Politics

Amber Rudd: Ex-top Tory announces she is standing down in general election


Former top Tory Amber Rudd has revealed she will not stand at the election.

But the ex-Home and DWP Secretary warned the Evening Standard: “I’m not finished with politics. I’m just not standing at this election.”

It means the prominent MP will not face a wipeout by Labour in her Hastings and Rye seat – where she had a slim majority of just 346 votes.

She had faced having to stand as an Independent after she quit the Cabinet and Tory whip last month to protest at Boris Johnson’s push for no-deal Brexit.

Ms Rudd resigned in solidarity with 21 of her colleagues who were sacked from for voting to prevent a no-deal Brexit in September.

 

VID MPs shout "disgrace" at Amber Rudd as she rejects calls for Orgreave inquiry
“I’m not finished with politics. I’m just not standing at this election,” she said

 

Reports earlier today that she would have the whip restored and had met with the Prime Minister were dismissed by No10.

But last night the MP of nine years made her peace with Boris Johnson.

She said today: “I will be leaving the House of Commons on perfectly good terms with the Prime Minister and I want him to succeed.”

Ms Rudd’s departure means the House of Commons will lose one of its most prominent anti-hard-Brexit MPs.

 

Ms Rudd’s departure means the House of Commons will lose one of its most prominent anti-hard-Brexit MPs

 

Yet she also had changed her position in the past, moving from vowing to block a no-deal Brexit to saying it would have to be left open as an option.

Born in London in 1963, she was the fourth child of stockbroker Tony Rudd and magistrate Ethne Fitzgerald.

Her brother Roland Rudd runs the People’s Vote campaign – where he is embroiled in a furious row with his own staff over a botched bid to oust senior staff.

She went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Queen’s College in London before reading History at Edinburgh University.

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General election 2019

Rudd joined the investment bank J.P.Morgan, working in London and New York, before working in venture capital and financial journalism.

She married the writer A.A. Gill and the couple had two children together in the 1990s but later divorced.

Gill, who died in 2016, referred to Rudd as ‘the Silver Spoon’ in his reviews and she was an aristocracy advisor to Four Weddings And A Funeral.

Ms Rudd was forced to resign as Home Secretary over the Windrush scandal after she misled MPs by denying removal targets existed.

An internal inquiry later found she was not given full information herself.

Ms Rudd returned to Cabinet as Work and Pensions Secretary where she announced some reforms to disability and other benefits.

But when she quit the hated 5-week wait for Universal Credit, flawed monthly payments system and benefit freeze were all still in place.





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