I'm very sad to learn this morning that my friend Richard Spring has decided to leave Parliament at the next election. This is the text of a letter he sent to his chairman on Friday.
I am writing to you to confirm that I shall not be contesting the West Suffolk constituency again, and will be leaving the House of Commons when the General Election is called.
I have taken the decision with very mixed feelings. I will have been the local Member of Parliament for eighteen years by the time the General Election takes place next year. It has been the greatest possible honour to have been the parliamentary representative for West Suffolk. I have enjoyed this role immensely. It has been a huge privilege to defend and promote local electors’ interests both in Suffolk and in the House of Commons.
I am most grateful to you for the way you have chaired the Association, and in particular pay tribute to you and Dorothy Whittaker, my constituency agent. It would not have been possible to fulfil my duties without your guidance and support.
It goes without saying that I shall give my fullest support to the future prospective parliamentary candidate for the constituency, who I confidently believe will be the next Member of Parliament for West Suffolk.
Richard has been one of the few MPs to really embrace blogging. He told me he regarded it as 'liberating'. Perhaps he will feel the same about his decision to leave Parliament. He would have certainly been a minister in a Cameron government but I guess he feels he wants to do something else while he is young enough to do so.
Parliament will be the poorer without him.
Strange, he has the most empty Wikipedia profile I think I've seen for any MP.
ReplyDeleteHe may rather doubt that there will ever be a Cameron Government, Iain.
ReplyDeleteIf all the good guys go what will we be left with? Apparatchiks and career politicians?
ReplyDeleteMaybe Sir William Garrow should be resurrected and put in charge of things?
@Arden Forester
ReplyDeleteIf all the good guys go what will we be left with? Apparatchiks and career politicians?
"A" listers.
Presumably he's going now to prevent CCHQ being able to control his seat selection after the New Year?
ReplyDelete@Opinicus
ReplyDeleteI suppose the first local Tory party which has an all women shortlist imposed will be rather annoyed?
Notable, however, that Nadeen Dorries was selected from one with a majority of women I gather.
So her fulmination son the topic might be taken with a sniff os salts . ..
An all-women shortlist, no doubt. But be warned. After the Turnip Taliban come the Suffolk Swedes, determined to resist the exclusion of the Deputy Leader of Suffolk County Council (a woman, for those who think that a candidate’s sex matters) from the shortlist to succeed her own retiring MP at Central Suffolk and North Ipswich. All of the shortlisted candidates for this Friday’s selection meeting are meterosexual.
ReplyDeleteI have every sympathy with those Tories who still have an absolute commitment to the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled importation and immigration, and a realistic foreign policy. They characteristically have a no less absolute, and indeed inseparable, commitment to the Welfare State (including farm subsidies), workers’ rights, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation (not environmentalism), fair taxation, full employment, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, and a base of real property from which every household can resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State. In a farming area such as Suffolk, invariably so.
They are now getting the treatment meted out to those Labourities who had an absolute commitment to the Welfare State (including farm subsidies), workers’ rights, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation (not environmentalism), fair taxation, full employment, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, and a base of real property from which every household can resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State. They characteristically had and have a no less absolute, and indeed inseparable, commitment to the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled importation and immigration, and a realistic foreign policy. In a mining and steelworking, Catholic and Methodist area such as County Durham, invariably so.
We should get together sometime...
Well, every cloud has a silver lining - it means another PPC place for you to stand for, Iain. Good luck son - 132nd time lucky, eh?
ReplyDeleteSo, Spring has sprung?
ReplyDelete