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Independent Conservative is a description which has been used in theUnited Kingdom,Canada,United States and elsewhere, to denote a politicalconservative who lacks a formal affiliation to the party of that name.
As a description for use on theballot paper, until 1999 anyone could stand at anyBritish election as an Independent Conservative, but since theRegistration of Political Parties Act 1998 came into force, a candidate who is not officially certified by theConservative Party must either stand for another registeredpolitical party or as anIndependent. However, the term is still used to designate apolitician who either has left the Conservative Party or never joined it, so is independent of it, but who nevertheless identifies as a conservative.
Lord Robert Cecil was an Independent Conservative in theHouse of Commons between 1911 and 1923, after he won the1911 by-election forHitchin, Hertfordshire. At the1945 general election,John Mackie andDaniel Lipson were both elected to the Commons as Independent Conservatives.
Andrew Hunter was elected as a Conservative MP in 2001; he left the party when selected in 2002 as a candidate for theDemocratic Unionist Party in the2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election. Hunter sat as an Independent Conservative MP until joining the DUP Westminster parliamentary party in 2004.
Lord Stevens of Ludgate sat in theHouse of Lords as an Independent Conservative between 2004 and 2012.[1]Derek Conway sat as an Independent Conservative after helost the whip in 2008, and did not contest the2010 general election.
Nadine Dorries was suspended from the Conservative Party after taking part in the television competitionI'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in November 2012,[2] before regaining the Conservative whip in May 2013.
On 25 October 2016,Zac Goldsmithresigned from the House of Commons over the planned expansion ofHeathrow Airport, triggering aby-election, which Goldsmith contested as an Independent, but without opposition from the Conservative Party. He was described as an Independent Conservative.
In April 2019,Nick Boles quit the Conservatives to sit as what he called an "IndependentProgressive Conservative".[3]
In September 2019,Amber Rudd quit the Conservatives over the disagreement that has been engaged in by their former 21 MP colleagues on the subject ofBrexit, underBoris Johnson leadership.[4] She decided not to seek re-election at the2019 general election after initially planning to run as an Independent Conservative.[5][6]
Independent Conservative members of parliament have also sat in theHouse of Commons of Canada, with a similar designation. In the 19th century, prior to the solidification of the party system, it was common in Canada for Independent Conservative andIndependent Liberal members to be elected, sometimes defeating official Conservative orLiberal candidates.
In the1940 Canadian federal election,Joseph Sasseville Roy was elected to representGaspé as an Independent Conservative. He had declined to run as an officialConservative due to his disagreement with the party's policy onconscription, which was unpopular in Quebec.Henri Courtemanche was elected as an "Independent Progressive Conservative" inLabelle in1957 and subsequently rejoined theProgressive Conservative Party of Canada.Maurice Allard was elected to the Commons as an "Independent Progressive Conservative" inSherbrooke at the1965 federal election, defeating the official Progressive Conservative candidate. A former Progressive Conservative politician, Allard had quit the party in 1963 due to his opposition to its leader,John Diefenbaker.
Since then, it has been more usual for Independent Conservatives at the national level to be Conservatives who have voluntarily resigned the party whip or who have been expelled from the party.Bill Casey sat in the House of Commons forCumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley as an "Independent Progressive Conservative" after he was expelled from theConservative Party of Canada caucus for stating that the Conservative government's 2007 budget had violated theAtlantic Accord. Casey was re-elected at the2008 Canadian federal election with almost 70 per cent of the vote.[7]
Patrick Brazeau was an Independent Conservative Senator until he was expelled from sitting in the Senate due to his arrest for assault.Pamela Wallin is a current Independent Conservative Senator who lost her position in the party's caucus due to a spending scandal. In 2008,Brent Rathgeber was elected as Conservative MP forEdmonton—St. Albert; he left the Conservative Party's caucus in 2013 to become an Independent Conservative MP, accusingPrime MinisterStephen Harper of exerting authoritarian control over the government throughthe Prime Minister's Office. He served until the2015 federal election, when he lost to regular Conservative candidateMichael Cooper inSt. Albert—Edmonton, a reorganized version of his previous constituency.
