Anthony Miles

[Norman Wingrove]

Name: Anthony Miles

Avatar: Ed Vaizey

Age: 49 (1st Oct 1957)

Sex: Male

Ethnicity: White

Marital Status: Married

Sexual Orientation: Straight

 

Party: Conservative

Political Outlook: Member of the Cornerstone Group

Constituency: Worthing East and Shoreham

Year Elected: 1997

 

Education: Ardingly College; Law and History, Selwyn College, Cambridge

Career: Project management, Turner & Townsend and Sun Alliance

Political Career: Stood unsuccessfully for Leeds Central, 1992. MP, Worthing East and Shoreham, 1997-present. Various positions in the Shadow Cabinet: Trade and Industry, 01-02; Culture, Media and Sport, 02-03; Shadow Leader of the House, 03-05; International Development, 05-07

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Anthony James Sidney Miles was born in Hove, East Sussex, on 1st Oct 1958. His father, Kenneth Miles, was a barrister; his mother, June (née Brazier), the daughter of a business owner. Anthony attended Ardingly College, an independent school for boys, in Mid Sussex

Miles attended Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he read History and Law. He was particularly drawn to the elements of modern history that covered politics. At Cambridge, Miles joined the Conservative Party, the Cambridge University Conservative Association, and the Cambridge Union, the latter of which he was President of during the 1980 Michaelmas term.

After graduating, Miles worked for Turner & Townsend, a project management and consulting firm serving the property, infrastructure and natural resources sectors. He later joined the insurance firm Sun Alliance, working from their main office in Horsham.

In the early 1990s, Miles began to follow his political interests. He was selected as the Conservative candidate in the unwinnable seat of Leeds Central for the 1992 general election, finishing a distant second. For the 1997 election, Miles contested the far safer, newly-redrawn seat of Worthing East and Shoreham, next door to his native Hove. He won the seat with a majority of just over 5,000 votes. Miles has served in the Shadow Cabinets of Duncan-Smith, Howard and Cameron, in the “Trade and Industry”, “Culture, Media and Sport”, and “International Development” portfolios, as well as 2 years as Shadow Leader of the House.

Anthony married Anne Carpenter in 1984. The couple live in Hove with their daughters Victoria and Samantha, son Thomas, and their two Springer Spaniels. He is a member of the Cornerstone Group, and considers himself to be on the right of the party. His political views derive from a respect for the strength and resilience of Britain’s great institutions, which he attributes to his education in them while growing up: the courts (through his father’s profession), the church (through his school’s chapel) and parliament (through his university education).