Broadcaster Iain Dale has stepped back from hosting his show on LBC in a bid to run in the general election as a Conservative candidate.
Mr. Dale made the announcement on Tuesday during his “Evening Show” after 14 years with the commercial radio station, confirming that as yet, he had not been selected to stand in a particular seat.
The broadcaster and author said that the decision was not something he had anticipated making “until just a few days ago,” but that along with being a radio presenter, one of his life’s ambitions was to be an MP.
“This will be my last show on LBC for the foreseeable future,” the 61-year-old said in the last minutes of his final broadcast.
He said: “I’m putting my hat in the ring to be a candidate at the general election. Whatever the result, I feel I can play a role in restoring trust and honesty in politics.
“There are no guarantees I'll even be selected, let alone elected. But I know that I would forever kick myself if I didn’t at least have a go. Even if you don’t share my politics, I hope at least that’s something you can respect.”
Mr. Dale previously ran as a Conservative MP in 2005, but was unsuccessful.
‘Fundamentally’ a Conservative
Later during his “For The Many” podcast, which he co-hosts with former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Mr. Dale confirmed he was seeking to stand as a Conservative candidate, despite suggesting a few months ago that he was not sure if he was going to vote for the Tories.He told Ms. Smith, “I’m fundamentally a conservative and always have been, I fundamentally believe in Conservative values, however you define them nowadays.”
“I just thought, whatever the result of this election, and we all know what the polls say, I think I could play a bit of a role in not just helping the Conservative Party through some fairly traumatic and difficult times, but actually rebuilding it.
131 MPs Standing Down
So far, 131 MPs have announced they are standing down ahead of the July 4 general election, which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced last week.This is a record number of MPs standing down at a general election, beating the previous high of 149 set during the 2010 election, which resulted in a hung Parliament and the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition that lasted until 2015.
In total, 77 Conservative MPs have resigned, which itself is the highest number in modern political history, surpassing the previous post-war record of 72 Tories who stood down ahead of the 1997 election, which ushered in the New Labour Tony Blair era.
Labour Challenging Jeremy Corbyn
In the past few days in the Labour camp, several MPs announced they were standing down, including House veterans John Cryer and John Spellar.Last week also saw Labour select Praful Nargund, an entrepreneur in the fertility industry who had only been a local councillor since 2022, to challenge former party leader Jeremy Corbyn in his Islington North seat.
Mr. Corbyn has held the seat since 1983, retaining it in the 2019 election with a 26,188 majority. In 2020, Labour suspended Mr. Corbyn after he refused to accept in its entirety the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s findings on how anti-Semitism was handled by the party when he was in charge.
Since then, Mr. Corbyn has sat as an independent in the Commons. The Islington North MP was blocked from standing as a Labour candidate last year after a motion by the National Executive Committee. When he decided to stand as an independent candidate in the July 4 election against Labour’s candidate, he was expelled from the party.
“Jeremy Corbyn’s days of influencing Labour Party policy are well and truly over. Jeremy Corbyn’s decision is his decision. What I’m intent on doing is putting first class Labour candidates in Islington North, which we have now done,” said party leader Sir Keir Starmer.
