Former Home Secretary Amber Rudd announces she is standing down as MP
3 min read
Former Tory cabinet minister Amber Rudd has announced that she will not fight to hold on to her ultra-marginal seat in December's election.
Ms Rudd resigned as both Work and Pensions Secretary and a Conservative member in September in response to Boris Johnson's decision to remove the whip from 21 Tory rebels for supporting a Commons bid to delay a no-deal Brexit.
She currently holds the Hastings and Rye seat with a wafer-thin majority of just 346 votes.
But, speaking to the Evening Standard, she said she felt a "sense of relief" after the Prime Minister readmitted 10 of the rebel MPs to the party on Tuesday evening, just hours before MPs backed his plans for a snap election.
And the former senior minister also revealed she would be meeting with Conservative Chief Whip Mark Spencer on Wednesday to formally rejoin the party before Parliament dissolves.
"I spoke to the Prime Minister and had a good meeting with him a few days ago. I'm really confident of my position," she said.
"I will be leaving the House of Commons on perfectly good terms with the Prime Minister and I want him to succeed."
She added: "I'm not finished with politics, I'm just not standing at this election.
"I'm happy to leave the House of Commons as a Conservative MP."
Ms Rudd had previously threatened to stand against her the Conservatives in a high-profile London seat if Mr Johnson refused to return the whip to senior Tory rebels.
"I thought about it very hard," she told the paper. "I felt I wanted to do it out of solidarity with colleagues I had been in cabinet with, people whose values as Conservatives I shared and respected.
"I could not stand by while they were apparently being expelled from the Conservative Party.
"I'm very pleased the party appears to be reasserting itself, although it's disappointing it does not include a few of them.
"I feel a sense of relief that they have been welcomed back and the party can be what it should be, representing different views on Europe as well as everything else."
She added: "I felt I made the right steps at those critical points and I am pleased that the Prime Minister has now restored the whip to some of those colleagues."
Her announcement came just moments after former Conservative Party chairman Patrick McLoughlin revealed he had decided to retire ahead of the snap poll.
In a letter to his Derbyshire Dales consitituents he said it was "time to move on" after 35 years in the seat.
"I spent thirty of those years on the frontbench, in Opposition and in Government under five Conservative Prime Ministers. I had the honour to serve as David Cameron's Chief Whip in the first coalition government for many decades," he wrote.
"My first ministerial post was in 1989 as a junior minister. It was a great and welcome challenge to return as Transport Secretary in 2012."
He added: "But it is now the right time for me to stand aside and let someone else take Derbyshire Dales forward."
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