Geoff Hoon

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Geoff Hoon at a press conference in the USA

Geoffrey William Hoon (born December 6, 1953 in Derby , England) is a British lawyer and politician and a member of the Labor Party.

From October 1999 to May 2005 he was Secretary of State for Defense in the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair and thus British Defense Minister . After the last general election in 2005 Hoon was appointed Lord Privy Seal (Lord Privy Seal) and the House leaders appointed; The latter is a more representative position with cabinet rank. On May 5, 2006, he was appointed Minister for Europe, before he lost that office when Gordon Brown took office on June 28, 2007, but remained a member of the cabinet as Chief Whip .

From October 2008 to June 2009 he was Secretary of Transportation under Gordon Brown. On June 5, 2009, he submitted his resignation as the fifth cabinet member within a week and the third within a day.

education

Hoon was born in Derby, Derbyshire , UK . He attended school in Nottingham and worked in a furniture factory from 1972 to 1973. He then went to the prestigious University of Cambridge and studied law at the local Jesus College .

Career

After finishing his studies, he worked as a lecturer at the University of Leeds between 1976 and 1982 . During this time, in 1978, he was admitted to the bar. He was also for a short time (1979-1980) in his field visiting professor at the American University of Louisville in the US state of Kentucky . After the end of his teaching activities, he founded his own law firm in Nottingham.

The member of the Labor Party began his political career in 1984. For the constituencies of Ashfield and Derbyshire, he moved to the European Parliament , to which he was a member until 1994.

In 1992 he ran in the Ashfield constituency and was elected with 54.9 percent of the vote. He has been able to defend this mandate three times so far, the last time in 2005, where he received 48.6 percent of the vote.

In the House of Commons , he was quickly appointed spokesman for trade and industry. In 1994 he rose to the position of opposition whip - the person who has to ensure the voting discipline of the opposition (in Germany this task is taken over by the parliamentary group chairman).

After the overwhelming election victory of the Labor Party in 1997, the new Prime Minister Blair chose one of his confidants, law professor Hoon, for his government team. There he first served as Parliamentary State Secretary in the Office of the Lord Chancellor, and from May 1999 as Minister of State in the Foreign Ministry. In October 1999, Blair made him Secretary of Defense. He held this post after the Labor Party's renewed election victory in June 2001, as a result of which Blair filled many government posts.

tasks

During Hoon's tenure there were various foreign missions by the British Army, either under its own command or as part of operations by NATO or the United Nations .

So Hoon sent troops to Macedonia , Bosnia and Croatia , the Persian Gulf and Sierra Leone . On behalf of the UN, British soldiers completed peace missions in Cyprus and East Timor , Georgia , the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kuwait .

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 , Great Britain became the closest member of the anti-terror coalition founded by US President George W. Bush . Hoon mobilized many troops for the following Afghan war (2001) and the Iraq war (2003).

In close cooperation with the USA, Hoon had assigned 46,000 soldiers, 70 fighter planes, 26 warships, 120 battle tanks and 150 armored personnel carriers, a considerable part of the British army. He also demonstrated his ties to the United States by declaring in the House of Commons that Great Britain would be ready to use nuclear weapons against “ rogue states ” if necessary .

During his tenure, Hoon tried to downsize and modernize the British Army. In July 2004, he announced that 19,000 jobs would be cut in the three armed forces and 10,000 jobs would be cut in the civil administrations in the coming years. At the same time, he planned to increase the defense budget to 50.6 billion euros by 2007/2008.

He also made sure that the British Army reduced its dependence on the most important and largest British arms manufacturer BAE Systems . For the construction of two new aircraft carriers, for example, partial orders were also awarded to the Thales Group for the first time . With this, Hoon showed that when awarding government contracts, he relies on economic criteria, not just, as is usual in armaments, on national security or labor market interests.

Public opinion

In the phase following the fall of Baghdad on March 9, 2003, there was harsh criticism not only of Hoon but also of Prime Minister Blair for their actions. This was primarily due to the so-called Kelly affair and the Hutton report that followed . BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan had reported that British government dossiers on Iraqi weapons research - which had been cited as a reason for war - had been exaggerated by Blair's communications chief, Alastair Cambell. Gilligan relied on the government weapons expert and microbiologist David Kelly, without giving his name. This was only publicized by indiscretions by the government, whereupon Kelly committed suicide.

Political observers attested Hoon "cool professionalism" during his tenure. In the press he was sometimes referred to as " Rumsfeld's branch manager" because of his proximity to the USA . The picture changed in the course of the investigations after David Kelly's death. Unlike Tony Blair, who told the Investigative Committee that he was "fully responsible" for the disclosure of Kelly's name, Hoon said he had "had nothing to do with it."

He also pretended to be ignorant of a second affair. In May 2004, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that not only American but also British soldiers had been involved in the torture of Iraqi prisoners. Although many observers expected his resignation, he remained in office. He was only transferred to the post of Leader of the House of Commons after the general election in May 2005 .

Private

Hoon has been married to Elaine Ann Dumelow since 1981. They have a son, Christopher, and two daughters: Julia and Nathalie. According to his own statements, he is interested in music and is a fan of the English football club "Derby County FC".

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Stern Online on five ministerial resignations within a week under Gordon Brown [1]

Web links

• Short biography for the newspaper "The Guardian" ( Memento from July 11, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
• Hoons testimony before the Hutton Tribunal in a PDF by the Guardian (133 kB)
• Official website of Geoff Hoon