Justine Greening

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Justine Greening

Justine Greening.Portrait.jpg

Name Justine Greening (born 30 April, 1969)
Politics
Party Conservative
Constituency Putney (2005 - present)
Positions • Secretary of State for International Development (September 2012 - present)
• Secretary of State for Transport (October 2011 - September 2012)
• Economic Secretary to the Treasury (May 2010 - October 2011)
Likes ?
Dislikes Heathrow expansion, Ebola
Friends ?
Enemies ?
Relationships
Personal Attributes
Nationality English
Religion Church of England
Sexuality Unknown - in a same-sex relationship[1]
Height 5' 5"
Eye Colour Blue
Handedness Right
Accent Estuary with faintly Northern vowels

One of the few senior Conservative ministers who is neither an Osborne groupie nor a rightwing reactionary appointed to appease the backbenchers, Justine has consequently been sidelined into a series of crappy Cabinet briefs. Her current crappy brief is International Development.

Life and Career[edit | edit source]

Early Life[edit | edit source]

Greening was born in Rotherham, where she attended Oakwood Comprehensive School. She went on to read economics at the University of Southampton, and then to get an MBA from the London Business School.

Pre-political Career[edit | edit source]

Justine worked as an accountant and finance manager for an assortment of global corporations, including Price Waterhouse Coopers, GlaxoSmithKline and Centrica.

Early Political Career[edit | edit source]

In 2001 Justine contested the hopelessly Labour seat of Ealing, Acton & Shepherd's Bush and failed to win it. She was then selected to stand in the more marginal Putney in 2005, where she outperformed the national swing and successfully unseated the Labour incumbent. Putney is one of those constituencies that always returns early in the night, so Justine was the first Conservative elected that evening and her victory gave the party some hope that it was beginning to recover from the 1997 landslide.

Parliamentary Career[edit | edit source]

In Opposition[edit | edit source]

After the election Michael Howard made Justine a vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, responsible for connecting with The Youth. This project hasn't gone well, obviously, but nevertheless David Cameron promoted her to the Shadow Treasury team in the July 2007 reshuffle. In January 2009 Justine was promoted to Shadow Minister for London, which is technically a CLG brief but mostly comes down to whining about transport investment. This put her in prime position to coordinate the Tories' London campaign for the 2010 General Election.

She was the youngest female Conservative MP for a while, until Chloe Smith was elected in 2009 and beat her record.

In Government[edit | edit source]

We can't have as Secretary of State someone who doesn’t understand that the British national interest overrides her constituency interest.~ Anonymous Cameron aide on the Heathrow spat

Justine is not impressed with your Heathrow expansion proposals.

When the coalition was formed Justine was made Economic Secretary to the Treasury. There was friction due to some combination of she didn't get along with George Osborne/he wanted to pack the Treasury with his groupies, so in 2011 he made sure she was promoted to Secretary of State for Transport to get her out of his face.

This turned out to be a bad idea, because Putney is in the flight path for the proposed third runway at Heathrow and Justine is a dedicated member of the London Conservative NIMBY Club. She made trouble about it in Cabinet until Cameron reshuffled her over to International Development, at which point Boris Johnson pitched a fit about moving her.

Since the whole Tory leadership were firmly committed to the 0.7% GDP aid target, Justine's new role had less obvious potential for wank and lulz, but Justine was resourceful and found a way. During the critical division on the controversial proposal for military intervention in Syria in 2013, Justine never showed up to vote. Apparently she was "discussing Rwanda" with another minister in a room behind the chamber and failed to hear the division bell. The Government lost the vote, and for Cameron the historic humiliation of being the first Prime Minister to lose a major foreign policy vote since Lord North in 1782 was compounded by the fact that not all his Cabinet ministers could be bothered to show up for it. Since the division bells can be heard from blocks away, the whole story is a little suspect, but Justine apologised and claimed to be "gutted" she'd missed the vote. Cameron accepted that she'd made a genuine mistake and let her stay in the Cabinet.

Justine Greening.Pensive.jpg
Full List of Appointments
• Vice-Chair of the Conservative Party (1 July 2005 - 6 May, 2010)
• Shadow Treasury Minister (3 July, 2007 - 19 January, 2009)
• Shadow Communities and Local Government Minister (19 January, 2009 - 6 May, 2010)
• Economic Secretary to the Treasury (13 May, 2010 - 14 October, 2011)
• Secretary of State for Transport (14 October, 2011 - 4 September, 2012)
• Secretary of State for International Development

Incumbent (4 September, 2012 - present)

Personal Life[edit | edit source]

According to the Daily Mail "blonde Justine has a legion of male fans in the Tory ranks"[2], but she's never married. Trying to climb the greasy pole of the Conservative Party outside the usual patronage networks doesn't leave a lot of time for dating or recreation.

Justine came out on twitter as being in a same-sex relationship on the day of London Pride march 2016.

Portrayal[edit | edit source]

In the Media[edit | edit source]

Apart from the standard Daily Mail grossness about any female politician (or indeed, human) the media are usually kind to Justine. The general view seems to be that she's been sidelined for failing to join one of the various Old Boys' Clubs in the Conservative Party and that this is a waste of a good minister.

In Fanon[edit | edit source]

Back in her Treasury days Justine featured in a few fics about her interactions with the rest of the Treasury team, but she has a low fandom profile.

References[edit | edit source]