Tom McNally, Baron McNally

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Thomas "Tom" McNally, Baron McNally, PC (b. 20 February 1943) is a British politician and the current Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords.

[edit] Education

McNally went to University at University College London where he arguably started his political career by being elected president of the Student's Union.

McNally worked for the Fabian Society and then as a full-time employee of the Labour Party, becoming its international secretary. He served as a political advisor to foreign secretary James Callaghan during the conflict in Cyprus in the 1970s and became head of the Prime Minister's political office at Downing Street when Callaghan succeeded Harold Wilson.

Elected to the British House of Commons in 1979 as a member of the Labour Party, in 1981 he was one of the later defectors to the new Social Democratic Party. He lost his Stockport seat at the general election of 1983. In January 1996 he was elevated to the life peerage as the Baron McNally, of Blackpool in the County of Lancashire.

In October 2004 he was elected unopposed to succeed Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, as the Liberal Democrat leader in the House of Lords.

In January 2006, Lord McNally was linked to the resignation of Charles Kennedy, with critical comments regarding Kennedy's leadership of the party, and the effect that infighting was having on their electoral prospects in the upcoming local elections in May. Lord McNally criticised Kennedy, suggesting that his style and content were lacklustre.

On 21 January Lord McNally revealed in an interview that he had himself been alcohol dependent in the 1980s ([1]). He said, "I don't think the passing of a more boozy ill-disciplined, ill-researched type of politics is to be regretted at all." Friends noted that it had been quite a struggle for McNally (and his then-wife, Eileen) but that he had successfully stayed on the wagon since and, after remarrying, had forged a happy life (and 3 children), living in St Albans.