Andrew Boff

Andrew Boff (born 14 April 1958) is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been a Member of the London Assembly (MLA) since the 2008 election. He is a London-wide member, representing the thirty-two boroughs and the City of London.

Andrew Boff
Leader of the Conservative Party
in the London Assembly
In office
June 2012 – October 2015
Preceded byJames Cleverly
Succeeded byGareth Bacon
Member of the London Assembly
as the 5th Additional Member
Assumed office
1 May 2008
Preceded bySally Hamwee
Personal details
Born (1958-04-14) 14 April 1958
NationalityBritish
Political partyConservative
Domestic partnerGareth Carey
ResidenceBarking Riverside
OccupationPolitician
ProfessionIT consultant
WebsiteAndrew Boff at London Assembly website

Andrew Boff was a supporter of the "Yes to fairer votes" campaign. 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, he was a Young Conservative branch founder whilst still at school, and in 1976 proposed the legalisation of cannabis at a Young Conservative national conference. His mother Elsie was already a councillor when he was elected a councillor in Hillingdon in 1982, and he was Leader of the Council between 1990 and 1992.[1] In 1992, he stepped down to run for Parliament, defending the marginal Hornsey and Wood Green constituency, but he lost the seat to Labour's Barbara Roche.

Boff ran in the safe Labour seat of London South Inner in the 1994 elections to the European Parliament, and was placed seventh on the Conservative list in London in the 1999 election. He failed to be elected both times.[2]

London Assembly

He contested the Conservative nomination for the London mayoral elections in 2000, 2004, and 2008. He came second in 2000, behind Steven Norris,[1] and came second once again in 2008.

He was placed first on the Conservative top-up list for the London Assembly in 2008, comfortably winning a seat. He was re-elected in 2012 and 2016. He ran for chairman of the Assembly in 2010, with the backing of the 11 Conservative members, but lost to Liberal Democrat Dee Doocey, who received the backing of the 14 other members, including Richard Barnbrook.[3] After his re-election to the Assembly Andrew was elected as the GLA Conservative Group Leader.

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[4]

In summer 2018, Andrew launched his campaign to be the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London. He was shortlisted along with Joy Morrissey and fellow London Assembly Member Shaun Bailey. Boff finished in second place with 35%, an increase of 31% on his run for the nomination in 2015.

In 2019, Boff became Chairman of the Confirmation Hearings Committee and the Planning Committee.[5]

Hackney politics

He has run for office numerous times in Hackney, where he lived. He received the Conservative nomination for the elections in 2002 and 2006 to elect the Mayor of Hackney, but came second both times. He was the Conservatives' London Assembly candidate for the North East constituency in 2004, but came third, behind the candidates from both Labour and the Liberal Democrats.[6]

He achieved success in Hackney in 2005, when he won the supposedly safe Labour seat of Queensbridge in a council by-election, before losing it at the 2006 Hackney Council election, albeit with a vote tripled from the previous borough election.

Boff ran for Mayor of Hackney for a third time in 2010. A booklet containing election statements from every candidate was distributed to every voter in the borough, but excluded Boff, due to the council's confusion over whether the statements he made about the cost of the mayoralty were legally admissible.[7] By the time they decided that they were, it was too late to print, and the council compounded this by telling voters who enquired that Boff was not running.[8] In the contest, Boff fell to third place, behind the Labour incumbent and the Liberal Democrats.

Personal life

He is an information technology consultant.[1][9]

Boff is openly gay. In 2005, he was the first person in the United Kingdom to enter a same-sex civil partnership.[10]

Boff is a libertarian,[11] and an outspoken proponent of direct democracy, having prominently publicised the issue at London mayoral hustings and on ConservativeHome.[12]

An atheist and a humanist, Boff is a member of Humanists UK.[13] He helped to launch the Conservative Humanist Association, a Conservative Party ginger group, at an event in London in 2008.[14][15]

On June 10 2019, Boff ran into a burning tower block in Barking to help people escape a fire that had broken out.[16]

gollark: I think the jailbreak works by just using their ridiculously insecure update feature, actually.
gollark: I made a cool newsreader for my Kindle, actually, using the magic of RSS.
gollark: ... except the web browser, which *also* runs as root, um...
gollark: It was probably a bit of an afterthought, really, since they don't run too much untrusted stuff.
gollark: Slightly relatedly, Kindles are really insecure (with everything running as root) and can be jailbroken for full root access. There are some cool slightly useful unofficial kindle applications around.

Footnotes
  1. "Andrew Boff: Making an Impression". BBC News. 16 December 1999. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  2. "London". European Parliament. Archived from the original on 31 March 2008. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  3. Hill, Dave (13 May 2010). "London Assembly: committees and chairs". The Guardian.
  4. https://www.theguardian.com/uknews/davehillblog/2015/sep/10/tory-mayoral-hopeful-wants-managed-street-prostitution-area-in-london
  5. "Andrew Boff". London City Hall. 7 May 2015.
  6. "London Assembly results". Guardian Unlimited. 13 May 2010. Archived from the original on 8 April 2008. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  7. Lydall, Ross (4 May 2010). "Tory falls foul of mayoral bid rules". Evening Standard.
  8. "Bish Bash Boff in Hackney". Private Eye.
  9. Grew, Tony (29 July 2007). "Interview: However he voted against the scrapping of the anti gay clause 28 when a Conservative Councillor in Hillingdon. The Tory who wants to boff Boris". Pink News. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  10. https://twitter.com/lgbtcons/status/1043562956410245120?s=21
  11. White, Michael (10 September 2007). "Tory mayoral hustings – live". London: Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  12. Boff, Andrew (14 August 2006). "Andrew Boff: "To give London's voters the power to propose binding propositions on the executive or to recall the Mayor."". ConservativeHome. Retrieved 12 April 2008.
  13. "Minutes of the Annual General Meeting" (PDF). Humanists UK. 14 July 2012. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  14. Boyce, Laurence (16 August 2008). "God & the Tories". Iain Dale's diary. Retrieved 1 April 2019.
  15. Marre, Oliver. "Pendennis". The Guardian.
  16. "'No fire alarms' sounded in Barking flats blaze". Evening Standard. 10 June 2019.
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