Foreign Secretary (United Kingdom) in the context of "David Cameron"

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born 19 June 1964) is a British politician and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He was previously Foreign Secretary from 2016 to 2018 and the second mayor of London from 2008 to 2016. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 2001 to 2008 and for Uxbridge and South Ruislip from 2015 to 2023.

In his youth Johnson attended Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, and he was elected president of the Oxford Union in 1986. In 1989 he began writing for The Daily Telegraph, and from 1999 to 2005 he was the editor of The Spectator. He became a member of the Shadow Cabinet of Michael Howard in 2001 before being dismissed over a claim that he had lied about an extramarital affair. After Howard resigned, Johnson became a member of David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet. He was elected mayor of London in 2008 and resigned from the House of Commons to focus his attention on the mayoralty. He was re-elected mayor in 2012, but did not run for re-election in 2016. At the 2015 general election he was elected MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Johnson was a prominent figure in the Brexit campaign in the 2016 EU membership referendum. After the referendum, Prime Minister Theresa May appointed him foreign secretary. He resigned from the position in 2018 in protest at both the Chequers Agreement and May's approach to Brexit.

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence on foreign nationals in support of its Five Eyes partners. SIS is one of the British intelligence agencies and the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (known as "C") is directly accountable to the Foreign Secretary.

Formed in 1909 as the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau, the section grew greatly during the First World War, officially adopting its current name around 1920. The name "MI6" originated as a convenient label during the Second World War, when SIS was known by many names. It is still commonly used today. The existence of SIS was not officially acknowledged until 1994. That year the Intelligence Services Act 1994 (ISA) was introduced to Parliament, to place the organisation on a statutory footing for the first time. It provides the legal basis for its operations. Today, SIS is subject to public oversight by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament.

Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour (/ˈbælfər, -fɔːr/; 25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930), was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As foreign secretary in the Lloyd George ministry, he issued the Balfour Declaration of 1917 on behalf of the cabinet, which supported a "home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, and later issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926 as Lord of the Privy Council, which announced a co-equal relationship between the United Kingdom and its Dominions, laying the groundwork for the Statute of Westminster 1931 which granted full independence to the former colonies.

Entering Parliament in 1874, Balfour achieved prominence as Chief Secretary for Ireland, in which position he suppressed agrarian unrest whilst taking measures against absentee landlords. He opposed Irish Home Rule, saying there could be no half-way house between Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom or becoming independent. From 1891 he led the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, serving under his uncle, Lord Salisbury, whose government won large majorities in 1895 and 1900. An esteemed debater, he was bored by the mundane tasks of party management.

The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. Based on a suggestion by Herbert James Paton, it was first proposed in 1919 by Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary, to the Supreme War Council as a diplomatic basis for a future border agreement.

The line became a major geopolitical factor during World War II, when the USSR invaded eastern Poland, resulting in the split of Poland's territory between the USSR and Nazi Germany roughly along the Curzon Line in accordance with final rounds of secret negotiations surrounding the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the Allies did not agree that Poland's future eastern border should be changed from the pre-war status quo in 1939 until the Tehran Conference. Churchill's position changed after the Soviet victory at the Battle of Kursk.

Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff (/ˈkæləhæn/ KAL-ə-han; 27 March 1912 – 26 March 2005), was a British statesman and Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980. Callaghan is the only person to have held all four Great Offices of State, having also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1964 to 1967, Home Secretary from 1967 to 1970 and Foreign Secretary from 1974 to 1976. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1987.

Born into a working-class family in Portsmouth, Callaghan left school early and began his career as a tax inspector, before becoming a trade union official in the 1930s. He served as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He was elected to Parliament at the 1945 election, and was then regarded as being on the left wing of the Labour Party. He was appointed to the Attlee government as a parliamentary secretary in 1947, and began to move increasingly towards the right wing of the Labour Party, while maintaining his reputation as a "Keeper of the Cloth Cap" – that is, seen as maintaining close ties between Labour and the trade unions. Following Labour's defeat at the 1951 election, Callaghan increasingly became regarded as a leader of the right wing of the Labour Party, and stood for the positions of deputy leader in 1960 and for leader in 1963, but was defeated by George Brown for the former and Harold Wilson for the latter.

The secretary of state for commonwealth affairs was a British Cabinet minister responsible for dealing with the United Kingdom's relations with members of the Commonwealth of Nations (its former colonies). The minister's department was the Commonwealth Office.

The position was created on 1 August 1966 by the merger of the old positions of secretary of state for commonwealth relations and secretary of state for the colonies. In 1968 the position was merged with that of secretary of state for foreign affairs to create the new position of secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs.

The Great Offices of State are senior offices in the UK government. They are the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary, or the three offices excluding the prime minister.

Uxbridge and South Ruislip is a constituency in Greater London represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since its 2010 creation. The seat has been held by Danny Beales of the Labour Party since July 2024.

From 2015 to 2023, the seat was held by former Prime Minister (2019–2022) Boris Johnson, of the Conservative Party. Johnson won the seat in 2015 with a majority of 10,695. In 2017, as Foreign Secretary, he won a narrower majority of 5,034 votes. In 2019, as Prime Minister, he won an increased majority of 7,210. Johnson formally resigned in June 2023 after receiving a copy of the Standard Committee's report into Partygate, which recommended a recall petition. The subsequent by-election was won by Conservative candidate Steve Tuckwell, who then lost the seat to Danny Beales in the 2024 general election.

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (13 March 1764 – 17 July 1845) was a British Whig politician who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1830 to 1834. His government enacted the Reform Acts of 1832, which expanded the electorate in the United Kingdom, and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which abolished slavery in the British Empire.

Born into a prominent family in Northumberland, Grey was educated at Eton College and the University of Cambridge. While travelling in Europe on a Grand Tour, his uncle secured his election as member of parliament (MP) for Northumberland in a 1786 by-election. Grey joined Whig circles in London and was a long-time leader of the reform movement. He briefly served as First Lord of the Admiralty and as foreign secretary in the Ministry of All the Talents from 1806 to 1807 and then remained in opposition for nearly 24 years. He was asked to form a ministry by William IV in 1830, following the resignation of Wellington.

Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (/ˈɡæskɔɪn ˈsɪsəl/ GASK-oyn SISS-əl; 3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903), known as Lord Salisbury, was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen years. He was also Foreign Secretary before and during most of his tenure. He avoided international alignments or alliances, maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".

Lord Robert Cecil, later known as Lord Salisbury, was first elected to the House of Commons in 1854 and served as Secretary of State for India in Lord Derby's Conservative government 1866–1867. In 1874, under Disraeli, Salisbury returned as Secretary of State for India, and, in 1878, was appointed foreign secretary, and played a leading part in the Congress of Berlin. After Disraeli's death in 1881, Salisbury emerged as the Conservative leader in the House of Lords, with Sir Stafford Northcote leading the party in the Commons. He succeeded William Ewart Gladstone as prime minister in June 1885, and held the office until January 1886.

Herbert Stanley Morrison, Baron Morrison of Lambeth (3 January 1888 – 6 March 1965) was a British politician who held a variety of senior positions in the Cabinet as a member of the Labour Party. During the inter-war period, he was Minister of Transport during the Second MacDonald ministry, then after losing his parliamentary seat in the 1931 general election, he became Leader of the London County Council in the 1930s. After returning to the Commons, he was defeated by Clement Attlee in the 1935 Labour Party leadership election but later served as Home Secretary in the wartime coalition.

Morrison organised Labour's victorious 1945 election campaign, and was appointed Leader of the House of Commons and acted as Attlee's deputy prime minister in the Attlee ministry of 1945–51. Attlee, Morrison, Ernest Bevin, Stafford Cripps, and initially Hugh Dalton formed the "Big Five" who dominated those governments. Morrison oversaw Labour's nationalisation programme, although he opposed Aneurin Bevan's proposals for a nationalised hospital service as part of the setting up of the National Health Service. Morrison developed his social views from his work in local politics and always emphasised the importance of public works to deal with unemployment. In the final year of Attlee's premiership, Morrison had an unhappy term as Foreign Secretary. He was hailed as "Lord Festival" for his successful leadership of the Festival of Britain, a critical and popular success in 1951 that attracted millions of visitors to fun-filled educational exhibits and events in London and across the country.

The Churchill war ministry was the United Kingdom's unity coalition government for most of the Second World War from 10 May 1940 to 23 May 1945. It was led by Winston Churchill, who was appointed prime minister of the United Kingdom by King George VI following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain in the aftermath of the Norway Debate.

At the outset, Churchill formed a five-man war cabinet which included Chamberlain as Lord President of the Council, Clement Attlee as Lord Privy Seal and later as Deputy Prime Minister, Viscount Halifax as Foreign Secretary, and Arthur Greenwood as a minister without portfolio. Although the original war cabinet was limited to five members, in practice they were augmented by the service chiefs and ministers who attended the majority of meetings. The cabinet changed in size and membership as the war progressed but there were significant additions later in 1940 when it was increased to eight after Churchill, Attlee, and Greenwood were joined by Ernest Bevin as Minister of Labour and National Service; Anthony Eden as Foreign Secretary, replacing Halifax who was sent to Washington as Ambassador to the United States; Lord Beaverbrook as Minister of Aircraft Production; Sir Kingsley Wood as Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Sir John Anderson as Lord President of the Council, replacing Chamberlain who died in November (Anderson later became chancellor following Wood's death in September 1943).

The Anglo-Japanese Alliance (日英同盟, Nichi-Ei Dōmei) was an alliance between the United Kingdom and the Empire of Japan which was effective from 1902 to 1923. The treaty creating the alliance was signed at Lansdowne House in London on 30 January 1902 by British foreign secretary Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne and Japanese diplomat Hayashi Tadasu. After the preceding era of unequal treaties enforced on Asian countries including Japan, the alliance was a military pact concluded on more equal terms between a Western power and non-Western nation. It reflected the success of Meiji era reforms that modernized and industrialized Japan's economy, society and military, which enabled Japan to extract itself from the inferior position it had previously shared with other Asian countries like China, which had been subordinated to Western empires either through formal colonial acquisition or unequal treaties.

One shared motivation for the agreement was that a diplomatic alliance might deter other world powers that might otherwise encroach on British and Japanese imperial interests in Asia. For the British, the alliance marked the end of a period of "splendid isolation" while allowing for greater focus on protecting its rule over India and competing in the Anglo-German naval arms race, as part of a larger strategy to reduce imperial overcommitment and recall the Royal Navy to defend Britain. By contrast, it came at a time of Japan's ascendancy; Japan had not only successfully abrogated the unequal treaties it was previously subject to by the Western powers, but was now a fledging empire in its own right: Japan had imposed its own unequal treaty on Korea in 1876 and now controlled Formosa (Taiwan) as a colony, as Taiwan been ceded by Qing China to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, after the First Sino-Japanese War. Consequently, Japan was now developing its own imperial sphere of influence, and felt that a conflict with Russia was imminent over rival ambitions in Manchuria and Korea, especially after the Triple Intervention in 1895, in which Russia, France, and Germany coerced Japan into relinquishing its claim on the Liaodong Peninsula. Article 3 of the alliance promised support if either signatory became involved in war with more than one power, and thus deterred France from assisting its ally Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Instead, France concluded the Entente Cordiale with Britain and limited its support of Russia to providing loans. Japan also gained international prestige from the alliance and used it as a foundation for their diplomacy for two decades, although the alliance angered the United States and some British dominions, whose opinion of Japan worsened and gradually became hostile.

George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (11 January 1859 – 20 March 1925), known as Lord Curzon (/ˈkɜːrzən/), was a British statesman, Conservative politician, explorer and writer who served as Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 and Foreign Secretary from 1919 to 1924.

Curzon was born in Derbyshire into an aristocratic family and educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, before entering Parliament in 1885. In the following years, he travelled extensively in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East, and published several books on the region in which he detailed his geopolitical outlook and underlined the perceived Russian threat to British control of India. In 1891, Curzon was named Under-Secretary of State for India, and in 1899 he was appointed Viceroy of India. During his tenure, he pursued a number of reforms of the British administration, attempted to address the British maltreatment of Indians, undertook the restoration of the Taj Mahal, and sent a British expedition to Tibet to counter Russian ambitions. In 1905, he presided over the partition of Bengal and came into conflict with Lord Kitchener over issues of military organisation. Unable to secure the backing of the government in London, he resigned later that year and returned to England.

Mary Elizabeth Truss (born 26 July 1975) is a British politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022. On her fiftieth day in office, she stepped down amid a government crisis, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. The member of Parliament (MP) for South West Norfolk from 2010 to 2024, Truss held various Cabinet positions under three prime ministers—David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson—lastly as foreign secretary from 2021 to 2022.

Truss studied philosophy, politics and economics at Merton College, Oxford, and was the president of the Oxford University Liberal Democrats. In 1996, she joined the Conservative Party. She worked at Royal Dutch Shell and Cable & Wireless and was the deputy director of the think tank Reform. After two unsuccessful attempts to be elected to the House of Commons, she became the MP for South West Norfolk at the 2010 general election. As a backbencher, she called for reform in several policy areas including the economy, childcare and mathematics in education. Truss co-founded the Free Enterprise Group of Conservative MPs and wrote or co-wrote a number of papers and books, including After the Coalition and Britannia Unchained.

The second May ministry was formed on 11 June 2017 after Theresa May returned to office following the June 2017 snap general election. The election resulted in a hung parliament with the Conservative Party losing its governing majority in the House of Commons. On 9 June 2017, May announced her intention to form a Conservative minority government, reliant on the confidence and supply of the Democratic Unionist Party; a finalised agreement between the two parties was signed and published on 26 June 2017.

May announced on 24 May 2019 that she would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party on 7 June. She remained in office as caretaker prime minister during the resulting Conservative Party leadership election, before officially resigning on 24 July, after which she was succeeded as prime minister by former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.