Nigel Dodds
Nigel Dodds (born August 20, 1958 in Derry , Northern Ireland ) is a Northern Irish lawyer and politician and has been the deputy chairman of the Unionist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) since 2008 .
biography
Nigel Dodds was born in 1958 to a Protestant Northern Irish family in Derry. He first attended the Portora Royal School in Enniskillen and then studied law at St. John's College at the University of Cambridge and at the Institute of Professional Legal Studies at Queen's University Belfast . After that he received approval as a barrister . From 1984 to 1996 Dodds worked in the Secretariat of the European Parliament in Brussels.
In 1985 Dodds was elected to the Belfast City Council for the Castle area in North Belfast. He was elected Mayor of Belfast from 1988 to 1989 and 1991 to 1992 . When he was first elected in 1988, he was 29 years old, making him the youngest mayor in the city's history. During these years he was active in various local and regional politics in Northern Ireland and as a member of the Senate of Queen's University Belfast. In 1997 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to local politics.
In the 2001 general election he was elected to the DUP in the constituency of Belfast North with 40.8% of the vote in the Parliament of Westminster. He was able to win the constituency again in the general election in 2005 (45.6%), 2010 (47.0%), 2015 (47.0%) and 2017 (46.2%). In the elections from 2015 he benefited from the fact that the rival unionist UUP no longer put up its own candidate in the constituency. In the general election on December 13, 2019 , Dodds lost the long-held constituency of Belfast North to his rival candidate John Finucane ( Sinn Féin ). Dodds received 43.1% and Finucane 47.1% of the vote.
In the Northern Ireland Regional Government, established after the 1998 election to the Northern Ireland Assembly , Dodds was briefly Minister for Social Development from 1999 to 2000 and 2001 to 2002, and after the 2007 election Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment (2007-2008) and Finance and Human Resources ( 2008-2009). In 2010 he resigned from the Northern Ireland Assembly.
After the party founder Ian Paisley was replaced at the helm of the DUP by Peter Robinson in 2008, Nigel Dodds was elected as his deputy.
In 2010 he was appointed a member of the Privy Council (" Privy Council ").
Personal
Nigel Dodds has two children with his wife, Diane. Diane Dodds is also politically active and a member of the DUP in the European Parliament.
Web links
- Website of Nigel Dodds
- Nigel Dodds - Northern Ireland Excluded from TV Election Debates , interview with Nigel Dodds with Andrew Neill from the BBC , after the decision not to allow the DUP to participate in the central television debates before the 2015 general election
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d About Nigel Dodds. nigeldodds.co.uk, accessed May 14, 2015 .
- ^ London Gazette (Supplement). No. 54794, HMSO, London, June 13, 1997, p. 10 ( PDF , accessed November 7, 2016, English).
- ↑ Northern Ireland election results: DUP suffers losses. BBC News, November 13, 2019, accessed November 15, 2019 .
- ^ Belfast North Parliamentary constituency. BBC News, accessed December 15, 2019 .
- ↑ Angela Balakrishnan: Robinson succeeds Paisley as DUP leader. the Guardian, accessed May 14, 2015 .
- ^ European parliament MEPs: Diane DODDS. European Parliament, accessed on May 13, 2015 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dodds, Nigel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Northern Irish politician (DUP), member of the House of Commons |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 20th August 1958 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Londonderry , Northern Ireland |