Andrew Boff (born 14 April 1958) is a British politician who has been Deputy Chair of the

London Assembly The London Assembly is a 25-member elected body, part of the Greater London Authority, that scrutinises the activities of the Mayor of London and has the power, with a two-thirds super-majority, to amend the Mayor's annual budget and to reject ...

since May 2022. A member of the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

, he has served a London-wide Assembly Member (AM) since the

2008 election This electoral calendar 2008 lists the national/federal direct elections held in 2008 in the de jure and de facto sovereign states and their dependent territories. Referendums are included, even though they are not elections. By-elections are ...

. Boff served as Leader of the Conservatives in the London Assembly from June 2012 to October 2015. Andrew Boff was a supporter of the "Yes! To fairer votes" campaign in the 2011 UK Alternative Vote referendum. He was the Conservative representative at a "Yes!" event in London on 3 May 2011.

Political career

Early career

Active in politics since the 1970s, Bacon was a Young Conservative branch founder whilst still at school; in 1976 he proposed the legalisation of cannabis at a Young Conservative national conference. His mother Elsie was already a

councillor A councillor is an elected representative for a local government council in some countries. Canada Due to the control that the provinces have over their municipal governments, terms that councillors serve vary from province to province. Unl ...

when he was elected a councillor in

Hillingdon Hillingdon is an area of Uxbridge within the London Borough of Hillingdon, centred 14.2 miles (22.8 km) west of Charing Cross. It was an ancient parish in Middlesex that included the market town of Uxbridge. During the 1920s the civ ...

in 1982. He later served as Leader of the Council between 1990 and 1992. In 1992, he stepped down to run for Parliament, defending the marginal Hornsey and Wood Green constituency. He lost the seat to Labour's

Barbara Roche Barbara Maureen Roche (; born 13 April 1954) is a British Labour politician, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hornsey and Wood Green from 1992 until 2005, when she lost her seat to the Liberal Democrats, despite having enjoyed a maj ...

with 39.2% of the vote. Boff ran in the safe Labour seat of London South Inner in the 1994 election to the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the Legislature, legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven Institutions of the European Union, institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and in ...

. He was placed seventh on the Conservative list in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in the

1999 European Parliament election The 1999 European Parliament election was a European election for all 626 members of the European Parliament held across the 15 European Union member states on 10, 11 and 13 June 1999. The voter turn-out was generally low, except in Belgium and L ...

. He failed to be elected both times.

London Assembly

Boff became known in London politics after he contested the Conservative nomination for the London mayoral elections in

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight ...

and

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

. He came second in 2000 behind Steven Norris. He came second again in 2008. In summer 2018, Boff launched another campaign to be the Conservative candidate for

Mayor of London The mayor of London is the chief executive of the Greater London Authority. The role was created in 2000 after the Greater London devolution referendum in 1998, and was the first directly elected mayor in the United Kingdom. The current m ...

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...

. He was shortlisted along with Joy Morrissey and fellow London Assembly Member Shaun Bailey. Boff finished once again in second place with 35% of the vote, an increase of 31% on his run for the nomination in 2015 for the 2016 election. Boff was placed first on the Conservative top-up list for the

, comfortably winning a seat. He was re-elected in

2012 File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gat ...

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the Impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses duri ...

and

. He ran for the chairmanship of the assembly in 2010, with the backing of the eleven Conservative members, but lost to

Liberal Democrat Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties usually follow a liberal democratic ideology. Active parties Former parties See also *Liberal democracy *Lib ...

Dee Doocey Elizabeth Deirdre Doocey, Baroness Doocey, (née O'Keeffe; born 2 May 1948) is a British Liberal Democrat politician and businesswoman. A former chair of the London Assembly, she was created a life peer in 2010 and is now the inaugural chair o ...

, who received the backing of the fourteen other members, including

Richard Barnbrook Richard Barnbrook (born 24 February 1961) is a British politician and a former member of the London Assembly. He was elected as a British National Party (BNP) list candidate in the 2008 election, though he resigned the BNP whip in August 2010 ...

. After his first re-election to the London Assembly, Boff was elected as the GLA Conservative Group Leader. He was succeeded by

Gareth Bacon Gareth Andrew Bacon (born 7 April 1972) is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Orpington since 2019. A member of the Conservative Party, he was a member of the London Assembly from 2008 until he stood down ...

in October 2015. In September 2015, Boff called for a managed street prostitution zone to be set up in East London in order to protect sex workers from harm. In 2019, Boff became Chairman of the Confirmation Hearings Committee and the Planning Committee. In May 2021, he was elected Chairman of the London Assembly. In May 2022, he became Deputy Chairman of the London Assembly.

Hackney politics

He has stood for office numerous times in Hackney, where he lived. He received the Conservative nomination for the elections in 2002 and

2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro votes to declare independence from Serbia; The 2006 ...

to elect the Mayor of Hackney, but came second both times. He was the Conservatives' London Assembly candidate for the

North East The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...

constituency in 2004, but came third, behind the candidates from both Labour and the Liberal Democrats. He achieved success in Hackney in 2005, when he won the supposedly

safe A safe (also called a strongbox or coffer) is a secure lockable box used for securing valuable objects against theft or fire. A safe is usually a hollow cuboid or cylinder, with one face being removable or hinged to form a door. The body and ...

Labour seat of Queensbridge in a council

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election ( Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to ...

, before losing it at the 2006 Hackney Council election, albeit with a vote tripled from the previous borough election. Boff stood for Mayor of Hackney for a third time in

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

. A booklet containing election statements from every candidate except him was distributed to every voter in the borough. It excluded Boff owing to the council's confusion over whether the statements he made about the cost of the mayoralty were legally admissible. By the time they decided that they were, it was too late to print, and the council compounded the problem by telling voters who enquired that Boff was not running. In the contest, Boff fell to third place, behind the Labour incumbent and the Liberal Democrats.

Personal life

He is an information technology consultant. Boff is openly gay. In 2005, he was the first person in the United Kingdom to enter a same-sex civil partnership. Boff is a

libertarian Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's en ...

, and an outspoken proponent of

direct democracy Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the electorate decides on policy initiatives without elected representatives as proxies. This differs from the majority of currently established democracies, which are repres ...

, having prominently publicised the issue at London mayoral hustings and on

ConservativeHome ConservativeHome is a British right-wing blog which supports, but is independent of, the Conservative Party. It was first established by Tim Montgomerie in 2005 with the aim of arguing for a broad conservative spectrum, which is serious about bo ...

. An

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

and a

humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "human ...

, Boff is a member of

Humanists UK Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious b ...

. He helped to launch the Conservative Humanist Association, a Conservative Party

ginger group The Ginger Group was not a formal political party in Canada, but a faction of radical Progressive and Labour Members of Parliament who advocated socialism. The term ginger group also refers to a small group with new, radical ideas trying to a ...

, at an event in London in 2008. On 10 June 2019, Boff says he ran into a burning tower block in

Barking Riverside Barking Riverside is a mixed-use development in the area of Barking, east London, England, within the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. It is being built on land formerly occupied by Barking Power Station, adjacent to the River Thames, ...

to help people escape a fire that had broken out.

References

External links

Andrew Boff
at the London Assembly {{DEFAULTSORT:Boff, Andrew 1958 births 21st-century English politicians Conservative Members of the London Assembly Conservative Party (UK) parliamentary candidates Councillors in the London Borough of Hackney Councillors in the London Borough of Hillingdon English atheists English humanists English libertarians Gay politicians LGBT politicians from England Living people People from the London Borough of Hillingdon 21st-century LGBT people