Read the complete write-up of Ben Wallace net worth, UK, MP, age, wife, children, height, family, parents, salary, party as well as other information you need to know.
Introduction
Ben Wallace is a British politician and former soldier currently serving as Secretary of State for Defence since 24 July 2019 and Member of Parliament (MP) for Wyre and Preston North, formerly Lancaster and Wyre, since 2005. Before becoming an MP, he was a Conservative list Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for North East Scotland from 1999 to 2003.
Wallace stood down in 2003 and moved to Lancashire as he sought selection for a Westminster constituency in England. Following his election as an MP and after serving as a backbencher for nearly five years, he was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Justice, Ken Clarke, from 2010 to 2014. Wallace was then made a whip from July 2014 to May 2015.
He became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Northern Ireland Office between 2015 to 2016. He was appointed Minister of State for Security and Economic Crime from 2016 to 2019. A supporter of Boris Johnson, Wallace was promoted to the senior cabinet role of Secretary of State for Defence after Johnson became Prime Minister. Before politics, he held the rank of captain in the Scots Guards, a regiment of the British Army.
Early life
| Name | Ben Wallace |
| Net Worth | $5 million |
| Salary | $1 million |
| Occupation | Politician |
| Age | 52 years |
| Height | 1.75m |
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace was born on May 15, 1970 (age 52 years) in Farnborough, London, England. His father was a soldier in the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards and saw service in Malaya. Wallace was educated at Millfield, an independent school in Somerset. While at school, he attended a young officers’ course for the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, and after leaving school was interviewed by the Regular Commissions Board, then spent some time as a ski instructor with the Austrian National Ski School in t he village of Alpbach in Austria.
After training as a cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, in June 1991 Ben Wallace was commissioned into the Scots Guards as a Second Lieutenant, with a short service commission. From 1991 to 1998, he served in Germany, Cyprus, Belize, and Northern Ireland. In April 1993, he was promoted to Lieutenant, and also in 1993 was mentioned in dispatches, for an incident in Northern Ireland in which the patrol he was commanding captured an entire IRA active service unit attempting to carry out a bomb attack against British troops. In 1996 he was promoted to Captain and in June 1998 transferred from the Active List to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers, with a short service commission as a Captain.
Political career
Ben Wallace entered politics after leaving the army, citing as a reason for this decision the experience he had commanding men from some of the UK’s most economically deprived areas, which he averred could be improved by promoting a more aspirational society. Wallace became a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, as a list MSP for North East Scotland.
Wallace stood down in 2003, as he sought selection for a Westminster constituency in England. Wallace was the Scottish Conservatives’ shadow health spokesman during that time. From 2003 to 2005 he was overseas director of the aerospace company QinetiQ, the UK’s former Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA).
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He was elected as MP for the Lancaster and Wyre constituency at the 2005 general election. He won 22,266 votes, with a majority of 4,171 (8.0%), gaining the seat from the Labour Party. The constituency was abolished for the 2010 general election; Wallace was elected as MP for the new seat of Wyre and Preston North with 26,877 votes and a majority of 15,844 (30.9%).
Wallace was re-elected in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 general elections, with majorities suggesting a safe seat for him and his party. From 2005 to 2010 Wallace was a member of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee. From 2006 to 2010 Wallace was the Shadow Minister of State for Scotland. He was Chairman of the British–Iran Parliamentary Group from 2006 to 2014. On 13 November 2008, Wallace was awarded Campaigner of the Year in the Spectator/Threadneedle Parliamentarian awards, for his work promoting transparency of MP’s expenses.
Ben Wallace faced criticism locally after it was revealed he had the fourth-highest expenses claim of any MP in the UK in 2008, claiming £175,523 on top of his £63,000 salary. However, he defended the costs by arguing that the constituency has an electorate that is nearly 20% larger than the average one in England.
Following his re-election to Parliament in 2010, Ben Wallace was appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then-Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, and later Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office, Ken Clarke MP. On 4 September 2012, Wallace turned down a position as a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury during the cabinet reshuffle to remain Clarke’s PPS. He voted against the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013, which legalized same-sex marriage in England and Wales.
In July 2014, as Clarke returned to the back benches, Wallace was again offered a job in Government as a whip. This time he accepted. In May 2015 he was promoted to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Northern Ireland Office. After the EU referendum, the new Prime Minister, Theresa May, promoted him to Minister of State for Security in the Home Office. In December 2017 the Ministerial portfolio was extended to include Economic Crime.
He was the Security Minister during the terror attacks of 2017 and the Salisbury attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal. Wallace was appointed to the Privy Council for his role in coordinating the government response to the 2017 Westminster attack. Wallace supported the UK remaining within the European Union (EU) prior to the 2016 referendum. He voted for then Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement in early 2019 and voted against any referendum on a Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Secretary of State for Defence
On 24 July 2019, Ben Wallace was appointed Secretary of State for Defence by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, succeeding Penny Mordaunt. In August 2019, he was overheard discussing Prime Minister Johnson’s controversial prorogation with Florence Parly, the French Minister of Armies. Wallace suggested that the reason for the prorogation of parliament for five weeks was to prevent MPs from blocking the government’s Brexit plans rather than the government’s official position that it was to introduce new legislative agenda.
The government responded to his comments by stating he had “misspoken”. This prorogation was later deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court on 24 September 2019. On 13 October 2019, Wallace defended Turkey’s offensive against the Syrian Democratic Forces in north-eastern Syria in a NATO meeting. He commented, “Turkey needs to do what it sometimes has to do to defend itself”. His comments were condemned by other delegates at the meeting.
On 12 January 2020, in an interview with The Sunday Times, Wallace said that the UK “must be prepared to fight wars without the US”, one of the UK’s key allies. He stated that the upcoming Defence Review “should be used to make the UK less dependent on the US in future conflicts”. His comments were made in response to US President Donald Trump’s America First isolationist policies. Wallace also said that the next Defence Review would be the “deepest review” of Britain’s defense and foreign policies since the end of the Cold War in 1991.
Ben Wallace said the US put Britain in a “very difficult position” following the withdrawal of most US troops from Afghanistan. Soon after the withdrawal of US troops had started, the Taliban launched an offensive against the Afghan government, quickly advancing in front of a collapsing Afghan Armed Forces. Wallace said the UK would be ready to work with the Taliban should they come to power provided they adhere to certain international norms.
On 16 August 2021, during an interview on LBC about the US Afghanistan withdrawal, Wallace was asked by an LBC interviewer, “Why do you feel it so personally, Mr Wallace?” He replied with emotion, “Because I’m a soldier… because it’s sad, and the West has done what it’s done and we have to do our very best to get people out and stand by our obligations”.
On 26 August 2021, Wallace was accused of abandoning Pen Farthing, who ran an animal sanctuary in Kabul and was seeking permission for a private jet to be given clearance by the Ministry of Defence to get 71 people and more than 100 animals to the UK. The next day, he gave clearance for the $500,000 private plane to land at Kabul Airport. Wallace said Ministry of Defence staff had suffered abuse from some of Farthing’s supporters.
In a phone call with Saudi Arabia’s vice defense minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Ben Wallace discussed ways to strengthen defense relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly military exports. In December 2021, he met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss cooperation in various fields, especially defense.
Upon the 40th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War in 2022, Wallace declared Britain’s determination to “stand up to bullies”, sparking a crescendo in “dialectic tension” vis-à-vis the relations between the United Kingdom and Argentina. The Argentine government decried these declarations as “belligerent threats” and “denigrating references”.
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He met Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu on 11 February 2022. The following day, Wallace said that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was “highly likely”, and British citizens were being told by the Foreign Office to evacuate while commercial means were still available. Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadym Prystaiko, said Wallace’s comparison of diplomatic efforts with Russia to the appeasement policies of the 1930s was unhelpful, saying now is the wrong time to “offend our partners”. In February 2022, Wallace was filmed saying that the Scots Guards “kicked the backside” of Nicholas I of Russia in the Crimean War, and could do so.
On 21 March 2022, clipped footage of Ben Wallace in a prank call by Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus was released online. The duo, who are suspected by critics of links to Russian security services or of being Russian state actors, impersonated the Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal saying that Ukraine wished to promote its own nuclear deterrent to protect itself from Russia, a false claim made by the Russian government during the Russo-Ukrainian War and the invasion of Ukraine. Wallace was believed to be on a Microsoft Teams call with the duo for ten minutes. That day, Wallace announced plans to reduce the established size of the British Army by almost ten thousand.
Wife
Ben Wallace is married to Liza Cooke, they had their wedding in 2001. His wife worked as a part-time parliamentary assistant in his office until 30 April 2019. The couple first met when she was a researcher in the Scottish Parliament and Wallace was an MSP. Wallace and his wife Liza Cooke have two sons and a daughter. Wallace lives in Lancashire and London. Outside politics, he lists his recreations as skiing, sailing, rugby and horse racing. He is a member of the Third Guards club. As of mid-2022, Ben Wallace and his wife Liza Cooke are still married.
Ben Wallace net worth
How much is Ben Wallace worth? Ben Wallace net worth is estimated at around $5 million. His main source of income is from his career as a politician and former army officer. Wallace salary per month and other career earnings are over $1 million annually. He is one of the richest and most influential politicians in the United Kingdom. Wallace stands at an appealing height of 1.75m and has a good body weight which suits his personality.