Graham Stringer

Early life

Stringer attended Christ Church Primary School in Beswick, Manchester, and Moston Brook High School for Boys in Harpurhey, Manchester.

After graduating in Chemistry from the University of Sheffield in 1971, Stringer worked as an analytical chemist.

Stringer became a local councillor in Manchester in 1979, and was Manchester City Council leader from 1984 to 1996. He was also chair of Manchester Airport plc from 1996 to 1997.

Parliamentary career

Stringer was first elected in 1997 taking over the Blackley seat of the retired Kenneth Eastham. He is only the third Member of Parliament (MP) in the constituency since 1964, which has been a "safe" Labour seat since Paul Rose defeated Eric Johnson that year.

Stringer was as a member of the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee until 1999. He then served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office until 2001. After a spell on the back benches and as a government whip, he spent the last six years of the Labour Government as a member of the Transport Select Committee. He campaigned against a proposed Congestion Charge in Greater Manchester.

Stringer gained some notoriety when he became the first MP to publicly call for Gordon Brown to resign as Prime Minister. Following boundary changes which abolished the Manchester Blackley constituency, Stringer successfully contested the successor seat of Blackley and Broughton at the 2010 general election.

In January 2011 he called for Sir Alex Ferguson, a lifelong Labour voter, who led Manchester United to numerous football trophy successes since becoming manager in 1986, to be given a seat in the House of Lords. Two years, later Ed Miliband offered Alex Ferguson a seat in the House of Lords but he turned it down.

In September 2011 he contributed to the book What Next for Labour? Ideas for a New Generation; his piece was entitled "Transport Policy for the Twenty-First Century".

In January 2014 he, along with 98 others, voted for the Dominic Raab amendment to the Immigration Bill.

Stringer has also established a reputation as a prominent Eurosceptic in the Labour Party who favoured a referendum on the EU He called for Britain to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum, describing the EU as a barrier to a progressive government

He was a vocal critic of former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who he accused of running an "unforgivably unprofessional" campaign in May 2014 and referred to as "not an asset on the doorsteps" when campaigning in October 2014.

Personal life

On 7 January 1999 he married Kathryn Carr in New Orleans; the couple have one son.

Views and interests

Stringer's interests are specified on the UK Parliament website as "urban regeneration, House of Lords reform, revitalising local democracy, aviation and airports, bus regulation, science policy". His financial interests as listed on the UK Parliament website show payments of £1320 in the period 29 December 2011 to 3 September 2012 from polling, broadcasting and training organisations and a visit to Saudi Arabia to meet politicians and human rights groups and strengthen political ties.

In a 2009 online column, Stringer denied the existence of dyslexia, calling it "a cruel fiction" invented by "the education establishment" to divert blame for illiteracy from "their eclectic and incomplete methods for instruction". The charities Dyslexia Action and the British Dyslexia Association criticised Stringer's claims.

As a member of the Science and Technology Committee, Stringer participated in the investigation into the Climatic Research Unit email controversy ("Climategate") in March 2010, questioning Professor Jones closely on transparency and other issues; in the five-member group producing the report he voted against the other three voting members on every vote, representing a formulation more critical of the CRU and climate scientists. Stringer was the only MP on the committee with a scientific background. He is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, an organisation which promotes climate change denial.

In a 2011 op-ed, Stringer criticised the British inquiries into the CRU email controversy, writing that the controversy "demanded independent and objective scrutiny of the science by independent panels. This did not happen."