Witney by-election, 2016
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
Location of Witney within Oxfordshire
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
The Witney by-election was a UK parliamentary by-election held on 20 October 2016 in the constituency of Witney in Oxfordshire. It took place on the same day as the Batley and Spen by-election. They were the fifth and sixth by-elections of the 56th UK Parliament.
The by-election was triggered by the resignation of the sitting Member of Parliament (MP) David Cameron on 12 September 2016. The election was won by Conservative Robert Courts with a reduced majority, and the Liberal Democrats came in second with an increase in vote share of 23.4 percentage points.
David Cameron had been the Conservative Party MP for the seat since the 2001 general election, becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 2005 and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2010. Following the Leave result in the referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union that Cameron had campaigned against, he resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, being replaced by Theresa May. In September 2016 he announced his resignation as an MP saying he did not want to be a distraction to May's premiership.
The Conservatives picked Robert Courts, a barrister and West Oxfordshire District Councillor since 2014, from a shortlist of three candidates. Though Witney voted in favour of remain in the EU referendum on 23 June 2016, Courts is a "Brexiter".
...
Wikipedia