Andrew Adonis, Baron Adonis

Family and education

Adonis's father, Nikos, emigrated from Cyprus as a teenager, becoming a waiter in London, where he met Adonis's English mother. His mother left the family when he was three and has had no communication with him since. Shortly thereafter, Adonis was placed in care and lived in a council children's home until the age of 11, when he was awarded a local education authority grant to attend Kingham Hill School, a boarding school in Oxfordshire.

Adonis gained admittance to Keble College, Oxford, where he graduated with a First Class Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern History. He subsequently gained a doctorate with a thesis on the British aristocracy of the late 19th century at Christ Church, before being appointed to a Fellowship in History and Politics at Nuffield College.

From 1991 to 1996, he was an education and industry correspondent at the Financial Times, eventually becoming their public policy editor. In 1996, he moved to The Observer to work as a political columnist, leader writer and editor.

Early political career

From 1987 until 1991 Adonis was an Oxford City Councillor for the Social Democratic Party and later the Liberal Democrats, representing the North Ward. In 1994, he was selected by the Liberal Democrats as their Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Westbury Constituency, but he resigned after 18 months. The following year, he joined the Labour Party.

During the mid- to late-1990s, he was politically active in Islington North, the constituency represented by Jeremy Corbyn, and was selected to contest St George's Ward for Islington London Borough Council in 1998. He withdrew from the process before the election, however, upon being offered a position in the Number 10 Policy Unit as a constitutional and educational policy advisor in 1997. He remained in this role until 2001, when he was promoted to become Head of the Policy Unit.

On 16 May 2005 he was created a life peer as Baron Adonis, of Camden Town in the London Borough of Camden, elevation to membership of the House of Lords making possible his appointment as a Government Minister without ever having been elected to Parliament.

In government

Following his appointment to the House of Lords, Adonis became the Minister of State for Education in the Department for Education and Skills, which was later renamed the Department for Children, Schools and Families. He was closely involved in the London Challenge. Having been the architect of the academies policy in the Policy Unit, Adonis was also able to be the driving force in Government behind the programme, which replaced failing and under-performing comprehensive schools with all-ability, independently managed academies, run on a not-for profit basis. By the time he left the Department in October 2008, 133 academies were open and 300 more were in the pipeline. Independent studies by the National Audit Office and the London School of Economics attest to the success of academies in raising educational standards.

Adonis also encouraged state schools to adopt practices of the private sector and generally believed in giving individual schools more independence and autonomy from central government and the local education authorities. His criticism of under-performing comprehensives made him unpopular with some trade union members and some on the Labour Party's left-wing. Adonis was also popular with some Opposition politicians, in particular the then-Conservative Education Spokesman Michael Gove, who once declared, "We are on the same page as Andrew Adonis."

Having initially kept his position when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, on 3 October 2008 Adonis was reshuffled to the Department for Transport to become Minister of State. In May 2009, while reviewing potential cycle "super highways" with Kulveer Ranger and Mayor Boris Johnson, the group had a "near-death" experience when a passing lorry's back door 'suddenly flew open, dragged a parked car into the street and smashed into another – just feet from the group'. On 5 June 2009, Adonis was promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Transport and was sworn in as a Member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. In this role, he pioneered the plan for High Speed 2, the proposed high-speed railway line from London to Birmingham and the north of England. The plan was published shortly before the 2010 election, and has since been adopted and taken forward, largely unchanged, by the coalition government. Adonis also planned and announced the electrification of the Great Western Main Line from London Paddington to Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea, and the electrification of lines in the north-west from Manchester to Liverpool and Manchester to Preston. This electrification programme, except for the Cardiff to Swansea section of the Great Western, is also being taken forward by the coalition government.

Adonis was a key figure in the aftermath of the 2010 general election, which produced a hung parliament. He was reputed to favour a Lib-Lab deal and, given his Liberal background, was a member of Labour's negotiation team that attempted, ultimately in vain, to form a government with the Liberal Democrats. After the Liberal Democrats formed a coalition government with the Conservative Party, Adonis stepped down from frontline politics.

Adonis later returned to active politics in 2012 as part of Ed Miliband's Shadow Cabinet reshuffle. He worked with Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna on crafting Labour's industrial strategy, and has also taken up roles as Shadow Minister for Infrastructure in the House of Lords, and overseeing the Armitt Review looking at future infrastructure plans for the Labour Party.

Subsequent career

In July 2010, Adonis became the Director of the Institute for Government, an independent charity with cross-party support and Whitehall governance working to improve government effectiveness. Adonis left the Institute for Government in January 2012 in order to become Chair of Progress, an internal Labour Party organisation. Having already been appointed President of the Independent Academies Association, in 2012 Adonis was also appointed a Liveryman Honoris Causa of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, one of the major charitable promoters of academies.

He is also a Trustee of Teach First, the charity which recruits graduates to teach in state schools, a Trustee of the vocational education charity Edge, and a Governor of the Baker-Dearing Trust, which supports the establishment of University Technical Colleges, technical schools for 14- to 18-year-olds. He has been a Director of RM Plc since October 2011. His book on education reform – Education, Education, Education – was published by Biteback in September 2012. In November 2014, he was appointed visiting professor at King's College London.

Adonis considered standing to be Labour's candidate for Mayor of London in 2016, but ended his putative campaign in February 2015, endorsing Tessa Jowell.

In October 2015, he resigned the Labour Party whip in the House of Lords to sit as a non-affiliated Peer and lead a newly created National Infrastructure Commission.

Personal life

Adonis was formerly married to Kathryn Davies, who was once a student of his; the couple had two children. Adonis and Davies divorced in 2015.

Styles of address

Books

Articles