Christopher John Rennard, Baron Rennard, (born 8 July 1960) is a British life peer in the House of Lords, appointed to the Liberal Democrats' benches in 1999. He was Director of Campaigns & Elections for the Liberal Democrats from 1989 to 2003, and Chief Executive of the party from 2003 to 2009.
Education and early career
Rennard was born in 1960 the second of three sons to Cecil Rennard (1888-1963) and Jean Winfred Watson (1923-1976/77). He has an older step sister from his father's first marriage, his father also had two step children through that marriage.
Rennard was educated at the Liverpool Blue Coat School and gained a BA (Hons) Social Studies in 1982 from the University of Liverpool. From his early teens he was an active member of the Liberal Party. He began his political activism in Liverpool in the late 1970s, where he chaired the Liverpool University Liberals. He cites the early pioneers of community politics in Liverpool, including Cyril Carr, Trevor Jones and David Alton, as having had a major influence on him. Rennard was Deputy Chair of the Liverpool Liberal Party and organised many of the party's election campaigns in the 1980s, at a time when the Liberal Party controlled the City Council. The first successful parliamentary by-election campaign he worked on was the Liverpool Edge Hill by-election in March 1979, at which the party's candidate was David Alton. Rennard was Alton's agent when he successfully contested the newly created Liverpool Mossley Hill constituency in 1983 (after boundary changes) and helped to secure an excellent result there in a general election that saw a landslide Conservative victory nationally.
In 1984 he became one of the party's national Area Agents, based in Leicester, when the party won its first seats there for over 20 years. He was a member of many of the Liberal/Alliance by-election campaign teams, including those in West Derbyshire in 1986 and Greenwich in 1987. He was a member of the standing committee of ALC (Association of Liberal Councillors) and wrote some party publications on election campaigning and party organisation.
National positions
In 1989 Rennard was appointed as Director of Campaigns and Elections for the Liberal Democrats. He married Ann McTegart (whom he had met when they were both Liberal Party agents in Merseyside in the 1980s) and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1989 New Year Honours.
In the 1997 general election he oversaw the party's target-seat campaign, which resulted in the Liberal Democrats nearly doubling its number of MPs from 26 to 46. In 2001 and 2005, with Tim Razzall (Baron Razzall) as Campaign Chair and Charles Kennedy as Leader, he also directed the Liberal Democrats' general-election campaigns, which further increased the number of Lib Dem MPs respectively to 52 and 62, the largest total of Liberal or Liberal Democrat MPs since 1923.
He was the party's Chief Executive between 2003 and 2009. During his employment by the Liberal Democrats at a national level, he was credited with winning 13 parliamentary by-elections for the party (11 gains and 2 holds), out of a total of 74 by-elections held—a success rate of 17.5%. The Eastbourne by-election in 1990 was claimed by Rennard as rescuing the Liberal Democrats from their very weak position following the merger of the Liberal Party and the SDP, and saw a 16,923 Conservative majority become a Liberal Democrat majority of 4,550. The by-election followed a major row between Rennard and Paddy Ashdown over the party leader's initial opposition to the Liberal Democrats fighting the by-election. A by-election in Christchurch during July 1993 saw the Liberal Democrats gain the seat from the Conservatives by the largest swing (35%) against any British government since 1918.
Former party leader Charles Kennedy has described Rennard as "a quite extraordinary figure in British politics", while his predecessor Paddy Ashdown praised Rennard as "a formidable and widely-respected practitioner of political campaigning across all parties". Iain Dale said in an interview in Total Politics (June 2011) that Rennard "is probably the most formidable and feared political campaigner of the last 20 years."
Concerning the 2001 general election, Andrew Stunell, a friend of Rennard's, is reported as having said: "Last time people didn't follow Chris [Rennard's] instructions and the difference between those who did and who didn't – like in the Isle of Wight [which the party lost] – was very clear. The message got through."