Jack Straw
John Whitaker "Jack" Straw (born 3 August 1946) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn since 1979. He served as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 and Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons from 2006 to 2007 under Tony Blair. From 2007 to 2010 he was the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and the Secretary of State for Justice, appointed as part of Prime minister Gordon Brown's first Cabinet. Straw is one of only three people to have served in Cabinet continuously from 1997 to 2010 (the others being Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling).
When the Labour Party lost power in May 2010, he briefly became the Shadow Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, but stood down from the frontbench after the Labour Party elected a new Shadow Cabinet.
Read more about Jack Straw: Early Life, Member of Parliament, Personal Life
Famous quotes containing the words jack and/or straw:
“This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. The House That Jack Built (l. 1–3)
“The tender skin does not shrink from bayonets, the timid woman is not scared by fagots; the rack is not frightful, nor the rope ignominious. The poor Puritan, Antony Parsons, at the stake, tied straw on his head when the fire approached him, and said, “This is God’s hat.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)