Hilary Benn keeps up family tradition with new Cabinet post

The appointment of Hilary Benn to the Cabinet by Sir Keir Starmer means that there has been a member of his family in every Labour government to date.

Mr Benn, the MP for Leeds South, has been made Northern Ireland Secretary. It is not his first time serving in the Cabinet, having previously worked for both Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

He is the third member of his family to have served in Labour governments, with every Labour prime minister appointing a Benn to his Cabinet.

His father, prominent Left-winger Tony Benn, was energy secretary under James Callaghan and Harold Wilson, having previously served as industry secretary under the latter between 1974 and 1975. His grandfather, William Wedgwood Benn, served as air secretary to Clement Attlee and before that as India secretary to Ramsay MacDonald.

Mr Attlee made him a hereditary peer as Viscount Stansgate, but Tony went on to disclaim the title.

Hilary Benn was Sir Keir’s shadow Northern Ireland secretary and had previously served as chairman of the Brexit committee until 2021. He began his political career at the age of 25 when he was elected to Ealing Borough Council in 1979.

He served under Lord Blunkett after Labour’s landslide victory in 1997 as a special adviser, working on education.

He became an under-secretary of state for international development in 2001 and then joined the Home Office for two years before becoming the environment secretary in 2007. During that time, he worked on the Climate Change Act, which formed the basis of the UK’s approach to tackling climate change by requiring carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions to come down.

Lord Blunkett recounted Mr Benn’s first speech as a frontbencher, with his father sitting in the gallery and “people were describing the tears in his eyes”.

He told the BBC: “He was so proud of Hilary, and he was proud of him being his own person.”

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader and now the independent MP for Islington North, was heavily influenced by Tony Benn’s politics, and was “very close” with him. The former Cabinet minister was very outspoken on matters of military intervention, and was highly critical of Sir Tony Blair’s actions in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

But his son’s politics have been seen as very different; the New Labour stalwart gave a speech in support of military action in Syria which prompted Alex Salmond to say Tony Benn would have been “birling (spinning) in his grave”.

Hilary Benn has previously been forced to clarify, “I’m a Benn, not a Bennite”, in response to regular comparisons with his father.