Everything You Need to Know About Energy and Climate Secretary Amber Rudd Before COP21: Part 1

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Amber Rudd will be leading the British team of negotiators at Paris as the worldโ€™s leaders meet to decide the fate of theย planet.

The secretary of state was just this week accused of misleading Parliament about the state of the countryโ€™s renewable energy target as the chasm between her declared commitments to climate change and loyalty to chancellor George Osborneโ€™s austerity-plus-fracking grows everย wider.

And yet it was only 10 years ago that Rudd decided to enter politics. She made a life-changing decision at the age of 40. She decided to โ€œtake [her] life backโ€ and โ€œreally point it in the direction I want it toย go.โ€

Observers disagree about whether Rudd is a โ€˜Turquoise Toryโ€™, a conservative with a small โ€˜cโ€™, or whether in fact she is merely a career politician serving the powerful. Will she stand on principle in Paris, or quietly toe the corporateย line?

There are important clues to be found from her lifeย story.

Life Beforeย Politics

Rudd was born on 1 August 1963, in London, to father Tony Rudd, a stockbroker and financial journalist, and mother Ethne, a magistrate who also worked as theย secretary of the Kensington Society.

Ethne was a strong woman. โ€œShe had a very strong sense of right and wrong and that was part of her magnificent appeal,โ€ Tony wrote upon her death in 2008 after 56 years ofย marriage.

The youngest of four siblings, Rudd lived a privileged life. Her childhood homes consisted of a Kensington townhouse and a country mansion in Wiltshire. Chalcot House, near Bath, previously belonged to Nicholas Phipps, whose mother, Lady Sybil, was a sister of the Dowager Duchess of Gloucester and the Duke ofย Buccleuch.

It must be a spectacular place to stay; part of the house dates back to the 12th century while other parts areย Carolingian.

Rudd graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1986 with a Masterโ€™s degree in History. Four years later, in 1990, she married the writer A.A. Gill, a restaurant reviewer for Vanity Fair and the Sunday Times – Ruddโ€™s privileged upbringing was far from lost on Gill, who nicknamed her โ€˜the Silver Spoonโ€™ in his restaurant columns. The pair has two children, Flora and Alasdair, but the couple separated in 1995 and laterย divorced.

Financialย World

Before entering a life of politics, Ruddโ€™s career was dedicated toย finance.

She worked for financial services company JP Morgan in both London and New York for several years after which she joined a venture capital firm in London where she raised funds for small businesses. And like her father, she also spent time working as a financialย journalist.

But in an entertaining testament to her posh upbringing, Rudd had a stint in the early โ€˜90s as โ€œaristocracy co-ordinatorโ€ recruiting extras for party scenes in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.

As the filmโ€™s director Richard Curtis, put it: she knows โ€œa lot of dukes and earlsโ€.

Meanwhile, as Rudd was becoming acquainted with the finance world. Roland, her brother, founded Finsbury PR and is now one of the best known people in financial PR. He is a Labour Party donor, and also the currentย treasurer of the Britain Stronger in Europeย campaign.

Of Ruddโ€™s two sisters, Amanda runs Aveda hair and beauty products in Europe while Melissa is a primary schoolย teacher.

Before DECC

Then, in 2005 things changed. Rudd set her sights on a career inย Whitehall.

Describing her choice to enter politics in an interview with the Financial Times in 2013, Rudd said: โ€œI decided to take my life back. In my twenties I was leaving university, getting married or having a baby. And then, in my thirties, I was just keeping my head aboveย water.

โ€œWhen I hit 40 I thought I have got to get a grip of my life and really point it in the direction I want it to go rather than just swim hard against theย current.โ€

A few short years later Rudd picked up and moved to Hastings – an area to which she has no connection – to stand as a Conservative MP. Her political ambitions knew noย bounds.

Check out Part 2 where DeSmog UK looks at Ruddโ€™s burgeoning political career and close ties toย Osborne.

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Kyla is a freelance writer and editor with work appearing in the New York Times, National Geographic, HuffPost, Mother Jones, and Outside. She is also a member of the Society for Environmental Journalists.

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