Nick Boles

Early life

Boles is the son of Sir Jack Boles, the Head of the National Trust from 1975 to 1983, and the great-nephew of Conservative MP Dennis Boles.

Boles was a scholar at Winchester College before studying PPE at Magdalen College, Oxford, then winning a Kennedy Scholarship to study for a Master's in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Career

In 1995, he founded a small DIY supply business, Longwall Holdings Limited, where he is non-executive chairman, having served as the chief executive until 2000. In 1998, he was elected to Westminster City Council for the West End ward comprising Mayfair and Soho. He was chairman of the Housing Committee from 1999 to 2001, before stepping down in 2002. During much of this time, Boles shared a flat with fellow Conservative activists Michael Gove and Ivan Massow.

He and Gove, along with fellow MPs Ed Vaizey, David Cameron, George Osborne and Rachel Whetstone, were often described as being the Conservative Party's 'Notting Hill Set'. He founded the think tank Policy Exchange in 2002 and served as the Director until leaving the organisation in 2007 to avoid a potential conflict of interest.

Boles was the Conservative Party candidate for the Labour-held marginal seat of Hove for the May 2005 general election. He received some media attention during 2005 election by being an openly gay Conservative candidate for a winnable seat. However, Celia Barlow retained the seat for Labour. The share of the Conservative vote fell by two percent. He was a candidate in the Conservative primary for the London mayoral election, 2008 but withdrew after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Boles recovered from his illness and in October 2007 was selected as the prospective Conservative candidate to contest Grantham and Stamford, the seat occupied by Quentin Davies, who switched allegiance from the Conservatives to Labour earlier in 2007. In May 2008, he was appointed as the Chief of Staff for the new Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson for a period of three months. In the later half of 2008, he started work on preparing the Conservatives for potential government by meeting senior civil servants to discuss how to implement Conservative policies if they won the next general election.

He was elected as member for Grantham and Stamford on 6 May 2010 with a majority of 14,826 votes. He was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Schools Minister, Nick Gibb in 2010.

Boles was Minister for Planning between November 2012 and August 2014 He introduced a "presumption for sustainable development" aimed at making new housing development easier, which required councils to create local plans identifying areas that were suitable for further building. In a November 2013 speech, at a conference fringe meeting, he argued that despite their unpopularity the reforms were "making the world a slightly better place", but told Conservative Party activists if he was still planning minister after the next election they should shoot him. In August 2014 Boles was appointed Minister for Skills, which included responsibilities for education and construction.

On 26 October 2016, Boles announced that a cancerous tumour been had found in his head and he expected to undergo treatment soon. The following February, he took a trip out of hospital after a third round of chemotherapy in order to vote for the government's bill on withdrawal from the European Union. He announced on 19 April 2017 he would be standing at the 2017 general election. Although his successful treatment has finished, he does not expect to have fully recovered until the end of the summer.

Policy positions

Boles has called for the forming of a "National Liberal" faction within the Conservative Party formed of social liberals with fiscal conservative views, and suggested some Conservative candidates might benefit from running for election under that name to win over voters who did not consider themselves Conservatives.

In July 2012 Boles used a speech at the Resolution Foundation think tank to call for:

Boles is a member of the Cambridge-based think tank the Henry Jackson Society, which advocates a pro-active approach to the spread of democracy in the world. In 2012 Boles was listed as being a participant in that year's Bilderberg Group meeting.

Boles supported the Remain campaign in the European Union membership referendum in 2016.

Boles is also a supporter of Land Value Tax.

Personal life

Boles is gay, and in May 2011, he entered a civil partnership, as noted in his contribution to the parliamentary debate on the Middle East on 16 May 2011. He is the brother-in-law of former Conservative MP Dudley Fishburn.

In August 2012, he was criticised for claiming £678.80 in Parliamentary expenses for Hebrew lessons so that he could talk to his partner.