Politics
Sir Michael Ellis to leave parliament ahead of general election
Jewish MP becomes latest in wave of Tory resignations
May 24, 2024 14:41
Jewish MP becomes latest in wave of Tory resignations
May 24, 2024 14:41Former minister Sir Michael Ellis will stand down from his Northampton North seat ahead of the general election on July 4.
Ellis has represented the consistency since 2010 and has served for over ten years in government roles under four Conservative prime ministers.
He previously served as solicitor general, transport minister, and deputy leader of the Commons, and was appointed attorney general in Liz Truss’s cabinet.
“I think records indicate I am the first Northampton MP of any party to have been appointed to Cabinet in 100 years,” he wrote in his resignation letter.
He was knighted for public and political service in Rishi Sunak’s 2023 honours list.
The Jewish MP is a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel and has frequently raised issues about Israel in the Commons.
In Parliament in March, he raised the treatment at Manchester airport of two Israeli survivors of Nova festival, meanwhile, he wrote to the Charity Commission over Rio Cinema’s snubbing of Eurovision “because the only Jewish nation is competing.”
He has been a vocal critic of the BBC’s coverage of the war in Gaza. During a cross-party debate in Westminster Hall in February he said that BBC management had “fundamentally failed” to deal with “biased coverage” and mitigate the fears of Jewish staff.
“The relentless bias of BBC News coverage has contributed to the record levels of intimidation and attacks on British Jews,” he said.
Ellis is the second Conservative Northamptonshire MP to announce his departure from Westminster.
Boundary shifts will see his seat take in Northampton town centre from the Northampton South constituency. Partly due to these changes, polls from the Electoral Calculus predict that the Labour Party has a 99 per cent chance of winning the seat.
"I feel now is the time for a new candidate to seek the nomination to have the honour to represent the seat under the new boundaries," he said.
“This has been an extremely difficult decision. I was born in Northampton and have lived and worked in the town my whole life. It has been the honour of my life to have served the people of my town in Parliament since 2010,” he wrote in his letter.