alexander did well and received enough votes to push the incumbent Conservative candidate into third place. On qualifying as a solicitor he worked for a firm of solicitors in Perth. The Perth and Kinross constituency was abolished, but Alexander was again chosen to be the Labour candidate in the newly drawn Perth at the 1997 General Election. He was again defeated by Roseanna Cunningham but had some consolation in cutting her majority in half.

On July 28, 1997 the Labour Member of Parliament for Paisley South, Gordon McMaster, committed suicide. Alexander, who grew up in Renfrewshire, was chosen to contest the by-election and he was duly elected to serve as the Member of Parliament for Paisley South on November 6, 1997.

Alexander took a successful co-ordinating role in his party's campaign for the 2001 General Election. He was rewarded by Tony Blair and was appointed as the Minister of State with responsibility for "e-commerce and competitiveness" and the Department for Trade and Industry in June 2001.

In May 2002, Alexander was transferred to the Cabinet Office to continue to serve in the same task. Then, in June 2003, he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; it was suggested that this was so that he could help plan for the next general election. However, Alan Milburn came out of retirement for the post in September 2004, and so Alexander was made the Minister of State for Trade at both the Department for Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. After the 2005 General Election, he was given the role of Minister of State for Europe, part of the Foreign Office, with special provision to attend Cabinet. This job is seen as crucial to successfully piloting the referendum on the European Constitution, a significant electoral pledge by Labour. On June 7, 2005, he was made a Member of the Privy Council.

Alexander is on the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, and his sister, Wendy Alexander, is also involved in politics, as an MSP. His father, a Church of Scotland minister, conducted the funeral of the inaugural First Minister of Scotland, Donald Dewar at Glasgow Cathedral in 2000. He is married to Jacqueline Christian and they have a son.

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