Jacqueline Carter

The Right Honourable Dame Jacqueline Carter GBE GCWO GCH MP
Leader of the Liberal Democrats
Incumbent
Assumed office 27 August 2020
President	Mark Pack
Deputy	Daisy Cooper
Preceded by	Tim Farron
Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Incumbent
Assumed office 24 March 2024
Prime Minister	Keir Starmer
Preceded by	David Gauke
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Incumbent
Assumed office 24 March 2024
Prime Minister	Keir Starmer
Preceded by	Chloe Smith
Chancellor of the University of Oxford
Incumbent
Assumed office 20 September 2023
Vice-Chancellor	Irene Tracey
Preceded by	The Lord Patten of Barnes
17th Director-General of the BBC
In office 10 April 2018 – 8 May 2020
Preceded by	The Lord Hall of Birkenhead
Succeeded by	Tim Davie
Senior Independent Director of the BBC
In office 26 March 2014 – 10 April 2018
Preceded by	Dillon Harvey
Succeeded by	Nicholas Serota
CEO of BBC News
In office 5 September 2012 – 26 March 2014
Preceded by	Declan Phillips
Succeeded by	Deborah Turness
Member of the UK Parliament for St Albans
Incumbent
Assumed office 7 May 2020
Preceded by	Anne Main
Majority	12,166 (21.1%)
Personal details
Born	Jacqueline Thomas Carter (1983-06-22) 22 June 1983 Los Angeles, California, United States
Citizenship	British American
Political party	Liberal Democrats
Spouse	Henry Cavill (m. 2015)
Children	Thomas Elizabeth
Parent(s)	King Thomas (father) Lynda Carter (mother)
Alma mater	Columbia University (B.M.C) University of Oxford (M.M.C)
Profession	Politician Broadcaster Journalist Author

Dame Jacqueline "Jackie" Thomas Carter GBE GCWO GCH (born 22 June 1983) is a British journalist, author, and politician currently serving as Leader of the Liberal Democrats since 2020 as well as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport since 2024. The youngest of two illegitimate children of King Thomas and the American actress Lynda Carter, Carter initially spent much of her early years in the United States under her mother's care before later moving abroad to the United Kingdom in 2001. In 2010, she graduated with a master's degree in mass communication from the University of Oxford before being later appointed its chancellor, succeeding Chris Patten after a two-decades-long tenure. A member of the party's centre-left Social Liberal Forum, Carter has been a vocal proponent for the nationalisation of railways, regulation of certain economic industries, the introduction of proportional representation, withdrawal of British military forces from the Middle East, and clean energy, particularly nuclear energy.

In 2002, Carter began her career as a presenter for BBC News at One, during which over the course of five years, she became one of the most watched hosts in the United Kingdom. In 2007, Carter was chosen as the inaugural main presenter for BBC World News America, covering major American events including the inauguration of President Obama, the Great Recession, and the Deepwater Horizon explosion. In addition, she has also presented documentaries on various topics including climate change, global poverty, and human rights abuses on Panorama, Daily Politics, and Newsnight, earning much acclaim and several accolades for her often in-depth analysis and pointed delivery style. Moreover, as the lead presenter on Today With Jacqueline Carter, Carter gained much acclaim for her interviews with various political figures including Prime Minister David Cameron, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Bahraini cleric Ali Salman amidst the 2011 Bahraini Revolution. In September 2012, she was appointed CEO of BBC News before a promotion to Senior Independent Director followed in March 2014 and subsequently to Director-General of the BBC in April 2018, becoming the first woman to hold the post until her resignation in May 2020. Since departing the BBC, Carter has served as a part-time consultant and commentator for various British media outlets, namely The Guardian, The Times, and The Observer, often providing her own liberal and centrist insight. In addition, she is also the author of a number of bestselling books including From California to London, The Future of British Media, and The Populist's Paradox.

Following a distinguished career in the media industry, Carter, a member of the Liberal Democrats since 2014, made her switch to politics by contesting as a Liberal Democrat in the 2020 United Kingdom general election for the St Albans constituency. Following this, Carter stood as a candidate for the party leadership in light of the resignation of the incumbent leader Tim Farron where she subsequently defeated the deputy leader Ed Davey, becoming the first woman to lead the Liberal Democrats. In February 2024, she jointly led a successful effort to oust the ruling Conservative Party from power and help establish a grand coalition between the United Kingdom's three largest opposition parties, namely the Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, and the Hanoverian Union Party. In the process, she oversaw the Liberal Democrats' biggest electoral victory since their formation in 1988, winning a record of 128 seats.

In 2015, Carter married the British actor Henry Cavill, with whom she has two children. Through her father, Carter is the sister and half-sister respectively of former professional football player and manager William Carter and the United Kingdom's Queen Alexandra.

Early Life

Born on 22 June 1983, Jacqueline Carter was the second and youngest child of American actress Lynda Carter and Thomas, Prince of the Welsh, a member of the British royal family with whom her mother had eloped for several years long but never otherwise married. Being the couple's only daughter after her older brother William, Carter immediately became the subject of much love and devotion from her parents with her father particularly choosing to name her "Jacqueline" after First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy whom the latter deeply admired.

Like her brother, despite growing up in relative seclusion and away from the public eye, Carter nonetheless enjoyed a mostly happy childhood as she aged with her father said to have considerably "spoiled" an infant Carter. In this, from at least the age of five, Carter's academic and journalistic tendencies quickly became apparent to her parents who, in turn, often bought their young daughter books for the latter to read and indulge herself with. In a later interview, her mother Lynda Carter remarked, "While she wasn't very different from girls around her age who like to play dress up, dolls, and stuff, the one, absolute thing that Jackie loved was reading fairly long and colourful storybooks, sometimes to almost no end. For the first few years, it was mostly books with lots of pictures and graphics but once she started becoming a teenager, books with fewer pictures but more words started becoming her favourite". In the meantime, despite her "bookish" character, Carter was said to have exhibited some "wild" and "adventurous" tendencies which included a lifelong fascination with motorcycles owing to her own father being an avid motorcyclist himself. To that end, in a later interview, Carter admitted that while she was initially scared about accidentally falling off the motorcycle, particularly at high speeds, and thereby injuring herself, her father's enduring patience, coupled with a gradual build-up in her own confidence and self-esteem, saw her ultimately embrace the risks of riding a motorcycle with her eighteenth birthday seeing her being gifted an expensive Ducati motorcycle, one which she continues to occasionally ride to the present day.

Sometime around 1993, the apparent inevitability of the couple never getting married in reality, coupled with the need to preserve the British monarchy, saw Thomas make the difficult decision to leave his longtime partner and their two children in search for a new one which he later did with the American supermodel Christy Turlington. In this, Carter, who was around eleven years old at the time, later described the moment as "the most difficult moment of my childhood" given the sudden departure of her doting father but added that as her mother subsequently married the American lawyer and video game executive Robert A. Altman, she gradually came to terms with the latter's decision, stating, "If I were to be honest, early on, a part of me felt absolutely betrayed that my beloved father would just leave me and his family like that especially when we probably needed him around so dearly. However, even as he left us, my father promised to me and my brother William that he would be seeing us at least once a month and that he would never miss our birthdays or graduations from school". In the meantime, Carter also developed a fairly warm but not as intense filial affection towards her stepfather, with whom her mother went on to have two more children, namely a son James and a daughter Jessica in 1994 and 1996 respectively.

Described by her teachers as a "brilliant", "creative", and "hardworking" student, after initially attending fairly unassuming elementary schools and high schools in her native California, a consistently excellent academic track record, coupled with her father's relocation across the country to New York, saw Carter opting to further her studies at the prestigious Columbia University in New York City where she majored in communication studies. In recounting her university years, Carter revealed that, aside from maintaining a small group of like-minded friends, she largely lived alone and, in turn, often made up for her perceived "loneliness" by occasionally visiting her father who, together with his wife and their daughter, was also living in New York. Meanwhile, despite her seemingly reclusive nature, Carter's university peers have mostly described her as "very cooperative", "unassuming", and even a "workaholic". George Erik Rupp, who served as Columbia University's president throughout much of the 1990s, similarly said that despite her well-known status as the daughter of a famous actress, a fact that made her some sort of a little celebrity among her fellow peers, Carter generally displayed a "down-to-earth" and "unassuming" character throughout much of her time there, stating, "To some extent, one could probably feel as if she wasn't either really bothered or didn't really liked being known as the daughter of some famous actress because, in the end, much of the news about her is how she is always the top of her class and how she generally bonds well with her friends and professors rather than what food she is eating or what car she is driving, news that you often find when it comes to popular celebrities and the sort".

Media Career

Upon graduating from Columbia University, Carter, who longed on reuniting with her father once and for all, moved to the United Kingdom where, after opting not to pursue her master's degree at Columbua University, she instead chose to do so at the equally prestigious University of Oxford in London, England. Then, upon achieving her master's degree, Carter subsequently found work at the British public service broadcaster BBC where she started as a host for the company's afternoon news programme BBC News at One. In this, Carter's physical beauty, coupled with her eloquent presenting style, quickly raised her profile among British media circles who, in turn, began drawing comparisons between Carter and the famous British-Iranian journalist Christiane Amanpour, a comparison that Carter later described as "personally flattering" while admitting that she mostly looked up to the famous American journalist Barbara Walters whom she mainly credited for her entry into journalism.

In 2010, owing to her ever-increasing ratings, Carter was later given her own self-titled show Today With Jacqueline Carter. As its main and titular host, Carter gained further acclaim for interviews featuring British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, US President Barack Obama, American pop star Michael Jackson, and various other famous figures which also included her own father, whose paternity was then not yet publicly disclosed, during which she discussed with the British monarch several topics including the Great Recession, the future of the British monarchy, and gay marriage. Following this, in September 2012, Carter was appointed CEO of BBC News, a position that she held for roughly two years long before a further promotion to Senior Independent Director in August 2014 further increased her fame and popularity among Britons. Then, amidst the rise of right-wing populism across Europe and the prevailing debate about the United Kingdom's continued membership in the European Union, Carter went on to firmly establish herself as among the United Kingdom's leading journalists through widely-acclaimed interviews with major figures of both the Leave and Remain campaign including the likes of Nigel Farage, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, Karren Brady, and Jude Kelly.

In 2018, after four years as Senior Independent Director, Carter was eventually made the BBC's first-ever female director-general, a role that she held for the next two years. During this period, owing to her inherent status as the first woman to become the BBC's chief executive, Carter focused extensively on addressing lingering gender-related workplace issues while also devoting much time towards maintaining the BBC's longstanding reputation for impartiality, a vision expressed by Carter early on in her inaugural speech in which she remarked, "As the first American to become director-general of the BBC, I hold much praise for the network's longstanding and unflinching commitment to impartiality regarding its media coverage, a phenomenon that I did not otherwise grew up with during my early years in the United States where intense politicisation and political mudslinging between media outlets seems to be the norm if not the prevailing culture. Thus, as someone with firsthand experience of actual media polarisation, I vow that my term as director-general, no matter how long it may last, will firmly ensure that the BBC continues to shine as a beacon of media excellence and an example for others to follow".

Political Career

Liberal Democrats Leader (2020 - present)

While still serving as the BBC's director-general, ahead of the 2020 United Kingdom general election, Carter, a member of the Liberal Democrats, announced her decision to stand down from her current post in favour of contesting in the general election as a member of her political party. To that end, Carter was subsequently fielded as a Liberal Democrats candidate for the constituency of St Albans, a seat held by the Conservative incumbent Anne Main since 2005. Soon enough, despite a generally positive nationwide performance from the ruling Conservative Party under Prime Minister David Cameron, Carter, in spite of a poor overall showing from the Liberal Democrats, successfully unseated Main to become the constituency's first Liberal Democrat parliamentarian after securing 50.4% of the overall vote, higher than any of those recorded by Main during her fifteen-year term.

Emboldened by her strong individual performance in the polls, the subsequent resignation of incumbent Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron in light of his party's poor electoral performance saw Carter declare her decision to contest for the role of party leader as a representative of the party's centre-left Social Liberal Forum with Carter particularly positioning herself as a response to the "failed and disastrous leaderships" of Nick Clegg, who infamously abandoned the party's pledge regarding tuition fees, and Clegg's successor Tim Farron whose time as leader was panned by Carter given the party's recent decline in seats at the most recent general election. To that end, Carter was only challenged by the party's incumbent deputy leader Ed Davey for the party leadership but, with 66% of the vote in the first round, ultimately prevailed to become the party's first female leader since its establishment in 1988.

As party leader, in line with her socially liberal views, Carter expressed vocal support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the United Kingdom, describing it as a "morally upright movement of reckoning" while simultaneously criticising isolated acts of vandalism, particularly those targeting statues of public figures. Meanwhile, despite expressing initial praise for the government's swift response to the COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent reports of government ministers apparently breaching lockdown rules with instances of party gatherings and the like soon saw Carter emerge as a vocal critic of the government's handling of the pandemic. Likewise, despite David Cameron's ensuring resignation amidst mounting criticism, Carter went on to direct her criticism towards Cameron's successor Philip Hammond, whom she labeled as a "relic of the scandal-ridden administration", and, in turn, argued for an earlier general election in order to test the unelected Hammond's support among the general British public. Otherwise, on the international stage, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Carter was quick to criticise Russian President Vladimir Putin whom she infamously described as "Europe's most notorious warmonger since Adolf Hitler". Meanwhile, among other foreign issues, Carter has also vocally criticised China for their heavy-handed response to popular protests in Hong Kong and, following the election of Democrat Joe Biden over the Republican incumbent Donald Trump, has called for rapprochement between Europe and the United States after previously strained and difficult ties during the Trump presidency.

Deputy Prime Minister & Culture Secretary (2024 - present)

On 20 February 2024, shortly after the ruling Conservative Party suffered two major by-election losses that further reduced their share of seats in the House of Commons, Carter publicly spearheaded a motion of no confidence under the premise of new elections and the Conservatives' dwindling popularity. With the defection of their vital coalition partner, the Hanoverian Union Party, Carter, who did so in conjunction with the Labour Party's Keir Starmer, proved successful in ousting the Conservatives and thereby ending their nineteen years long in power since 2005. Following this, amidst widespread expectations of a hung parliament, Carter was announced by Starmer as the new shadow deputy prime minister, replacing the Labour Party's own incumbent deputy leader Angela Rayner, while Carter's deputy Daisy Cooper was simultaneously announced as the shadow home secretary, succeeding Yvette Cooper. Eventually, on 24 March 2024, while the Labour Party did go on to secure a majority, albeit a very slim one with only 385 seats, just one seat above the majority threshold, in a historic high, the Liberal Democrats, buoyed by several factors including Carter's general popularity and the overwhelming unpopularity of the Conservative Party, secured a record high of 128 seats, thereby making them the second-largest party in the House of Commons behind the Labour Party and ahead of the Conservative Party in third. Soon enough, as the second-in-command of a tripartite Labour-Liberal Democrats-HUP coalition which commanded a firm majority of 598 seats or 77.8%, Carter was sworn in as deputy prime minister, becoming the first woman to hold the office and the second Liberal Democrats politician since Nick Clegg in 2010. During a subsequent interview, Carter mainly attributed the coalition's extraordinary electoral success to an effective strategy of tactical voting and a firm agreement struck between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats where both parties agreed not to field candidates in the same constituency while encouraging their voters to vote for the other's candidate with the aim of maximising their chances of victory in winnable Conservative seats while ensuring that neither of their incumbents would be defeated by a Conservative challenger due to vote-splitting.

Owing to her longstanding association with the media, in addition to becoming deputy prime minister, Carter was also appointed culture secretary, an office that she was deemed to be the most ideal candidate for.

Personal Life

Much like her older brother, despite being born as the daughter of a monarch, she was never included in the line of succession owing to the fact that she had been born out of wedlock, thereby immediately disqualifying her from ever succeeding to the throne. Having been born on June 22nd, Carter notably shares the same birthday with singer Cyndi Lauper, actress Meryl Streep, and fellow female politicians Elizabeth Warren and the late Dianne Feinstein. Meanwhile, she also shares the same birth year with her husband Henry Cavill as well as other actors including Chris Hemsworth, Adam Driver, Mila Kunis, and Rebecca Ferguson.

A dual American-British citizen, Carter currently resides mostly in the United Kingdom with her husband and children but has also spent some time away herself back in her native California. In this, much like her brother, Carter herself gradually adopted a more "British-sounding" accent which helped her swiftly blend in with her coworkers at the London-based British Broadcasting Corporation. Separately, in a 2018 interview with the BBC, Carter revealed that her given name "Jacqueline" was directly taken from First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of US President John F. Kennedy. However, in another interview, despite being named after the former First Lady, Carter said that both physically and emotionally, she mostly resembled her paternal grandmother, namely the American actress Lauren Bacall whose distinctive smoky voice and high cheekbones are said to have been passed down to Carter herself.

Despite the fame of her family members, Carter is known to have generally preferred a more "low-profile" life such as participating in only a small number of interviews while also rarely commenting on the lives of her family members. Meanwhile, as revealed by her own accord upon being elected as the Liberal Democrats leader, Carter reportedly owns two houses, namely one in London and another in Brighton. In addition, Carter also normally drives a Mini Countryman and a Land Rover Freelander. Moreover, her estimated net worth is said to be around $12.5 million (£9.8 million).

In September 2015, Carter married the British actor Henry Cavill, with whom she had two children Thomas and Elizabeth. The couple was wedded at Westminster Abbey in an intimate ceremony following a two-year-long relationship that began after Carter met Cavill at the premiere of Man of Steel in which Cavill played the titular character of Superman. Born only a month apart, the two later began a discreet relationship that was eventually publicised for the first time when the couple appeared together at the premiere of the 2015 spy film The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Later, on 10 September 2015, the couple was wedded at Westminster Abbey in the presence of their respective families along with several of their close friends in attendance including fellow actors and actresses Daniel Craig, Christian Bale, Idris Elba, Amy Adams, Hayley Atwell, and Alicia Vikander. As a result of their marriage, Cavill became the brother-in-law of the famous former professional footballer William Carter and the American actress Anne Hathaway, the former's wife. In addition, being the half-sister of the reigning Queen Alexandra also meant that Cavill is also the brother-in-law of the Queen himself.