TONY CLARKE (ENGLISH POLITICIAN)

'Anthony Richard Clarke', known as 'Tony Clarke', (born September 6, 1963) is an English Labour Party politician, and was Member of Parliament for Northampton South from 1997 until 2005.
Clarke had previously been a Councillor on Northampton Borough Council. He won the parliamentary seat unexpectedly at the 1997 general election with a majority of 744^[1] over the sitting Conservative MP Michael Morris, with a campaign based on local representation. Morris, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, had a 14,000 vote majority at the 1992 election, and the seat was considered safe for the Conservatives.
At the 2001 general election, Clarke held the seat with a majority of 885 votes over the Conservative candidate Shailesh Vara¹, but at the 2005 election, the Conservative Brian Binley retook the seat with a majority of 4,419.^[2]
Clarke has also served as a democratically elected "fan's director" on the board of Northampton Town Football Club, succeeding Brian Lomax in this role. He is now the clubs part time General Manager.
In May 2007, after being expelled from the labour party for running against an official candidate, he won the Castle seat in Northampton Bourough Council with 601 votes.
Clarke was regarded as an anti war MP. Despite his stance against the invasion of Iraq, on receiving a copy of a confidential memo between Blair and Bush he chose to report the leak to the police rather than expose what was said.^[3]

Contents

External links

References

External links

★ Northampton Labour Group

★ Northampton South CLP Labour2win.co.uk

References

1. Northampton South General Election results, 1997 and 2001 at Richard Kimber's Political Science Resources
2. General Election results, 2005 at Richard Kimber's Political Science Resources
3. Pair are guilty of Bush memo leak