Background
Alexander was born in Glasgow, the son of a Church of Scotland minister, Douglas N. Alexander, and a doctor. Much of his childhood was spent in Bishopton in Renfrewshire. A prominent member of the 1st Bishopton Company of the Boys Brigade, he played bugle in the Company's marching band helping them win the Scottish BB Marching Band Championship in 1981. Alexander attended Park Mains High School in Erskine, also in Renfrewshire, from where he joined the Labour Party as a school boy in 1982.
In 1984 he won a Scottish scholarship to attend Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Canada, where he gained the International Baccalaureate Diploma, returning to Scotland to study politics and modern history at the University of Edinburgh. He spent 1988/89, the third of his four undergraduate years, at the University of Pennsylvania as part of the exchange scheme between Edinburgh and Penn. Whilst studying in America, he worked for Michael Dukakis during the 1988 American Presidential Election campaign, he also worked for a Democratic senator in Washington DC. He graduated from Edinburgh with a first-class degree in 1990.
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