Bryan Gould

Bryan Charles Gould, CNZM (born 11 February 1939 in Hawera, New Zealand) is a former British politician. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 to 1979, and again from 1983 to 1994. He was a member of the Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet from 1986 to 1994, and stood unsuccessfully for the leadership of the party in 1992.
Gould currently holds a number of positions and in 2004 was made a director at TVNZ.

Gould was a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1962. After completing a degree in Law with first-class honours, he joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1964. He then returned to Oxford as a tutorial Fellow in Law at Worcester College alongside Francis Reynolds.

Gould became Labour MP for Southampton Test in October 1974 and held the seat until 1979. He worked as a television journalist from 1979 to 1983, and was then elected as MP for Dagenham from 1983, holding the seat until he resigned on 17 May 1994.

Gould was a member of Neil Kinnock's Shadow Cabinet, serving first as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, then as spokesman on Trade and Industry, the Environment, and later on Heritage. In 1992 he founded the Full Employment Forum. Later that year he was defeated in the leadership election to succeed Kinnock after the general election, which Labour lost to the Conservative Party for the fourth election in succession. John Smith won the leadership contest, but Gould resigned from Smith's Shadow Cabinet on 27 September 1992 when the Shadow Cabinet rejected a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty and in protest against Labour's support for the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. He resigned his parliamentary seat in May 1994 when he was about to return to New Zealand.

In July 1994 he returned to New Zealand and became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Waikato, serving until his retirement in 2004. In this position Gould was instrumental in initiating The Great Race, a rowing race for Waikato University against international universities on the Waikato River. The Bryan Gould Cup for the women's eights race is named after him.

Gould was awarded Companionship of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2003 for services to Education. In October 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Waikato. He is a board member of TVNZ.

Bryan Gould's brother is Wayne Gould, best known for popularising Sudoku. They are descendants of George Gould, a former chairman of the New Zealand Shipping Company.