Weybridge General Election News

Runnymede & Weybridge MP Announcement

Former Chancellor Philip Hammond, MP for Runnymede & Weybridge has announced that he will not be standing in the December General Election.

“My letter to the constituents I have served for 22 years:”

“It is with great sadness that I am today announcing my decision to stand down as your Member of Parliament at the forthcoming General Election. After having had the privilege of representing Runnymede and Weybridge for 22 years in Parliament, this is not a decision I have taken lightly.

The announcement of the disillusion of Parliament and the forthcoming General Election presented me with an acute dilemma: the withdrawal of the Conservative Party Parliamentary whip from me and 20 colleagues on 3rd September in response to our support for the so-called Ben Act, preventing a No Deal Brexit on 31st October, means that I am unable to stand in the forthcoming election as the Conservative Party candidate. If I fight the General Election as an Independent Conservative candidate against an official Conservative Party candidate, I would cease to be a member of the party.

I am saddened to find myself in this position after 45 years of Conservative Party membership, 22 years service as a Conservative MP, 12 years as an opposition front bench spokesman and over nine years as a Cabinet Member, including serving as Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Conservative Party that I have served has always had room for a wide range of opinions and has been tolerant of measured dissent. Many Parliamentary colleagues have defied the party whip on occasions without any action being taken against them.

But however aggrieved I feel at the loss of the whip, and however strongly I believe that we must deliver Brexit through a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU, to protect British jobs and as prosperity, I remain Conservative and I cannot, therefore embark upon a course of action that would represent a direct challenge in a General Election to the party I have supported all my adult life.

I will remain an active party member and I will continue to make the case for doing whatever is necessary to deliver a negotiated close future trade and security partnership between the UK and the EU. I shall also seek to promote a widening of Conservative party membership to include more younger business and professional people who support longest established core values, to help to ensure that the Conservative party of the future is a broad-based forward-looking, pro-business and pro-markets centre-right party.

I would like to thank the many hundreds of my constituents who have taken the trouble to contact me personally over the past couple of months to express their support and to encourage me to stand for re-election. I hope they will understand why I am unable to do so. I would also like to thank the activists and members, past and present, of my Constituency Conservative Association who have supported me since 1997 and throughout this period. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to all the people of Runnymede and Weybridge, whatever their political affiliation, many of whom I have had got to know personally over the last 22 years. It has been a pleasure to serve you and I wish you all very every good fortune for the future. I shall miss you greatly.”

PHILIP HAMMOND