About Jack Straw
John Whitaker Straw (born 3 August 1946) is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He held two of the traditional Great Offices of State, as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 under Blair. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015. Straw was born in Essex and privately educated both at Oaklands School, where his mother worked as a teacher, and later at Brentwood School. He studied law at the University of Leeds before having a career as a barrister. He served as an adviser to cabinet minister Barbara Castle and was selected to succeed her as MP for the Blackburn constituency when she stood down at the 1979 general election. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and the Secretary of State for Justice throughout the Brown ministry. Straw is one of only three individuals to have served in Cabinet continuously during the Labour governments from 1997 to 2010; the others were Brown and Alistair Darling. After the Labour Party lost power in the 2010 general election, he briefly served as Shadow Deputy Prime Minister and Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, with the intention of standing down from the frontbench after the subsequent 2010 Labour Party Shadow Cabinet election. These policies won praise from Margaret Thatcher who once declared "I would trust Jack Straw's judgement. Straw's first Shadow Cabinet post was as Shadow Education Secretary from 1987 to 1992 and he briefly served as Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment under John Smith from 1992 to 1994. He won the seat at the 1979 general election. When Tony Blair became leader following Smith's death, he chose Straw to succeed him as Shadow Home Secretary.
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