Eddisbury by-election, 1999

The Eddisbury by-election, 1999 was a parliamentary by-election held on 22 July 1999 for the British House of Commons constituency of Eddisbury in Cheshire.

On 25 May 1999 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office announced the appointment of Eddisbury's Member of Parliament (MP), the Rt. Hon. Sir Alastair Goodlad, as High Commissioner to the Commonwealth of Australia. This created a vacancy in the seat which Sir Alastair had retained as the Conservative candidate in the 1997 general election. Sir Alastair resigned from the House of Commons by accepting the office of Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern on 28 June 1999 to formally vacate his seat.

The Conservatives selected Stephen O'Brien, a former SDP member who lived in Chichester, to defend the seat. Labour nominated Margaret Hanson, wife of David Hanson (Labour MP for Delyn), who had also fought in the 1997 election. Labour had been only just over 1,000 votes behind the Conservatives in 1997 and ran an energetic campaign, raising the issue of fox hunting which she pledged to ban. Prime Minister Tony Blair went to the constituency to campaign for her, an unusual move as it is convention for incumbent Prime Ministers not to visit byelection campaigns.

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