Friday, July 5, 2024

Ian Liddell-Grainger loses seat in Parliament

Embed from Getty Images 

     


 Ian Liddell-Grainger, 65, has lost his Parliamentary seat in the British election.  Liddell-Grainger served as MP for Bridgewater from 2001 through 2010.  From 2010 until yesterday, He was the Member of Parliament for Bridgwater and West Somerset.

In February Liddell-Grainger was adopted as the Tory candidate for the new Parliamentary constituency, Tiverton and Minehead.   The Bridgewater and West Somerset seat was split into two seats, Tiverton & Minehead and "the remaining Bridgwater constituency.  

He decided to his put his name forward for the Tiverton & Minehead seat.

"I am delighted to have been chosen.  The new seat will take a lot of getting used to, but everybody who knows me can be certain that I am up for the challenge.

"I will fight as hard for Tiverton and Minehead as I will continue to do for Bridgewater and West Somerset."

He will not be able to serve in the next Parliament as Rachel Gilmour, Liberal Democrat, won the seat.   Her vote total was 18,326.  Liddell-Grainger received 14, 819 votes.

Liddell-Grainger's time in Parliament was beset with criticism.  In 2006, he was "disqualified from the writetothem.com league table after sending five messages from a Hotmail account.   He sent the emails "to improve his responsiveness ratings."  The writetothem.com website was set up to help people contact their MPs.

He used the same email address, but the messages had different postal addresses.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4735330.stm

In 2010, he was criticized for not attending election hustings or taking part in BBC's election coverage.   A Facebook group -- Where's Ian Liddell-Grainger -- was set up by Tom Douglas, who said: We've got an MP here that doesn't want to engage with the public, so if he was  to be re-elected  what kind of platform is he standing on?"

Liddell-Grainger said he was "canvassing during the day and doing casework at night."

"You can't say (later on)  you've got a better offer, so it's better just to say from the start you just can't do them."

That same year, he opposed the creation of a wetlands habitat at Steart on the Severn estuary, as a realignment of coast flood defenses. Liddell-Grainger said the "nation should not and must not afford."   The coastal plan was implemented in 2012.   He also opposed wind power schemes for his constituency. 


  In 2017, Ian Liddell-Grainger defended employing his wife, Jill as a parliamentary assistant.


He married Jill Nesbitt in 1985.  They have three grown children: Sophie, Peter and May.   Ian is the eldest son of the late David Liddell-Grainger and Anne Abel Smith, whose maternal grandmother was HRH Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone.

The former MP is a descendant of Queen Victoria.

Victoria - Leopold - Alice -May - Anne - Ian



No comments: