Julian Smith

Julian Smith is the Conservative MP for Skipton and Ripon and the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Educated at Millfield School, Smith attended the University of Birmingham, where he read History and English. Smith worked in recruitment for ARG International for 11 years between 1999 and 2010 before being elected to parliament. Smith first won a majority of 9,950 and was initially welcomed onto the Scottish Affairs Committee. He served as the parliamentary private secretary to both Sir Alan Duncan, who then was a minister in the Department for International Development (DfID), and later Justine Greening, the then international development secretary. A keen supporter of Theresa May’s premiership, Smith was a member of the small cohort that led the future prime minister’s leadership campaign. He was appointed chief whip in November 2017 and tasked with the major responsibility of gathering votes for the administration’s withdrawal agreement. Smith was kept in cabinet upon Boris Johnson’s accession to Downing Street in July 2019. Smith notably characterised May’s government in a BBC documentary as “[the] worst example of ill-discipline in cabinet in British political history”, noting that parliamentarians should have been more prepared for legislation mandating a “softer Brexit” in light of the 2017 general election result.