Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. William Jefferson Hague (born 26 March 1961) is an British politician. He is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Richmond (Yorks), Shadow Foreign Secretary and Senior Member of the Shadow Cabinet (unofficial deputy to party leader David Cameron). He previously served as leader of the Conservative Party between 1997 and 2001. First elected to the House of Commons in a by-election in 1989, Hague rose through the ranks of John Major''s government and entered the Cabinet in 1995 as the Secretary of State for Wales. Following the Conservatives'' defeat in the 1997 general election, he was elected as leader of the Conservative Party. He resigned as party leader after the 2001 general election following a landslide defeat to the Labour Party. He was the first leader of the Conservatives not to have become Prime Minister since Austen Chamberlain in the early 1920s.