Michael Andrew Foster Jude Kerr, 13th Marquis of Lothian, Baron Kerr of Monteviot, PC, QC, DL
Lord Lothian, formerly styled as the Earl of Ancram and commonly known as Michael Ancram until he inherited the marquessate in 2004, is a British Conservative Party politician, formerly a Member of Parliament (MP) and a member of the Shadow Cabinet. Since 2010, he is the only Marquis currently sitting in the House of Lords.
Michael Ancram was born on 7 July 1945 in London and is the elder son and second child of the 12th Marquis of Lothian. He was educated at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, a Catholic boarding school. He matriculated at Christ Church at the University of Oxford, earning a BA in History in 1966 and later an MA. He received a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Edinburgh in 1968. Ancram was called to the Scottish Bar in 1970 and appointed a Queen’s Counsel (QC) in 1996.
He was first elected to Parliament in the February 1974 general election, when he won the seat of Berwickshire and East Lothian, only to lose the seat in the October election of the same year. He re-entered Parliament at the 1979 election as the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South, beating future Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He lost his seat again in the 1987. Returning to Parliament at the 1992 election representing Devizes, Ancram was a member of the Public Accounts Committee and Chairman of the backbench Constitutional Affairs Committee from 1992 until May 1993, when he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office. He was promoted to Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office in January 1994 and was sworn as a Privy Councillor in January 1996. After the Conservative defeat at the 1997 election, he served in the Shadow Cabinet as Constitutional Affairs Spokesman from June 1997 to June 1998, and as Chairman of the Conservative Party from October 1998 to September 2001.
Other political posts include serving as Chairman of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party from 1980 to 1983. He was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Scottish Office with responsibility for Home Affairs, Housing, Local Government, Rating Reform and the Environment from 1983 until 1987.
In 2001, he unsuccessfully ran in the election for the Conservative Party leadership. He then served the Party as Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs until 2003. In the reshuffle following the 2005 election, Ancram was moved to Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. He stood down from the Shadow Cabinet in December 2005, following the election of David Cameron as Conservative Party Leader. In January 2006 he was appointed to the Intelligence and Security Committee, replacing James Arbuthnot.
Ancram is a founder member of the Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, established in October 2009. In 2006 he set up Global Strategy Forum, a bi-partisan foreign affairs think tank based in London. Ancram was at that time Chairman of Le Cercle, a foreign policy think-tank specializing in international security.
Ancram became Marquis of Lothian upon his father’s death in 2004, but the peerage no longer has an automatic right to sit in the House of Lords. Apart from Irish peers, he was, after John Sinclair, 3rd Viscount Thurso and Douglas Hogg, 3rd Viscount Hailsham, the third person to have sat in the House of Commons while simultaneously being a hereditary peer. Lord Lothian was created a Life Peer on 22 November 2010 as Baron Kerr of Monteviot, of Monteviot in Roxburghshire, and was introduced in the House of Lords the same day.
He is married to Lady Jane Fitzalan-Howard, the fourth daughter of the 16th Duke of Norfolk, who from 7 April 2017 succeeded as the 16th Lady Herries of Terregles. They are both prominent Roman Catholics. She is a Patron of the Right to Life Trust and also a Patroness of the Royal Caledonian Ball. The Marquis and Marquess of Lothian have two daughters and two grandchildren.
Lord Lothian is a country music fan and has often played acoustic guitar at Conservative Party conferences. He is a knight of Order of St John and Order of St Lazarus, He was also made a Freeman of Gibraltar in 2010. During Lord Lothian’s visit to the 2019 Central Florida Highland Games, when Clan Kerr was the Honored Clan, he was honored with an appointment as an associate member of the Templar order, the Sovereign Military Organization of the Temple of Jerusalem in their Preceptory of the Holy Land in Jerusalem.