Character Information SheetNS Nation Name: Agarntrop
Character Name: David Richardson
Character Gender: Male
Character Age: 58
Character Height: 5' 11"
Character Weight: 185 lbs
Character Position/Role/Job: Shadow Secretary of State for Justice (2015-2018), Shadow Lord Chancellor (2015-2018), Shadow Minister for Justice (2012-2015), Secretary of State for Health (1998-2003), Minister of State for Health (1997-1998), Shadow Minister of State for Health (1994-1997), Shadow Parliamentary Under-secretary for Health (1992-1994), Member of Parliament for Warrington North (1992-Present), Councillor for the Warrington District of Cheshire County Council (1988-1992).
Appearance:
Character Constituency of Origin: Tatton
Character Constituency of Residence: Warrington North
Character Party Affiliation: Labour
Main Strengths: Strong experience, appeals to both socialist and centrist sides of the Labour Party, intellegent, decisive.
Main Weaknesses: Makes frequent gaffes, makes contraversial and divisive statements on occasion, overall a somewhat difficult person.
Biography:
David Jeremy Richardson was born on the 30th October 1960 to a middle class family in a village in Cheshire near Knutsford, where Richardson attended the local primary school. Richardson was noted by teachers to be intellegent but boisterous and unruly. Much to his discontent, Richardson's family moved from the village to the town of Warrington in 1968 due to Richardson's father's job as a consultant psychiatrist. Richardson, however, settled in to this environment soon enough and earned several O-levels and CSEs in maths, sciences and humanities, before earning A-levels in Politics, Engineering and Economics, and then completing a bachelor's degree at Durham University in Politics and Economics.
Richardson became a member of the Labour Party Young Socialists in 1976, and took an active role in its Cheshire branch. He took a comparably moderate position to most of its members who supported the
Militant Tendency group. This led to him eventually leaving the LPYS after he argued for Michael Foot to resign after the 1983 election result, calling him "useless" and "unelectable." He continued, however, to remain a member of the Labour Party, and strongly supported Neville Kirkbride's denunciation of the
Militant Tendency at the 1985 party conference.
Starting in 1984, Richardson worked for the Cheshire County council, collecting and analyzing data for them. He was then nominated to stand for the Warrington District on the council and he accepted such nomination. He was then elected in 1988 to serve as part of the Cheshire labour party at the time, where he worked notably and tirelessly and was thus nominated by the party to stand for the solid labour seat of Warrington North in 1992, where he easily won with a labour majority of over 12,000.
Shortly after the election, Richardson was appointed as a Shadow Parliamentary Under-secretary for Health, and was loyal to the party whip. Richardson spent the first two years of his time in parliament advocating for increased funding for healthcare services across the board. He accused the Tories of 'routine underinvestment' in healthcare.
Richardson supported Tom Blake at the 1994 labour leadership election, and was promoted to shadow Minister of State for Health shortly after Blake took office. He once again argued for more spending on the NHS and an increase in hospital staff numbers.
He retained his seat with a stonking mandate at the 1997 general election, acheiving a majority of over 19,000. He then assumed a ministerial position and went about attempting to acheive what he had intended to achieve in opposition, and influenced Tom Blake to dramatically increase funding for the Department for Health.
His pivotal role in this respect resulted in him being upgraded to Secretary of State for Health in 1998, when he became increasingly constrained by finances and bureaucracy, so had to temporarily set aside most of his ambitious plans, but still set about increasing investment in especially historically downtrodden hospitals and expanding GP coverage to remote communities in rural northern England and Scotland.
He was a major figure on the Labour Party campaign trail in the 2001 General Election, during which he promised "huge investment in new staff for our great National Health Service" if labour were elected and also stated that these investments will "affect every inch of Britain" and that "no place will be left behind for as long as I am health minister."
Richardson retained his seat at the 2001 general election with a majority of 15,156. He set to work in his department, although after 9/11 he began to develop a rift with the Prime Minister, due to his emphatic support for (not-Bush)'s war on terror, which Richardson was sceptical of. However, at least for the time being, Richardson mostly ignored this rift as he "had more important things to focus on for [his] department, like delivering on our election promises and securing a ramping up of our healthcare system," which he succesfully did in 2002.
Richardson was "appalled" at plans to invade Iraq in 2002, claiming that it was "ridiculous to start a conflict that will ultimately take thousands of lives when there is a clear diplomatic alternative," and that "we should take the sensible stance of our French and German partners, we are strong allies with the USA, but that does not mean that we are their puppets."
His noticable difference in attitude to the PM on this matter led to increasing calls for him to resign, which he eventually did reluctantly in February 2003, after it being speculated that the PM was planning to fire him. His official reasoning was so he could vote against the Iraq War, and denied any claims that he had been pressured by any senior Labour figures to resign.
This led to him returning to the backbenches where he fiercely and furiously argued against the Iraq War and frequently rebelled against the government on foreign policy motions, but mostly kept in line when it came to other bills proposed by the government. He retained his seat at the 2005 General Election, with a majority of over 12,000. He attributed the labour party's majority being cut from over 150 to 66 at the election to the "catastrophe" of the Iraq War.
After the 2005 election, he published a book entitled "English Nationalism: The Superiority Complex," criticising nationalists for assuming a false sense of British superiority and power rather than engaing in sensible and logical decisions. He also began to criticise the tabloid newspapers, especially after the phone hacking scandal of 2011, calling them "corrupt" and "manipulative," and was seen ripping up a copy of the
Daily Mail, with the 'enemies of the people' headline, on a live TV interview in November 2016.
He was a major voice for the adoption of Keynesian monetary measures after the 2008 crash, claiming it had shown that "deregulation has failed us miserably" and that the world must seek a new and more interventionist economic apporach he described as "new Keynesianism."
In the 2010 general election Richardson retained his seat with a majority of 6,771. Richardson blamed labour's wider election loss on the party's "stubborn retention of the previous economic policy, which, as history has shown, is the worst possible response to an economic crash."
Richardson supported Ted Merriment for the labour leadership contest in 2010, and developed a close relationship with Merriment and supported his changes to the Labour party that shifted it away from Blakeism. Richardson's close relationship with Merriment resulted in him being appointed shadow justice minister in 2012, where he argued against "hypocritical" budget cuts to the prison system.
Richardson retained his seat at the 2015 general election with an increased majority of 8,923. He originally supported (not Burnham) at the 2015 leadership election, although pledged his "full support" to (not Corbyn) after he was elected, and was promoted to shadow secretary of state for justice after the election, where he advocated for an end to austerity in the prison sector, the complete removal and replacement of IPPs, and more community service sentences rather than prison sentences or fines.
Richardson campaigned to remain in the 2016 EU Referendum. He was emphatically passionate about the issue and allegedly criticised (not Corbyn) for his lack of enthusiasm for the matter. He described the ultimate defeat of the remain campaign as "crushing" and was accused of suggesting the leave campaign only won because they had the "establishment media" on their side, a suggestion he later denied.
Despite his emphatic support for remain prior to the referendum, Richardson almost immediately said that he would "respect the result of the referendum," and called suggestions for a second one so soon after the last one "bizzare and ridiculous." However, he rejected any proposition to leave the EU Single Market and the EEA, claiming that Vote Leave had promised to remain in such organisations after brexit and as a result it would be undemocratic and scheming of them to "abuse" the result to "push an extremist agenda the public didn't vote for."
Despite his alleged critical comments made back during the Referendum campaign, he defended (not Corbyn) in the 2016 labour leadership challenge and stayed on as a cabinet minister.
He retained his seat at the 2017 general election, with a majority of over 9,500. He described the election result as "a message that the established order is about to go, and that a new kind of politics will take over." He also declared that "we have beaten the establishment for the first time since they took a stranglehold on power in 1979." He was later questioned as to why he served in Tom Blake's cabinet when he was clearly implying Blake's vision and views were no different to that of the conservative party in this declaration.
However, by new year 2018, Richardson began to become at odds with (not Corbyn) as he took an indecisive Brexit stance and began to lean towards a second referendum, something Richardson has always been opposed to. He also privately disagreed with (not Corbyn) over "unnecessary and hypocritical" cabinet firings.
He resigned as shadow secretary of state for justice in September 2018 after the labour party conference voted to support a second referendum, stating "it is too difficult for me to work in an indecisive shadow cabinet that one minute adopts a policy and sacks shadow ministers for supporting a contrary one, and then literally weeks later decides to adopt the contrary policy it has sacked shadow ministers for and then decides it will hound out shadow ministers who still support the original policy. It is almost as if one side thinks X will happen, the other side thinks Y will happen, and Mrs Bennett decides on Z."
After returning to the backbenches, Richardson furiously criticised both Diana Naismith and Brian Hansen. He controversially described Naismith as 'in political terms, somehow more dead than a rotting corpse,' sparking anger from those who considered it an offensive and graphic remark. He later went on to rail against Brain Hansen, who he labelled an 'aspiring despot' and 'poundshop Milosevic,' over his prorogation of Parliament.
Richardson campaigned determinedly in the 2019 General Election, however came close to losing his seat when the Tory landslide results came in. He called upon (not Corbyn) to resign, and criticised the Labour campaign for having an 'out of touch attitude' to voters living 'north of Milton Keynes.' He has now floated the idea of running for the Labour party leadership.
Other Info: 1 brother, Agnostic, member of the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance.
Married with 2 children:
Alfie (born 1998) - Age 21
Layla (born 2007) - Age 12
Political Positions:
Abortion: Supports the current relatively lenient laws in place for abortion in Great Britain, and believes they should be extended to Northern Ireland
Brexit: Despite originally opposing Brexit, supports "upholding the will of the people" and carrying it out following the referendum, but still favours UK membership of the EEA and Single Market.
Climate Change: Believes that the UK should convert to renewables fully and be carbon neutral by 2040.
Defence: Generally opposes millitary interventions (although exceptions can be made for the NATO operations in Bosnia in 1995 and military interventions in Sierra Leone) and privately supports cutting the defence budget to 2% of the GDP.
Energy: Supports completely phasing out fossil fuels by 2030, and recognises nuclear energy as a "potential solution."
Immigration: Supports keeping freedom of movement with the European Union, but is opposed to expanding it.
Devolution: Supports giving greater autonomy to devolved parliaments, but opposes Welsh or Scottish independence and Irish nationalism.
Northern Powerhouse: Hugely Supportive and believes should be a top priority for the Government to focus on.
NHS: Supports reducing privatisation of and increasing funding of the health service to at least 10% of the GDP.
Justice: Supports focusing the prison system towards rehabilitation over punishment for minor offenders, although recognises the need for a "strong deterrent" for severe offenders.
Same-sex Marriage: Supports strongly and voted for in 2013
Used Arab's template for part of my app.
I have read and accept the rules of the role-play: Agarntrop
Do Not Remove: 84721
Also, Emaz, the UK's defence budget was 2.1% when this was made. It has since been reduced to 1.7% because of covid.