James Brokenshire
Sure-footed Tory minister who rose rapidly, tackling tough problems such as post-brexit Ulster
JAMES BROKENSHIRE, who has died aged 53, was a safe pair of hands in the governments of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson; but his career was truncated by twice having to resign to undergo treatment for lung cancer, and also by being left out of Johnson’s first ministerial team.
A thoughtful but firm Right-winger, Brokenshire on the way up served for six years as a Home Office minister, initially with Mrs May as Home Secretary; he was in her Cabinet as Northern Ireland Secretary and Communities Secretary, then was reappointed to the Home Office by Johnson as Minister of State, finally resigning in July this year as his treatment continued.
Before resigning for the first time on his 50th birthday to undergo surgery, for 18 months Brokenshire oversaw a situation in Ulster dominated by two intractable issues, neither within his power to resolve. One was the prospect of a “hard Border” with the Republic following the referendum vote for Brexit; the other the collapse of Ulster’s power-sharing Executive over the “Cash for Ash” scandal.
His task was complicated because Mrs May’s calling of a snap election for June 2017 backfired and left her dependent on support at Westminster from the Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP were firmly against any Brexit solution that weakened the province’s ties with mainland Britain, and its leader, Arlene Foster, was deeply implicated in “Cash for Ash”.
Returning as Communities Secretary for 15 months until Johnson succeeded Mrs May, he proved sure-footed and innovative, the continuing deadlock over Brexit affecting him less than many Cabinet colleagues.
Johnson omitted Brokenshire from his initial team, but in a reshuffle in February 2020 recalled him to be the minister handling security issues.
James Peter Brokenshire was born at Southend-on-sea on January 8 1968. From the Davenant Foundation school, Loughton, he read Law at the University of Exeter. He qualified as a solicitor and joined Jones Day Gouldens in 1991, becoming a partner on the company and financial law side until his election to Parliament.
Brokenshire won his first seat – Hornchurch – at the 2005 election, defeating its Labour MP John Cryer by 480 votes. Cameron brought him on to the front bench after a year, as shadow minister for crime reduction.
With his constituency due for abolition, Brokenshire tried for the new seat of Hornchurch & Upminster, but it went to Upminster’s sitting MP Angela Watkinson. He then tried without success for Witham, Gillingham & Rainham, Grantham & Stamford, North East Cambridgeshire, and Maidstone & The Weald.
At this point Cameron withdrew the whip from Derek Conway, MP for Old Bexley & Sidcup, after it emerged that he had been paying his son a parliamentary salary while the son was studying in Newcastle. Conway did not seek re-election, and Brokenshire was selected in his place.
Brokenshire campaigned against the closure of accident and emergency services at Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, and took the seat at the 2010 election with a majority of 15,857, but the A&E closed that November. Nevertheless, he did help to secure a Guy’s Cancer Centre for Queen Mary’s, and was asked to open it.
He would hold the seat with almost the same majority in 2015 and 2017, increasing it in 2019 to 18,952.
In Cameron’s Coalition government, Brokenshire became Parliamentary Under-secretary for Crime Reduction in the Home Office team headed by Mrs May. With the Coalition committed to cutting a ballooning budget deficit, one of his first moves was to announce the closure of the loss-making Forensic Science Service, with its role to be taken on by the private sector.
Critics claimed that this would cost hundreds of jobs, and degrade forensic research and its application to criminal justice; a Select Committee inquiry criticised the way the closure was handled.
Brokenshire called for a new approach to the war on drugs, arguing that it should focus on getting addicts off them rather than harm reduction.
In May 2011 he also took on the security brief, with responsibility for updating plans to tackle terrorist content online, against resistance from internet companies and freedom of speech groups.
In October 2014 his responsibilities changed again, to Security and Immigration. He pushed through the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, saying it would “send the strongest possible message to criminals that if you are involved in this disgusting trade in human beings, you will be arrested, you will be prosecuted and you will be locked up.”
He stayed in post after the 2015 election – when Cameron won an outright majority – then after the vote for Brexit in June 2016 and Cameron’s replacement by Mrs May, she promoted him to Northern Ireland Secretary.
The impact of Brexit on the border was Brokenshire’s immediate headache. Brussels was proposing that Northern Ireland remain in the EU’S customs union even if Britain left it – which would throw up a barrier between the province and the rest of the United Kingdom. The solution eventually found under Johnson would be close to this, imposing severe strains.
“Cash for Ash” was as hard to unfold. Mrs Foster came in for heavy criticism after a whistleblower revealed that a Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme she had sponsored when Minister for Enterprise had overspent by £400 million. The scheme was reputedly bedevilled by fraud, but when senior civil servants suggested closing it, her office had pressured them to keep it open.
Mrs Foster refused to accept any blame. Sinn Fein, sharing power with the DUP in the Executive, pressed for a full accounting for the scandal, and when she dug her heels in, Sinn Fein’s Martin Mcguinness resigned as Deputy First Minister on January 9 2017.
Mcguinness’s resignation – he died not long after – automatically resulted in Mrs Foster losing office. When Sinn Fein declined to nominate a new deputy First Minister, the Executive collapsed on January 16 and its powers passed to Brokenshire, who ordered an Assembly election.
Although the DUP lost 10 seats, the deadlock continued and Brokenshire continued to run the province through its civil servants. But Mrs May’s electoral setback three months later, and her subsequent dependence on Mrs Foster’s party, left him unable to exert any leverage over the DUP. Before long, nationalists were accusing him of setting out to be a “pro-dup secretary of state”.
This view was encouraged by Brokenshire’s conclusion that too much effort was expended on criminal inquiries over the actions of soldiers
He called for a new approach to the war on drugs, arguing that it should focus on getting addicts off them, rather than harm reduction
and RUC officers during the Troubles, while unsolved terrorist crimes received less attention. Brokenshire was enjoying a family break in Northern Ireland in September 2017 – a respite from trying to restore powersharing at Stormont – when the warning sign for cancer came. Despite being fit, healthy and a non-smoker, he started coughing up blood. He underwent a series of diagnostic tests while continuing his work in government.
He only informed Mrs May the day before his hospital appointment, as they worked late on what would be a breakthrough next day in the Brexit talks. “I can’t be around tomorrow,” he told her, “because I’ve got a bronchoscopy.”
Hours later at St Thomas’s Hospital a lesion on his right lung was discovered requiring surgery to remove it, along with a surrounding portion of the lung. Advised it could take him months to recover, he told Mrs May he could not continue in his Cabinet role.
He resigned as Northern Ireland Secretary on January 8 2018, and was replaced by Karen Bradley. He underwent surgery a week later, and in a month was back at the Commons, briefly – as it would turn out – proving an active backbencher. That March, he took up the complaints of constituents who had been trapped in trains near Lewisham for several hours in snow and freezing temperatures; a number had got out and walked. “There was a real risk,” he said, “that someone could have been very seriously injured.”
Returning to the Cabinet as Communities Secretary the following month, he piloted through the Tenant Fees Act, which capped the deposit a landlord or letting agency can take from a new tenant and largely abolished administration fees.
In April 2019 Brokenshire sacked the philosopher Sir Roger Scruton as chairman of the Government’s “Building Better, Building Beautiful” commission, for disparaging remarks about Islam, China and the philanthropist George Soros attributed to him by the New Statesman.
A campaign by The Spectator’s
Douglas Murray led to the tapes of the interview being published, showing that Scruton had been misquoted. The Statesman published a correction, and Brokenshire apologised to Scruton and reinstated him.
As a close associate of Mrs May, Brokenshire was vulnerable when Johnson became prime minister weeks later, and duly found himself on the back benches. But his experience and judgment were valued, and within five months he was back at the Home Office under Priti Patel.
The cancer returned, though, and after a year he took leave of absence to undergo further treatment, resigning five months later as “my treatment is taking longer than hoped.”
James Brokenshire married, in 1999, Catherine Mamelok, who survives him with their son and two daughters.