Name: Sir Daniel Redmayne
Avatar: Sam Claflin
Age: 38
Sex: Male
Ethnicity: White
Marital Status: Married
Party: Conservative
Primary Tribe: Tory Reform Group
Secondary Tribes: Free Enterprise Group
Brexit Position: Voted / campaigned for Remain, loyally supported May’s Brexit efforts and deals
Constituency: Newark
Year Elected: 2014 (by-election)
Education:
- BA in History, Merton College, University of Oxford (1999-2002)
- Army Officer Training, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst (2002-2003)
- Second Lieutenant, British Army (2003-2004)
- Lieutenant, British Army (2004-2006)
- Captain, British Army (2006-2011)
- Outreach and Fundraising Manager, Walk for Veterans (2011-2012)
- Director of External Affairs, Turquoise Mountain Foundation (2012-2014)
- Member of Parliament for Newark (2014-present)
- Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (2015-2016)
- Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility (2016-2018)
- Minister without Portfolio and Chairman of the Conservative Party (2018-present)
Sir Daniel Redmayne MP (born March 11th 1981) is a British Conservative Party politician and former soldier. He served in the Royal Green Jackets and The Rifles, attaining the rank of Captain. Redmayne has been the Member of Parliament for Newark since 2014 and Chairman of the Conservative Party since 2018.
Redmayne was educated at Radley College from 1994 to 1999 for his O-Level and A-Level qualifications before later reading History at Merton College, Oxford from 1999 to 2002. Upon graduation from Oxford, Redmayne attended RMA Sandhurst from 2002 to 2003. He served as a Second Lieutenant, Lieutenant and then Captain within the Royal Green Jackets from 2003 to 2007 until the regiment was amalgamated with three others to form The Rifles. Redmayne remained as a Captain within The Rifles from 2007 for a further four years until being honourably discharged in 2011. During his time with the Army, Redmayne served tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
After leaving the Army, Redmayne joined the non-profit world as an Outreach and Fundraising Manager for Walk for Veterans, a charity dedicated to helping wounded soldiers and veterans from previous conflicts that the UK had engaged in. He subsequently later moved to the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a charity focusing on reviving historic areas and traditional crafts in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Throughout this time, Redmayne lived in his hometown of Nottingham and also became involved with local Conservative Party politics and campaigning. This came to the fore after Patrick Mercer, the Member for the nearby Newark constituency, resigned in a lobbying scandal. Redmayne had already been approved on the Candidates List for the 2015 general election and so threw his hat into the ring for the Newark nomination. He beat lawyer Robert Jenrick into second place for the nomination and fought off a strong UKIP campaign to be elected in June 2014 with a majority of 7,403. Redmayne was subsequently re-elected at the May 2015 general election with a majority of 18,474 and in 2017 with a majority of 18,149.
Eighteen months after being elected and due to his earlier non-profit experiences / having served as a member of the International Development Select Committee, Redmayne was asked by David Cameron to become the new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at DfID following the resignation of Grant Shapps. He served in this post for eight months until Theresa May became Prime Minister, the period encompassing the time of the EU referendum in which Redmayne campaigned to Remain. Redmayne was sent to the newly formed Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in July 2016 as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility.
He remained there for the first eighteen months of the May government and he continued to support the Prime Minister following her loss of majority after the 2017 election. Redmayne also believed and publicly stated it was in the best interest of the country to get a Brexit deal and that a leadership contest would be a distraction during such a period. During his time at BEIS, Redmayne was a champion for the importance of small businesses in the UK’s new economic future whilst similarly contending with business concerns about Brexit.
During the January 2018 reshuffle, Redmayne was initially tipped to be promoted to Minister of State level but found himself benefiting instead from the political drama on the day of the reshuffle itself. The rumoured planned appointment of Chris Grayling as Chairman of the Conservative Party went down badly and as a result, Redmayne’s name was placed into contention for the role as Downing Street looked for a younger MP with a record of campaigning. Redmayne’s success in increasing his majority so substantially in an East Midlands seat during recent elections and record of campaigning for other vulnerable MPs helped him get the nod and so he was appointed as Minister without Portfolio and Chairman of the Conservative Party.
As Chairman, Redmayne’s primary focuses are reinvigorating a depleted party membership following the 2017 calamity and preparing for the possibility of a snap election due to the razor-thin margins in Parliament. He also continued to support May’s positions within the Cabinet and voted for all three Meaningful Votes.
Outside of Parliament, Redmayne enjoys cycling, rowing, long-distance running and reading. He has been married to Lauren (b. 1984) since 2012 and the couple has two children, James (b. 2014) and Clara (b. 2018).
As the great-grandson of former Conservative Chief Whip Martin Redmayne, Daniel succeeded in 2018 to the Redmayne Baronetcy created for his great-grandfather, entitling him to be known as Sir Daniel Redmayne. He often doesn’t use the title but occasionally uses it depending on the occasion.