Hurd became private secretary (a political appointment, his salary paid by the Conservative Party) to Conservative Prime Minister
Edward Heath, and was first elected to Parliament in February 1974 to represent the constituency of
Mid Oxfordshire. Following his election, he was made a
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the
February 1974 Dissolution Honours, gazetted on 2 April 1974. At the
1983 general election the seat was replaced by
Witney and he remained MP for that seat until his retirement from the
House of Commons in
1997 having served 23 years in Parliament. His immediate successor was
Shaun Woodward, who defected to
Labour in 1999, and moved in 2001 to a safe Labour seat, before serving as
Northern Ireland Secretary, a position Hurd once held. From 2001 to 2016, Hurd's former constituency was represented by the former Leader of the
Conservative Party and former British prime minister,
David Cameron.
In government: 1979–1990 Hurd was appointed
Minister of State at the
Foreign & Commonwealth Office upon the Conservative victory in the
1979 general election and remained in that post for the duration of the Parliament. Following the 1983 election Thatcher moved Hurd to the
Home Office, but just over a year later he was promoted to
Cabinet rank, succeeding
Jim Prior as
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Candidature in the 1990 leadership election Hurd's Cabinet career progressed further during the turbulent final months of
Margaret Thatcher's prime ministership. On 26 October 1989, Hurd moved
to the Foreign Office, succeeding
John Major, whose rapid rise through the Cabinet saw him become
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the wake of
Nigel Lawson's resignation. In mid-November 1990, Hurd supported Margaret Thatcher's candidature as Conservative Party leader against challenger
Michael Heseltine, but on her withdrawal from the second round of
the contest on 22 November, Hurd decided to enter the race as a moderate centre-right candidate, drawing on his reputation as a successful 'law-and-order' Home Secretary. He was endorsed by former Prime Minister and Conservative Party Leader
Edward Heath. He was seen as an outsider, lagging behind the more charismatic Heseltine and the eventual winner, John Major, who shared the moderate centre-right political ground with Hurd but had the added advantages of youth and political momentum. Hurd's Etonian education may have also been a disadvantage. Years later, Hurd expressed frustration that his privileged background counted against him in the leadership election, commenting in an interview that "I should have said I am standing for leadership of the Tory party and not for some demented Marxist outfit". He came third, winning 56 of the 372 votes cast and, together with Heseltine, conceded defeat to allow Major, who had fallen just three votes short of an outright majority, to return unopposed and take over as prime minister on 27 November 1990. Hurd was gracious in defeat and, on the formation of Major's first Cabinet, was returned to his position as Foreign Secretary.
Foreign Secretary George H. W. Bush in 1991 Hurd was widely regarded as a
statesmanlike British Foreign Secretary, his tenure having been particularly eventful. One of the defining features of Hurd's tenure as Foreign Secretary was the British reaction to the
Yugoslav Wars. During the
Bosnian War, Hurd was seen as a leading voice among European politicians arguing against sending military aid to the
Bosniaks and for maintaining the arms
embargo, in defiance of the line taken by US President
Bill Clinton, and arguing that such a move would only create a 'level killing field' and prolong the conflict unduly. Hurd also resisted pressure to allow
Bosnian refugees to enter into Britain arguing that to do so would reduce pressure on the
Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to sue for peace. Hurd described his and British policy during that time as 'realist'. Shortly after his withdrawal from frontline politics, Hurd travelled to
Serbia and Montenegro to meet
Slobodan Milošević on behalf of the British bank
NatWest (see below), fuelling some speculation that Hurd had taken a pro-Serbian line. There has been criticism of Hurd's policies in relation to the war. The Bosnian government even threatened to charge Hurd as an accomplice to the
Bosnian genocide before the War Tribunal at
The Hague, though this came to nothing. In 2010 Hurd told a reporter that he was troubled by his Bosnia policy but still doubted that intervention would have brought about an earlier end to the war. Hurd was involved in
a public scandal concerning Britain's funding of a hydroelectric dam on the Pergau River in Malaysia, near the
Thai border. Building work began in 1991 with money from the British foreign aid budget. Concurrently, the Malaysian government bought around £1 billion's worth of British-made arms. The suggested linkage of arms deals to aid became the subject of a UK Government inquiry from March 1994. In November 1994, after an application for
judicial review brought by the
World Development Movement, the
High Court held that Hurd's actions as Foreign Secretary, in allocating £234 million towards the funding of the
dam, were
ultra vires [outside his legal powers and therefore unlawful], on the grounds that the legislation only empowered him to fund economically sound projects. In 1997, the administration of the UK's aid budget was removed from the Foreign Secretary's remit (previously the
Overseas Development Administration had been under the supervision of the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office). The new department, the
Department for International Development (DfID), had its own
Secretary of state who was a member of the
Cabinet. In 1995, during the Cabinet reshuffle widely seen as setting up the Conservative team which would contest the next election, Hurd retired from frontline politics after 11 years in the Cabinet and was replaced by
Malcolm Rifkind. which enabled him to continue sitting in Parliament as a member of the
House of Lords. He retired from the Lords on 9 June 2016. In December 1997, Hurd was appointed chairman of British Invisibles (now renamed
International Financial Services London or IFSL). He was chairman of the judging panel for the 1998
Booker Prize for Fiction. He became a member of the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords in February 1999, and in September 1999 he was appointed
High Steward of Westminster Abbey, reflecting his long active membership of the
Church of England. He later went on to chair the Hurd Commission which produced a review of the roles and functions of the
Archbishop of Canterbury. Hurd is chairman of the advisory council at FIRST, an international affairs organisation. Hurd was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1974 and
Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in the 1996 New Year Honours. He was formerly a
Visiting Fellow, and is now an Honourary Fellow, of
Nuffield College, Oxford and was
Chairman of the German British Forum until March 2005. On 17 July 2009, he received the
honorary degree of
Doctor of Letters (Hon DLitt) from
Aston University at its Degree Congregation. Hurd is a member of the
Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, established in October 2009. ==Personal life==