Read about Dennis Skinner net worth, age, wife, children, height, family, parents, salary, and party as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Dennis Skinner is a British former politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolsover for 49 years, from 1970 to 2019. He is a member of the Labour Party. He is known for his left-wing views and acerbic wit, Skinner belonged to the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. He was a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee, with brief breaks, for thirty years, and was the chairman of the Committee from 1988–89. He was one of the longest-serving members of the House of Commons and the longest continuously-serving Labour MP. He is a lifelong Eurosceptic. Skinner is a supporter of Derby County Football Club and Derbyshire County Cricket Club.
Early life
| Name | Dennis Skinner |
| Net Worth | $5 million |
| Occupation | Former politician |
| Age | 90 years |
| Height | 1.83m |
Dennis Edward Skinner was born on February 11, 1932 (age 90 years) in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, Skinner is the third of nine children. His father Edward Skinner was a coal miner who was sacked after the 1926 general strike, and his mother Lucy was a cleaner. In June 1942, at the age of 10, Skinner won a scholarship to attend Tupton Hall Grammar School after passing the eleven-plus a year early. In 1949, he went on to work as a coal miner at Parkhouse colliery, working there until its closure in 1962. He then worked at Glapwell colliery near Bolsover.
Skinner entered the Sheffield Star Walk in 1956, an amateur walking race, and finished second. In 1964, at the age of 32, he became the youngest-ever president of the Derbyshire region of the National Union of Mineworkers. After working for 20 years as a miner, he became a member of Derbyshire County Council and a Clay Cross councillor in the 1960s. In 1967, he attended Ruskin College, after completing a course run by the National Union of Mineworkers at the University of Sheffield.
Parliamentary career
Dennis Skinner joined the Labour Party in 1956. He was chosen as the Parliamentary Prospective candidate for Bolsover on 5 June 1969. Skinner was elected as MP for the then safe Labour seat of Bolsover at the 1970 general election and retained it until he lost it at the 2019 general election to Mark Fletcher of the Conservative Party. Due to his aggressive rhetoric, Skinner became known as the “Beast of Bolsover”.
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Skinner recalls that he earned the nickname for his behaviour in a tribute debate in the Commons following the death of former Conservative Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden in 1977: “They were making speeches about the wonder of Anthony Eden, so I got up and talked about miners and people seriously injured and dead in the pits and the £200 given to the widow. There was booing and then all the Tories left and the papers had a go, some serious ones”.
During his tenure in the Commons, Skinner would usually sit on the first seat of the front bench below the gangway in the Commons (known as the ‘Awkward Squad Bench’ because it is where rebel Labour Party MPs have traditionally sat) in a tweed jacket (whilst most other MPs wear suits) and signature red tie. In 2016, he stated that he had never sent an email and did not have a Twitter account. Skinner was a strong supporter of the National Union of Mineworkers and their leader Arthur Scargill in the 1984–85 miners’ strike.
He refused to accept a parliamentary salary in excess of miners’ wages, and during the miners’ strike he donated his wages to the NUM. Skinner has voted for equalisation of the age of consent, civil partnerships, adoption rights for same-sex couples, to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, and for same-sex couples to marry, and has a strong pro-choice stance on abortion. On 20 January 1989, he talked out a move to reduce the number of weeks at which an abortion can be legally performed in Britain by moving the writ for the Richmond by-election.
On 7 June 1985, he talked out a bill by UUP backbencher Enoch Powell which would have banned stem cell research by moving the writ for the by-election in Brecon and Radnor. Skinner later described this as his proudest political moment. In 1979, Skinner played a role in publicly exposing Anthony Blunt as a spy for the Soviet Union. On Thursday 15 November 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher revealed Blunt’s wartime role in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom in reply to questions put to her by Ted Leadbitter, MP for Hartlepool.
In 2000, Skinner denounced former ally Ken Livingstone, then serving as a Labour MP. Livingstone had failed to win the party’s nomination to be a candidate for Mayor of London and had then decided to run as an independent candidate instead, urging his supporters to help Green Party candidates get elected. Skinner said that Livingstone had betrayed Labour Party activists in his Brent East constituency, whom he described as having fought for him “like tigers” when his majority had been small: “He tells them he’s going to be the Labour candidate, then he lies to them. To me that’s as low as you can get”.
He contrasted Livingstone with the official Labour candidate, Frank Dobson, saying that Dobson was “a bloke and a half… not a prima donna … not someone with an ego as big as a house”. Skinner said Livingstone would “hit the headlines, but you’ll never be able to trust him because he’s broken his pledge and his loyalty to his party. The personality cult of the ego does not work down a coal mine and it does not work in the Labour Party”.
Conversely, despite his renowned left-wing views, Skinner for a long time had a positive relationship with Prime Minister Tony Blair, a leading figure on the right wing of the party, stemming from advice that Skinner gave Blair regarding public speaking. As recently as February 2018, he described the Blair and Brown ministries as a “golden period” for the NHS. However, Skinner strongly criticised Blair in May 2019, after the former Prime Minister had advised pro-Remain Labour supporters who felt that the party’s line on Brexit was too ambiguous to vote for explicitly pro-Remain parties in the 2019 European Parliament election; in the Morning Star.
Skinner described Blair as a “destructive force” who was “try(ing) to destroy the Labour Party so people keep talking about his reign” and stated that he “went into Iraq and destroyed himself. He helped David Cameron and Theresa May into power. You’re talking about a man who made a mess of it.” In 2003, Skinner was among the quarter of Labour MPs who voted against the Iraq War; he later rebelled against the party line when he voted against government policy to allow terror suspects to be detained without trial for up to 90 days. In 2007, Skinner and 88 other Labour MPs voted against the Labour Government’s policy of renewing the Trident Nuclear Missile System.
Dennis Skinner supported David Miliband in the 2010 Labour leadership election, which was won by his brother Ed Miliband. In March 2011, he was one of 15 MPs who voted against British participation in NATO’s Libya intervention. In May 2014, Skinner was the principal guest speaker at the Kent Miners Rally at the Aylesham & District Social Club to commemorate 30 years since the Miners Strike 1984/1985.
Skinner was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate Jeremy Corbyn as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015. Shortly after Corbyn was elected as leader, Skinner was elected to Labour’s National Executive Committee, on which he remained until October 2016. Skinner supported Corbyn, alongside the majority of Labour MPs, in voting against the extension of RAF airstrikes against ISIS in Syria in December 2015. Skinner voted for Britain to leave the European Union in June 2016 and favours outright abolition of the House of Lords.
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Following the retirement of Peter Tapsell in 2015, Skinner was one of the four longest-serving MPs, but did not become Father of the House, as two other MPs, who were also first elected in 1970, had been sworn in earlier on the same day and consecutively both held that position: Gerald Kaufman (2015–2017) and Kenneth Clarke (2017–2019). Skinner, the oldest sitting MP since 2017, stated that in any case he would not accept the honorific title. In 2019, with Clarke’s impending retirement, the issue of Skinner becoming Father of the House resurfaced but was rendered moot, when Skinner lost his seat at the 2019 general election.
Mother death
Dennis Skinner‘s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease prior to her death in the 1980s. Skinner sang to his late mother when she was diagnosed with the disease and was inspired by her ability to recall old songs. Since 2008, he has visited care homes in Derbyshire to sing to elderly patients with dementia.
Wife
Dennis Skinner was married to Mary Parker from 1960 to 1989. The then couple had their wedding in 1960, Skinner married Mary Parker, from whom he separated in 1989. He has three children and four grandchildren. Since 2017, his partner has been former researcher Lois Blasenheim. In 1999, Skinner was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer and subsequently had surgery to remove a malignant tumour. In 2003, he underwent a double heart bypass operation. He underwent hip surgery in 2019. He was too ill to campaign in the 2019 General Election after he was hospitalised with a dangerous infection following a hip operation. He was not present at the count when he lost his seat.
Dennis Skinner net worth
How much is Dennis Skinner worth? Dennis Skinner net worth is estimated at around $5 million. His main source of income is from his primary work as a former politician. Dennis Skinner’s salary per month and other career earnings are over $400,000 dollars annually. He is one of the richest and most influential politicians in the United Kingdom. He stands at an appealing height of 1.83m and has a good body weight which suits his personality.