The Rt. Hon. Lord Howard of Lympne
CH, QC
Honorary Co-President
Michael Howard was Leader of the Opposition and of the Conservative Party from November 2003 to December 2005. Previously he had served in various roles in Opposition, including Shadow Foreign Secretary and Shadow Chancellor.
He was a minister in the previous Conservative Government for twelve years, and served in the Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. He was appointed as Employment Secretary in 1990, Environment Secretary in 1992, and was for four years Home Secretary, from 1993 to 1997. He served as Member of Parliament for Folkestone and Hythe from 1983 until 2010, and became our first Honorary President in September 2008. After retiring from the Commons he was awarded a peerage and now sits in the House of Lords as Lord Howard of Lympne.
The Rt. Hon. Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, PC
Chairman
Jan Royall was Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords from 2010 to 2015, after serving in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council from 2008-2010. She is currently Principal of Somerville College, Oxford University, where she took up her appointment in September 2017.
Before being appointed to the House of Lords by Tony Blair in 2004, Jan Royall worked at the European Commission, initially as a member of the Cabinet of Neil Kinnock, for whom she had previously worked for nine years when he was Leader of the Opposition.
The Rt. Hon. Lord Kinnock
Honorary Co-President
Neil Kinnock was Leader of the Opposition and of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992. He was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in 1978, and joined the Shadow Cabinet a year later as Education Spokesman.
Following the Party's defeat in 1983, he was elected to succeed Michael Foot as Leader, a position he held for nine years, leading the Party at two General Elections and bringing it close to victory in 1992.
After standing down from the Leadership in 1992, he served as one of Britain's European Commissioners between 1995 and 2004, becoming Vice-President of the Commission. He was Chairman of the British Council from 2004 to 2009, and joined the House of Lords in 2005 as Lord Kinnock of Bedwellty. He was appointed as an Honorary President in October 2008.
Prof. Mohammed Abdel Haq
Executive Director
Dr Mohammed Abdel-Haq is co-founder of the Centre for Opposition Studies and a Professor in Banking and a Director of the Centre for Islamic Finance at the University of Bolton.
As well as his academic knowledge, Mohammed has a wealth of practical experience. In a long career in banking in major financial institutions such as Citi, Deutsche Bank and HSBC. Also he is the founding member of Oakstone Merchant Bank.
Mohammed is active in public life and holds a number of positions, amongst them from 2011-2014 he was an elected member of the Council of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) and a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Social Justice. In 2011 Mohammed was appointed Chairman of the UK Ministerial Advisory Group on Extremism in Universities and FE Colleges. He is the author of a book on Islamic finance and wrote several articles on various issues related to public life. He is also a regular speaker at conferences.
Mohammed stood as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party in 2005 general election for Swansea West. He previously Chaired the Advisory Board for the Conservative Middle East Council from 2011-2015. In March 2013 the UK Government launched the first Islamic Finance Task Force. Mohammed was one of a small group of non-ministerial industry experts within the Islamic Finance Task Force.
Dr Nigel Fletcher
Research Director and Co-Founder
Dr Nigel Fletcher is the co-founder of the Centre for Opposition Studies, and was its Executive Director from 2010-2016. Whilst studying for a PhD at King's College London he was struck by the lack of dedicated research on Opposition as an institution, and this led him in 2008 to establish the Opposition Studies Forum, which in 2010 became the Centre for Opposition Studies.
He graduated in Politics from Queen Mary, University of London, where he was awarded the Professor Lord Smith Prize for his dissertation on the Conservative Party in Opposition. He was Special Adviser on Education policy in the Conservative Research Department from 2004 to 2008, serving shadow ministers including David Willetts, David Cameron and Michael Gove.
He is now a Teaching Fellow at King’s College London, where he teaches Politics and Contemporary History. He was first elected as a Councillor in the Royal Borough of Greenwich in 2005, and became Leader of the Opposition there in 2020.
Sir Lynton Crosby, AO
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, C|T Group (London)
Sir Lynton Crosby is a renowned campaign strategist and Chief Executive Officer of the C|T Group - which delivers powerful, targeted solutions built on the foundation of research and insights into the highest levels of business, capital markets, government, bureaucracy and the media.
Sir Lynton’s intuitive sense of delivering results has been finely honed through years of providing high-level advice to prime ministers, premiers, opposition leaders and leaders of business.
In 1998 and 2001, Sir Lynton successfully led the campaign for Australian Prime Minister John Howard. In the 2008 London Mayoral elections, Sir Lynton masterminded the campaign that saw Boris Johnson beat the Labour incumbent Ken Livingstone against the odds. In 2012 he repeated this success for Boris Johnson, bucking the Conservative Party’s national trend and securing him a further term.
In the 2015 UK General Election, Sir Lynton steered the Conservative Party to a historic victory. He took the party from a 12 point deficit, to a near 7 point lead – returning, for the first time since 1955, a Conservative Government with an increased share of the vote.
This earned him a Campaign Excellence Award from the American Association of Political Consultants, which recognised him as Campaign Manager of the Year for the 2015 cycle.
Drawing on skills and experience acquired over a lifetime of political campaigning, Sir Lynton has also advised some of the world’s most well-known businesses, ensuring they are armed with the right research, message and strategy with which to achieve their goals.
Peter Samengo Turner
Peter Samengo Turner is a Chartered Accountant with over thirty years’ experience of working as a finance professional in a variety of industries both in the UK and abroad.
He currently runs his own consultancy providing business affairs supporting companies and mentoring their directors. These companies operate in sectors such as financial services, micro logistics and media.
Peter also serves on the finance committees of three charities – BAFTA, Comic Relief and CAFOD.
Advisory Council
Professor Lord Norton of Louth FRSA, AcSS
Lord Norton of Louth (Philip Norton) was appointed Professor of Government at the University of Hull in 1986, and in 1992 also became Director of the Centre for Legislative Studies.
In 1998 he was elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Norton of Louth. From 2001 to 2004 he was Chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, and has been described in The House Magazine - the journal of both Houses of Parliament - as ‘our greatest living expert on Parliament'.
Dr Jane Green
Jane Green lectures on politics at Manchester University, and is an expert on party strategies, issue agendas, policy positions and voting. She was the BBC World Services' election expert for the 2005 and 2010 British General Election nights and makes regular appearances as a political pundit in the media.
She has published work on the campaign strategies of opposition parties, most notably of the British Conservatives in opposition. She is a Board Member of methods@manchester, a Junior Fellow of the British Election Study and an Executive Committee member of the British Politics Group of the American Political Science Association.
Professor Tim Bale MA, PhD
Tim Bale is Professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, having previously held the same position at Sussex University, which he joined in 2003.
He graduated from Cambridge University, completed his Masters Degree at Northwestern University in the USA, and his PhD at Sheffield University, where he then lectured for a year.After Sheffield, he taught politics at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
Tim is an Official Representative for the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and, together with Ingrid van Biezen of Birmingham University, is the co-editor of the European Journal of Political Research's annual Political Data Yearbook. His book The Conservative Party from Thatcher to Cameron was published in 2010.
Dr Amer Al Sabaileh
Amer Al Sabaileh is a Jordanian academic born and raised in Amman. He graduated from the University of Jordan, has a Masters degree from the University of Rome, and a PhD from the University of Pisa .
He returned to the University of Jordan in 2007 where he currently teaches in the Department of European Languages, and the Department of International studies. Amer is a freelance columnist for the Jordan Times and the Ammon News agency, in both English and Arabic.
He has written widely on international relations, Islam and the Middle East. He blogs at: http://amersabaileh.blogspot.com