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Dehenna Davison was one of the rising stars of the 2019 Conservative MP intake.
Unfortunately, she is not standing for re-election.
Amazingly, she was the first Conservative to win in the northern — County Durham — constituency of Bishop Auckland, created in 1885. Until her victory, only Liberal (forerunners of the Liberal Democrats) and Labour candidates represented that constituency, never a Conservative.
We found out early on that ‘Dehenna’ rhymes with ‘Vienna’.
Why she ran
Four days before the election, on December 8, 2019, the Mail published a profile of Davison, which included a photo of her with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s girlfriend — now wife — Carrie Symonds on the hustings (campaign trail).
The article told us of her tragic circumstances growing up (purple emphases mine):
The poster girl for Boris Johnson‘s Election assault on Labour’s heartland has spoken in detail about the family tragedy that now guides her politics.
Dehenna Davison was just 13 when she learned her father Dominic had been killed by a single blow to the head in the pub.
Ms Davison, a Tory hopeful in a Co Durham seat which has never elected a Conservative MP, recalled how she sat in a hospital waiting room as doctors battled for 45 minutes to save her father’s life.
‘I can still picture it. I can tell you what the colour the walls were and everything,’ she said. ‘They [the doctors] stopped and I went to see my dad’s body, which is not something you expect to do at such a young age.’
Later on:
She recalled the trauma of attending every day of the resulting murder trial – and her lasting bitterness that the alleged attacker was found not guilty.
‘It gave me a very clear sense of injustice,’ she said. ‘I grew up overnight, literally overnight.’ At 16, she was representing ‘myself, my mum and my nan’ at a criminal injuries compensation tribunal. Even almost 13 years on, Ms Davison puts her real life experience age at 45 – not 26.
Since 2019, she has wanted a ‘one-punch law’ to be enacted, which would find perpetrators who caused the death of someone in that way guilty of murder. I am not sure that she has achieved that in the way that she envisaged. Although the Conservative government has toughened up sentencing in general through new legislation, this week, news reports have circulated wherein judges are asking for mitigating circumstances to be taken into account.
Returning to the Mail, we discovered more about her background:
She studied politics at Hull University and spent a year as an aide to [veteran Conservative MP] Jacob Rees-Mogg. Ms Davison, who has received support on the campaign trail from Mr Johnson’s girlfriend Carrie Symonds, said politics was about helping people ‘get their benefits claim through, getting a pothole filled’.
The former computer game shop worker admitted the ‘poster girl thing’ was probably due to her tragic backstory and her ‘slightly unusual demographics’. But she added: ‘I just want to get stuff done.’
Reality television marriage
After the election, reality television aficionados no doubt thought that Davison’s face looked familiar.
On December 14, two days after she was elected as an MP, The Sun told us:
A YOUNG woman, whose relationship with a man 35 years older than her was explored on a reality TV show, has been elected as an MP.
Dehenna Davison, 26, stood as the Conservative candidate for former Labour-stronghold Bishop Aukland – just a year after starring in Channel 4 programme Bride & Prejudice with now-husband John Fareham …
Dehenna was studying politics at Hull University when she met John, a Conservative councillor.
They fell for one another while out campaigning in Kingston upon Hull North, where she stood as a candidate in 2015.
John proposed to Dehenna – who also once worked as a parliamentary aide for Jacob Rees-Mogg – in 2015, but they still had to convince her grandfather Paul, eight years older than her other half, to support their relationship.
In the TV show, Dehenna and John, who was 59 when the programme aired, sought his approval for their marriage.
“Age doesn’t matter if two people really care about each other,” the future MP told the camera.
John added: “I had asked her before, but she told me to ask her properly.
“At my age, going down on one knee was going to be a bit tricky. It wasn’t the going down, it was the getting back up again.”
When the show aired, viewers rushed to give the couple their blessing – and criticised Paul’s unhappiness at the union.
One person wrote: “She’s 24 let her decide who to marry” …
The article included her election victory tweet, dedicated to her family:
Grandfather Paul was right.
Just ten days after the election — on December 22, 2019 — HullLive reported that the marriage was in tatters:
A new Tory MP, who studied and married in Hull, has split from her councillor husband, it has been confirmed.
Dehenna Davison married Bricknell ward councillor John Fareham in 2018 but, in an interview with The Telegraph on Saturday, she confirmed the news.
Cllr Fareham and Ms Davison appeared together on Channel 4 show Bride and Prejudice last year, which documented the couple’s push for acceptance from her grandfather, before they tied the knot.
The show picked the pair as one of six couples as Dehenna, then 24, was 35 years younger than John, 59, who was similar in age to her grandfather.
However, their relationship has since come to an end, according to the interview released this weekend.
Activity outside of Parliament
It wasn’t long before the left-wing Hope Not Hate activists targeted the loveliest of new MPs.
On Valentine’s Day 2020, The Guardian reported:
Calls have been made for an investigation after photographs emerged linking a newly elected Tory MP with two alleged far-right activists.
Dehenna Davison, the MP for Bishop Auckland and a prominent member of the party’s new contingent of northern representatives, was pictured holding a County Durham flag with Andrew Foster, a man described by anti-racism campaigners as a “Muslim-hating extremist of the very worst kind”.
The images, revealed following an investigation by the campaign group Hope Not Hate show the MP with Foster at a party celebrating Brexit in a pub on 31 January. At the same event she was also pictured with Colin Raine, a former Tory activist banned from the party after allegations that he was behind a far-right protest and made Islamophobic comments online. Raine has denied that he has any far-right links.
Davison, 26, sought to distance herself from any links with the two men. “These photos were taken at an event open to the public and I in no way whatsoever condone the views highlighted of the individuals concerned,” she said in a statement …
On March 4, 2020, Guido Fawkes posted a photo of a selfie that a glamorous Davison took of fellow Conservative MP Matt Vickers and — oddly enough — then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the Kebab Awards (yes, it’s an annual event). Perhaps she wanted Corbyn in shot to counter the Hope Not Hate smear?
On April 16 that year, nearly a month into lockdown, The Mirror reported that Davison posted a video of herself on TikTok, to which the defeated Labour incumbent Helen Goodman objected:
A Tory MP has been branded ‘self-indulgent’ for posting a sweary rap video video in which she appears to complain the coronavirus lockdown has left her bored.
Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison posted a TikTok clip, lip-synching to “Bored in the House” by rapper Tyga.
The clip shows her doing her washing, talking to her self in the mirror pouring a large glass of red wine and rapping “I’m bored in the mother f***in’ in the house bored”.
But the former Labour MP who Ms Davison replaced in December said she’s been left to answer queries from Ms Davison’s constituents, who can’t get an answer from their MP.
Ex-MP Helen Goodman said she was “shocked and horrified” by the video …
Ms Davison, 26, has since deleted the video.
She told the Mirror: “This was nothing more than adding to light-hearted content being produced by millions to stay positive during this lockdown.
“We should be celebrating the actions of 3.6 million people staying safe during lockdown rather than belittling them for keeping themselves and others entertained whilst following government guidance to stay home, protect our NHS and save lives.”
Ms Davison said the 3.6 million figure referred to the number of TikTok users who had made videos using the same song …
On September 7, when life with coronavirus was returning to normal in England, Davison wrote a pro-Brexit and pro-Boris editorial for The Sun:
… Knocking on doors during the election last year, three resounding messages on Brexit were clear: 1 – let’s just get on with it. 2 – Boris is the man to deliver it. 3 – we need to stand up to Brussels.
Now as talks reach the final furlong, more than ever, we need to remember that third message.
The Brussels bully boys will only blink if they recognise equivalent displays of strength from UK negotiators.
That is why I was so pleased to see the Prime Minister set out a definite deadline of October 15 for negotiations to be concluded or we will walk away.
We needn’t be afraid.
Whether we leave with or without a deal, Brexit marks the start of a bright future for Britain.
A future where we are free to strike our own trade deals, manage our own borders, make our own laws, and where we open our arms to the world as a truly global Britain …
In April 2021, Guido Fawkes told us that Davison was one of 40 MPs to join the think tank IEA’s Free Market Forum. Davison was one of the co-chairs of the group along with fellow Conservative MP Greg Smith.
Other members included future Prime Minister Liz Truss, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel and future Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.
GB News began broadcasting in June 2021. Davison was a presenter on the new channel’s Sunday morning current events show The Political Correction along with Nigel Farage, blue Labour activist Paul Embery and, occasionally, the former DUP party leader — now Dame and Baroness — Arlene Foster.
On Monday, October 11, she gave an interview to fellow GB News presenter Gloria de Piero, a former Labour MP, in the series The Real Me, in which MPs featured:
In the interview, Davison revealed her bisexuality to de Piero, which generated a few news articles in response.
GB News recapped it:
Dehenna Davison said her sexuality is not a big deal and “just part of who I am …
“If anyone were to explicitly ask me, I certainly wouldn’t try and hide it because I don’t think it’s anything to be ashamed of.
“The reason I haven’t done a kind of ‘By the way, guys’ is because I don’t want being bi to be considered a big deal.
“If I did a very public kind of coming out parade, that would be me saying there’s something really unusual about this and trying to make a big deal of it when to me it’s not. It’s just part of who I am.”
She also spoke about her divorce and the future. By then, she was in a new romantic relationship — with a man:
“It’s going really well, and I’m very excited about it. But we’ll see, the future is a very exciting place.”
In 2018, Miss Davison appeared in the Channel 4 programme Bride And Prejudice, which showed the then 24-year-old marrying John Fareham, a Conservative councillor who is 35 years her senior.
In a tweet on Sunday evening, she added: “Really overwhelmed by the outpouring of love this evening. Thank you so much for your support.”
The Mail had more soundbites about her sexuality:
Conservative MP Dehenna Davison said her sexuality is just ‘part of who I am’ as she came out publicly as bisexual today …
In an interview on GB News, set to be broadcast today, Ms Davison said: ‘I’ve known that I’m bisexual for quite a lot of years. All my close friends and family know’ …
On October 12, the Mail reported on the hate she received on social media.
The Telegraph‘s chief political correspondent Christopher Hope, who now works for GB News, included her political insight:
In the interview, she described the shock of learning that her father, Dominic, had been killed by a single blow “in the side of the neck” when she was just 13 …
Her father’s assailant pleaded self-defence and was not convicted of the assault, she said. She has set up an all-party parliamentary group on one-punch assaults to see whether more needs to be done for victims and on sentencing assailants.
Not having been raised in a political family, Miss Davison said she had “genuinely thought growing up that Winston Churchill was a Labour prime minister”.
She admitted that she occasionally thought about leading the Tory party, adding: “You kind of fantasise and see who’s in at the moment and you think, ‘maybe this is something that I could do’ – but would I like to?
“The upside is you get a chance to really try and shape the country and try and make it better, which is what we all get into politics to do anyway. And what better way than by leading a party and potentially going on to lead the country? But I think there are so many downsides too. I mean, that complete invasion into your personal life.
“It’s hard enough being a backbench MP… and I’m just not really sure whether that’s something that I’d really want to do. And certainly I wouldn’t want that pressure put on my family.”
Once Boris Johnson’s Partygate became a regular feature in parliamentary debates, Davison was accused of being part of the Pork Pie Plot — said to have originated with the Conservative MP representing the home of pork pies, Melton Mowbray — to oust him as Prime Minister.
On February 4 2022, the Mail told us of Davison’s latest relationship, again with a man.
As to her divorce from John Fareham, the article stated:
It is not clear whether that divorce is complete.
We discovered an interim relationship from 2021:
Last May she informed parliamentary officials she was in a relationship with Ahzaz Chowdhury, 35, a parliamentary lobbyist. She later announced that the five-week relationship had ended.
The article told us about her latest — and current — relationship, complete with photos:
A prominent MP is having an affair with a dashing but married diplomat likened to James Bond …
… the Mail can now reveal the 28-year-old is in a relationship with Tony Kay, 49, a Middle East expert at the Foreign Office.
Awarded an OBE for his work during the Arab Spring uprising, the father of two has been deputy ambassador to Israel and once threw a fancy-dress screening of a Bond film for hundreds of official guests.
His latest post is as head of the Arabian peninsula department at the Foreign Office.
His affair with Miss Davison is potentially sensitive given his high-profile position. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Middle East minister James Cleverly have been informed about the relationship, a source said.
On Wednesday Miss Davison and Mr Kay were seen walking hand in hand down a quiet street on the south side of the Thames in London. They then walked to Waterloo station where they embraced and kissed for several minutes before he caught a train.
It is believed he was travelling to the million-pound house he and his 47-year-old wife bought three years ago in Ascot, Berkshire …
Apparently, everyone who needed to know knew:
It is believed that Mr Kay and Miss Davison met in July 2019 when she was in a small group of prospective parliamentary candidates on a Conservative Friends of Israel trip. The group visited Gaza and the West Bank.
The pair have been growing closer ever since and he has moved into her expenses-funded home.
A Whitehall source said: ‘The relationship between Dehenna and Tony hasn’t been going on since they met in 2019 – it’s six months. His wife has known for half a year, the kids know, the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss knows, James Cleverley knows, his line manager knows, the permanent secretary knows.
‘He’s done absolutely everything by the book, and kept his line manager informed throughout. He’s going through a divorce process with his wife, he’s still married.
‘It’s not entirely unreasonable for him still to be going to the family home, but his marriage is over. Dehenna’s flat is her flat, and she’s entitled to have whoever she wants in her flat.’
A few days later, on February 12, The Times Magazine did a big splash interview with glamorous photos of Davison in retro-1960s clothes asking if she was the future of the Conservative Party.
Janice Turner, the interviewer, wrote:
Before we met, I’d assumed a 28-year-old MP who got married on reality TV, shares a GB News sofa with Nigel Farage and posts TikTok videos plucking her eyebrows to Taylor Swift’s …Ready For It? might well be a showboating lightweight of no fixed political abode. Instead I’m surprised to find Mrs Thatcher’s granddaughter: a serious operator, with well-honed conservative views, fluency, ambition and drive. I doubt Dee, as her friends call her, is going anywhere except up the slippery Tory pole.
‘Dee’ denied being part of the aforementioned Pork Pie Plot. Instead, she gave a lot of credit to Boris and Carrie:
So what was her involvement in a plot? The red wall MPs, she says, held a secret ballot about whether to put in letters calling for Boris Johnson to resign. Has she? “No.” Is she tempted? “I honestly don’t know.”
… Davison says her view hasn’t changed. “What matters… is the PM really gets a grip of No 10 and over policy, to make sure we are delivering for people in the red wall.” In other words, she is sitting tight to see which way the wind blows.
Yet Davison acknowledges she owes her victory in large part to Johnson. “It wasn’t just Brexit. He does have this incredible charisma,” she says. “You know, there aren’t many party leaders you can take to a beachfront in Hartlepool and people stop every four steps for selfies and to shake his hand. That’s a rock-star politician, something you don’t see very often at all.”
But she’s also equally indebted to his wife. In 2019, Carrie Johnson contacted her, saying she wanted to support female candidates and could she campaign in Bishop Auckland. “And I said, ‘Yes, I would absolutely love that.’ And we got messaging a bit through the election; she’d check in to see how I was doing. When I was down in London for some work stuff, I visited her. My first time in No 10, actually, was to go and see Carrie and the dog.”
There’s also a 2019 campaign photo of her, Carrie, Dilyn the dog — and none other than Rishi Sunak MP.
Davison, an only child, admitted to be an annoyingly good student in school:
It’s clear why Carrie Johnson would take Davison under her wing: young Tory women are scarce. Mrs Johnson, the arch-political strategist, must have considered this attractive, TV-ready working-class girl from a Sheffield council estate and thought the party had struck gold. What better vision of modern conservatism than the only child of a stonemason and a nursery nurse, who was so bright that her teacher, Mrs Burton, insisted she apply to the private Sheffield High School. “I had a really inquisitive mind. I always wanted to race to the end of the work so I could do more, learn more. I was one of those really annoying kids.”
The family worried that she’d win a place and they wouldn’t be able to afford to send her. But Mrs Burton even offered to pay the fee for the entrance exam, so insistent was she that Dee would win a scholarship. Which she did.
Davison, who was in the catchment for one of the city’s worst-performing comprehensives, believes private school changed her life. “I don’t think I’d be here [in parliament] today. Absolutely not. And one of the greatest things about an all-girls school is there was never a second when I was told I couldn’t do something because I was a woman. It was really: ‘If you work hard, you can do it.’ ”
The article revealed that Davison’s divorce was still going through, even though the Mail alleged that she and Tony Kay — now Tony Kay OBE, no less — were living together. John Fareham was either a member of or a guest at three of London’s most prestigious private men’s clubs:
… Davison did the most unfathomable thing: she married a Hull Conservative councillor, John Fareham, who at 59 was 35 years her senior. (“We went clubbing my style, to the Carlton, the Athenaeum and the Garrick,” he said.) And she did so on a reality TV show, Bride & Prejudice, about couples who face family opposition. Davison’s grandfather is shown weeping miserably before he gives her away. Does she regret the show? “I don’t think there’s much point regretting it because it’s happened. But, yes.”
Amateur psychologists might suggest she was looking for a father figure: “Oh, I get the daddy issues trope all the time.” Her marriage is a closed chapter, she says: her divorce is still going through. She’s now seeing a 49-year-old diplomat, Tony Kay, a Middle East expert with the Foreign Office, who is also getting divorced from the mother of his two children.
The Times Magazine‘s Janice Turner concluded:
Whether she keeps her seat or not, she’s clearly in the party for the long haul. When [Labour’s Deputy Leader] Angela Rayner called Conservative voters “scum” [in the House of Commons], Dehenna Davison wore and gave away “Tory Scum” badges. “I wanted to reclaim the narrative. If they’re going to call us scum, I’d rather embrace it.”
Well, one could only wonder at the time.
Nine months later, on November 25, Guido Fawkes gave us the answer. By then, Boris had been forced to resign, as had Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak was the Prime Minister, by fiat from Conservative MPs.
Red emphases Guido’s:
The Tories’ 2019 poster girl, Dehenna Davison, has announced she’s to stand down as an MP after just one term. Dehenna won her seat of Bishop Auckland in 2019, with a swing of 9.5%. However after a meagre five years in the Commons, Davison is to depart at the next election. The third Tory MP to announce they’re doing so…
Davison explains the reason she’s departing:
For my whole adult life, I’ve dedicated the vast majority of my time to politics, and to help make people’s lives better. But, to be frank, it has meant I haven’t had anything like a normal life for a twenty-something.
Dehenna is the third Tory MP to make such an announcement, after Chloe Smith and Will Wragg. It’s not like they’re leaving a sinking ship. At 25 points behind Labour, they’re on the ocean floor …
Guido added an update to say that Davison was the eighth Conservative MP to announce there would be no run for re-election.
The Telegraph reminded us that Davison had had a ministerial role at that point, so was no longer on the backbenches. Having watched her on BBC Parliament, I can say that she did very well at the despatch box:
Tory rising star Dehenna Davison has become the latest MP to announce she will stand down at the next election.
The Levelling-up Minister, who is only 29, made history in 2019 by becoming Bishop Auckland’s first Conservative MP.
The article also gave us more of her resignation statement:
I will always be humbled to have had the opportunity to serve as a Member of Parliament. But now the time feels right for me to devote more of my attention to life outside politics – mainly to my family and helping support them as they’ve helped support me.
That’s why I won’t be standing in the next general election.
On September 18, 2023, Guido reported that Davison resigned as Levelling-up Minister because of chronic migraines, an ailment she had not had before:
Dehenna Davison has resigned as Levelling Up Minister this afternoon, citing health reasons in her letter to Rishi Sunak. Davison had already announced she will stand down at the next election, though she has decided to step back a year or so early owing to chronic migraines:
Unfortunately, for some time now I have been battling with chronic migraine, which has had a great impact on my ability to carry out the role. Some days I’m fine, but on others it is difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with the demands of ministerial life – and the timing of such days is never predictable. Though I have tried to mitigate, and am grateful to colleagues for their patience at times, I don’t feel it is right to continue in the role. At such a critical time for levelling up, I believe the people of communities like mine, and across the country, deserve a minister who can give the job the energy it needs. I regret that I no longer can. And, as my capacity is currently diminished, it feels right to focus it on my constituents, and on promoting conservatism from the backbenches.
Davison was the government’s youngest Minister, and only joined the Commons benches in 2019. She’s done the full MP lifecycle in record time…
That was an excellent observation from Guido.
Another competent Red Wall MP, Jacob Young, replaced Davison.
As we are well into 2024 and awaiting Rishi Sunak’s date for the general election, MPs from all parties wish the agony of waiting would end soon.
On March 17, The Observer, weekend edition of The Guardian published interviews with several MPs who discussed their eagerness for an election date to be called and gave their thoughts on what life in Parliament was like. Dehenna Davison was one of them:
In her office, Dehenna Davison curls her legs beneath her on a sofa, seemingly oblivious to the whopping great Dr Martens on the end of them. “Colleagues keep saying: ‘You’re counting down the days,’” she tells me. “But we don’t know how many days are left.”
The article delved deeper into what she thought about the House of Commons.
She said:
There have been moments when the abuse has been so vile. There’s definitely an element of misogyny.
She has received hateful online messages. Even though she had worked as Rees-Mogg’s intern and thought she knew what went on in Westminster, she realised that the reality of being an MP was something quite different:
Dehenna Davison’s office is in a building whose long, rather desolate corridors resemble those of a three-star hotel, and it’s so small: as we talk, our knees are practically touching. She seems very young – she’s sipping a drink via a straw from a huge, multicoloured plastic cup – and if not vulnerable, exactly, then like someone who hasn’t had the easiest time since she won Bishop Auckland just over four years ago (for the 84 years before her election in 2019, the town had always had a Labour MP). She took the decision not to stand again in part because she felt that by devoting her 20s to politics, she’d missed out on “normal adult life”. But the longer she talks, the more obvious it becomes that the bigger factor by far may be the abuse she receives online.
“You have to have a thick skin to go into parliament,” she says. “And I’ve always argued that the internet is a great thing. But the level of abuse online is something I never anticipated. There have been moments when it has been so vile. I’m not talking about policy stuff. We’re always going to have people who disagree with us; that’s legitimate. It’s the personal attacks [that are upsetting]. There’s definitely an element of misogyny there. When I posted a memorial to my father who passed away in 2007 [he died after being punched in a pub], I got one message that said: ‘I bet he’d be turning in his grave, knowing you’re a Tory.’ Another one said: ‘You’re such a slut, I bet he’s looking down, and seeing all the disgusting things you’re doing – though maybe he likes that.’” One troll received a police caution, having posted 100 messages online in 24 hours. Another, she says, is subject to a restraining order. What support does parliament offer in this situation? She laughs. “When I was elected, I sat down with the police. They gave me some general advice: not to be controversial, and not to post in real time where I am.”
Davison wasn’t intimidated when she arrived: she’d been an intern in Westminster, and knew her way around. But her status as a rising young star who’d won a seemingly impossible seat made things difficult at times.
“I got a lot of media attention, which I hadn’t sought. I think my colleagues thought my motivation was the limelight. It became very isolating as time went on, hearing indirectly what people had been saying about me, all the backbiting.”
Like her colleague Charles Walker, she likes the division lobby: the chance to brush shoulders with cabinet ministers and even the prime minister. But the system of whipping leaves a lot to be desired. “When I was elected, my whip asked me in for a chat. His first question was whether I wanted to be prime minister.” Was he trying to weaponise her ambition? She nods. “You know that [if you rebel] you’re putting down a marker against yourself getting any kind of future promotion.” When she once voted against a government motion, a male politician “stood too close to me, being quite aggressive”.
Davison insists the Tories can hang on to Bishop Auckland, and that a lot can change electorally in six months: “Don’t believe everything the polls say.” But about the future of the party, she sounds less certain – especially if there is a Labour rout. “Then there’ll have to be some soul searching. It will be interesting to see who’s left, and in what direction that takes us. I’ve a suspicion the membership would want to see a move towards the right, a more authoritarian approach. Whether that’s the right thing in this age, I can’t say. I find myself economically pretty rightwing, but socially I’m very liberal, so I wouldn’t want to see us doing a massive shift to the right.” She smiles. “But you know, by that point, I’ll be just another [Conservative Party] member…”
She slurps on her straw. Her heart, I sense, is already elsewhere.
I think so, too.
My far better half said that some of the 2019 Red Wall MPs never expected to be elected. Perhaps Dehenna Davison is one of them.
The latest we heard from her was in a Point of Order in Parliament on March 18, when Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner and a few other Labour MPs visited Bishop Auckland without letting her know. All MPs going to another’s constituency in a public capacity must advise the sitting MP of their visit before it happens.
Guido had the story and the video:
Guido wrote, reminding us of Rayner’s current controversy over her living arrangements some years ago, which could, at the very least, involve a tax liability:
It looks like Angela Rayner is forgetting the rules. Bishop Auckland MP Dehenna Davison has asked in the Commons why Rayner, along with four other Labour MPs, parked up in her constituency unannounced to launch the Labour candidate for North East Mayor’s campaign. Anything to avoid a media interview…
The Commons Rules of Behaviour are clear – if an MP wants to visit a constituency of another “all reasonable efforts should be taken to notify the other Member“. Speaker Lindsay Hoyle weighed in to tick off rule-breaking MPs. Maybe Rayner was too tied up in domestic matters to remember the rules…
In any event, valete, Dee. It was nice knowing you, if only off the telly and in the papers.
Churchmouse Campanologist 