About Me

IIn April 1968, I walked in on the election campaign in Frinsbury Ward for the City of Rochester. At 13, after four years of Harold Wilson’s Labour government, I already knew that I was a Conservative and the temptation to “get involved” was too great: I was hooked. I joined the Rochester and Chatham Young Conservatives and, in one way or another, have been involved in the Party ever since.

I spent my University years in Salford, ostensibly studying Economics, in practice learning how elections were run and won. 1974 offered two general elections and gave me my first chance to run a ward campaign in Chancellor of the Exchequer Tony Barber’s Sale constituency. The mining constituency of Ashfield gave me my first taste of a Parliamentary by-election campaign and the rare pleasure of overturning a 23,000 Labour majority!

Returning to Rochester after University, I stood for the City Council at a by-election and served for just a couple of years as a City Councillor before losing my seat on the night we won the General Election in 1979. Both officers and fellow Councillors considered me a dangerous radical for advocating putting refuse collection out to tender, a policy that at the time only Southend had followed.

During these opposition years, I wrote Research Papers on economics and constitutional issues for the Federation of Conservative Students and Greater London Young Conservatives. The case I made for ending Incomes Policies went with the tide of Mrs Thatcher’s Party; my advocacy of Devolution did not.

Marriage, children and a career with lots of international travel limited my involvement over the next few years. I moved to Surrey, joined my Ward Committee and became its Chairman and then later Deputy Chairman Political and Chairman of the Surrey Heath Association. During my three years as Association Chairman, the Surrey Heath Association raised over £500,000 for the Conservative Party, gave £110,000 to Central Office and a further £40,000 directly to marginal constituencies. Our Mutual Aid campaign in the 2001 General Election helped win the Isle of Wight for Andrew Turner (one of only two Conservative gains from the LibDems that night).

In 2004, I was a candidate on the South East regional list for the European Parliament.

My career in business has run parallel to my work for the Conservative Party: as an Investment Manager for the Miners’ Pension Fund, an investment advisor to the Kuwait Government and, more recently, running my own international investment consultancy. I have run companies in Canada and the United Sates, and in Spain and France as well as the UK. While working for the Kuwaitis, I was responsible for a portfolio of property and industrial investments totalling $4 billion.
I am currently Deputy Chairman (Political) for the South East Region.