Andrew Mitchell
Sir Andrew John Bower Mitchell KCMG is a British politician who was Shadow Foreign Secretary from July to November 2024 and served as Deputy Foreign Secretary between February and July 2024. He was also Minister of State for Development and Africa between October 2022 and July 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he has served as the Member of Parliament for Sutton Coldfield since 2001 and previously served as the MP for Gedling from 1987 to 1997. Mitchell served in the Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development from 2010 to 2012 and then briefly as Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons in late 2012.
Mitchell studied history at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was elected President of the Cambridge Union in 1978. He was elected to the House of Commons for Gedling in Nottinghamshire at the 1987 general election. He served in the second Major government as a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury from 1994 to 1995 and as a junior minister at the Department of Social Security from 1995 to 1997. Mitchell lost his seat to the Labour Party's Vernon Coaker at the 1997 general election. In 2001, he contested Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, a safe seat for the Conservatives, and was returned to Parliament. Mitchell was appointed to the Shadow cabinet in 2005 as Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. In this role, he founded Project Umubano, a Conservative Party social action project in Rwanda and Sierra Leone in central and west Africa.
Under the coalition government of David Cameron, he served as Secretary of State for International Development from 2010 to 2012. In the September 2012 cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed chief whip. Amid public pressure due to the Plebgate scandal, Mitchell resigned from the government the following month, and returned to the backbenches. In 2022, after serving on the backbenches for 10 years, Mitchell made a return to government as Minister of State for Development and Africa following the appointment of Rishi Sunak as prime minister. He was appointed to the honorific title of Deputy Foreign Secretary in April 2024. After the defeat of the Conservative party in the 2024 general election, Mitchell became Shadow Foreign Secretary in the Shadow Cabinet of Rishi Sunak.
Early life and career
Mitchell was born at Hampstead in north London, the son of Sir David Bower Mitchell, a future Conservative MP of 33 years, and Government Minister. He was educated at Ashdown House School and Rugby School, where—as a self-confessed "stern disciplinarian"—he earned the nickname "Thrasher".In February 1975, he joined the Royal Tank Regiment as a second lieutenant on a Short Service Limited Commission, spending time in Cyprus where his unit was carrying out peacekeeping duties. In October of that year, he transferred to the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve. He resigned his commission on 9 February 1977.
He went to the University of Cambridge, where he read History at Jesus College. He was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association in the Michaelmas Term of 1977. He served as President of the Cambridge Union 1978–79, after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978, later proceeding to Master of Arts.
Mitchell worked for Lazard, the investment bank, where he worked with British companies seeking large-scale overseas contracts.
Political career
Early career (1983–2005)
Mitchell was the only Conservative member of Islington Health Authority in north London during the 1980s and, in that capacity, he called for the IHA to make greater use of competitive tendering in the allocation of service contracts.After unsuccessfully contesting Sunderland South at the 1983 general election, Mitchell entered Parliament in 1987 at the age of 31 as MP for Gedling, Nottinghamshire, serving in the House of Commons concurrently with his father until 1997. In 1988, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, he became PPS to William Waldegrave, who was Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In 1990, he became PPS to John Wakeham, who was Secretary of State for Energy. In 1992, under John Major, he became Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party, and in the same year was appointed as an Assistant Government Whip. In 1993, he became a Government Whip. In 1995, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Social Security, a position he held until 1997.
Mitchell lost his Commons seat with Tony Blair's Labour victory at the 1997 election. He was returned to Parliament at the 2001 election as the MP for Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham. He held no shadow ministerial or organisational position under the leadership of Iain Duncan Smith, but in November 2003, under new leader Michael Howard, he became Shadow Economic Affairs Minister. In 2004, he became Shadow Home Office Minister, primarily dealing with police matters.
Shadow International Development Secretary (2005–2010)
In May 2005, Mitchell was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. Following Howard's decision to stand down as leader following the Conservatives' 2005 general election defeat, Mitchell ran the unsuccessful leadership campaign of David Davis, but retained his Shadow Cabinet position under the winner of the leadership election, David Cameron.Project Umubano
Mitchell led groups of Conservative volunteers from the professions in social development projects in Rwanda for three consecutive summers, from 2007 to 2009, as part of Project Umubano, and kept a detailed diary of their activities and experiences. The volunteers focused on five areas: health, education, justice, the private sector, and a community centre construction project. In 2008, Mitchell himself taught English to over a thousand Rwandan primary school teachers. It was during one of these trips that Mitchell and his aides are reported to have verbally abused one of the volunteers, a student journalist who had circulated a draft newspaper article she had written stressing the positives of the project, but also pointing out some problems with its operation. The journalist, Lucy Kinder, claimed Mitchell texted her father, a friend from Mitchell's university days: "They are threatening her with physical violence and I can't say I blame them".Views on Gaza
Mitchell expressed support for the idea of a televised appeal for Gaza on the BBC in 2009, a subject which had aroused much controversy on both sides of the argument. He said that, while the matter was ultimately for the BBC to decide, "We believe that they should allow the broadcast to proceed so that the British public, who have proved themselves so generous during recent emergencies in the Congo and Burma, can make their own judgement on the validity of the appeal".Following the resignation of Baroness Warsi during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Mitchell criticised repeated Israeli attacks on UN schools and called for an arms embargo, warning that the misery suffered by an "enormous number of innocent people" was poisoning attitudes.
International Development Secretary (2010–2012)
Following the general election and formation of the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition in May 2010, he became Secretary of State for International Development.Mitchell travelled to countries in need of aid. He visited Pakistan during the floods in 2010 and returned the following year. He also visited Haiti, to see the effects of the earthquake, and Somalia and Libya in 2011. He also addressed the United Nations General Assembly in 2010 to press the case for greater support for the developing world, strongly criticised the developed world for failing in its responsibilities towards it, and announced that Britain would double its aid contribution to Pakistan.Both in Opposition and Government, Mitchell asserted the need for transparency and value for money in British aid contributions to the developing world, with resources concentrated on the world's poorest and most troubled countries.
During the 2011 Battle of Tripoli, Mitchell said that the UK had learned from Iraq and had laid the groundwork for a post-Gaddafi Libya. While emphasising that the transition should be Libyan-led, he said that Libya's allies had outlined steps to ensure a smooth transition. He added, "We have made clear that there should be no revenge attacks," and, "Libyans have to work together for a new Libya. They should keep in place the sinews of security. The National Transitional Council in Benghazi has good informal connections with security officials in Tripoli and has told them: 'You've got a job, please help us keep stability'." He added that "Divisions between the rebels groups are overstated. The way the National Transitional Council has reached out gives us some confidence."
Mitchell accepted that a smaller aid budget might have meant fewer cuts elsewhere, but insisted that development projects also helped protect Britain. "Our security is not just provided by soldiers and tanks and fighter jets, it is also provided by training the police in Afghanistan, by building up governance structures in the Middle East and by getting girls into school in the Horn of Africa," he said, "Those things are all part of what makes us safer."