A Jewish Conservative MP will be standing down at the next election, with Conservative Campaign Headquarters having reportedly initiated the process to select his successor last Friday.
As reported by the Guido Fawkes blog, Sir Oliver Letwin, who served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as well as a Minister of State for Government Policy under David Cameron, will be retiring from his seat.
Sir Oliver has been at the forefront of attempts by a faction of Conservative MPs to block a No-Deal Brexit, a prospect he described as “terrifying”.
The news that he would not be running again led some to speculate that he would consider joining a vote of no confidence in the current government, were such a vote to be proposed, with neither the Conservative party or his local Conservative association able to bring pressure to bear on him.
Last week, Jeremy Corbyn proposed that MPs join him in a vote of no confidence so that he could become a caretaker Prime Minister, call a snap election and campaign for another referendum.
On Saturday Sir Oliver, who has represented the constituency of West Dorset since 1997, told BBC’s Today programme that he “wouldn’t be able to support” such a move.
In 2004, Sir Oliver made headlines after Ian McCartney, then the Chairman of the Labour party, referred to the Jewish MP as a “21st century Fagin”, a description condemned by senior Jewish leaders.
Mr McCartney later described it as "absolute nonsense" to say his comment was racist, saying he had “spent all my life campaigning against racism and antisemitism.”
In 2013 Sir Oliver was in the news again after it was found that one of his members of staff had edited his Wikipedia page to remove the description of his religion as “Judaism”.
His office said that the reference to his religion had been changed because the politician was an atheist. References to his Jewish background remained.
