{"id":227874,"date":"2025-01-30T15:18:39","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T15:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/30\/quentin-davies-former-grantham-and-stamford-mp-dies-aged-80\/"},"modified":"2025-01-30T15:18:48","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T15:18:48","slug":"quentin-davies-former-grantham-and-stamford-mp-dies-aged-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/30\/quentin-davies-former-grantham-and-stamford-mp-dies-aged-80\/","title":{"rendered":"Quentin Davies, former Grantham and Stamford MP, dies aged 80"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/48cb\/live\/538e1300-df12-11ef-a75f-9dd268073925.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Quentin Davies, former Grantham and Stamford MP, dies aged 80\" title=\"Quentin Davies, former Grantham and Stamford MP, dies aged 80\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Former Lincolnshire MP Lord Davies of Stamford, whose political career spanned almost four decades, has died aged 80.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Born in Oxford, Quentin Davies had a career as a diplomat before going into banking.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">He was first elected to the then Stamford and Spalding seat in 1987 and famously defected from the <!-- --><a target=\"_self\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/uk_politics\/6241928.stm\" class=\"sc-c9299ecf-0 bZUiKB\" rel=\"noopener\">Conservatives to Labour in 2007<!-- --><\/a>.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Lincolnshire County Council leader Martin Hill described him as &#8220;larger than life&#8221;.<!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">In addition to his constituency duties, Lord Davies also served as shadow Northern Ireland secretary and junior defence minister.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">His Stamford and Spalding constituency was abolished in 1997 and went on to represent the redrawn seat of Grantham and Stamford.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Lord Davies decided not to seek re-election in 2010 and that year entered the House of Lords, where he served until 2023.<!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">He defected to Labour the day before Gordon Brown took over as prime minister from Tony Blair in 2007.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">In a letter to his former Conservative leader David Cameron, he claimed the party seemed &#8220;to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything&#8221;.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Hill, who was chairman of the Conservative Association in Grantham during Lord Davies&#8217; time as MP, said the defection came as a &#8220;total shock&#8221;.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">&#8220;He was a bit larger than life and a very good constituency MP, so the defection came straight out of the blue,&#8221; he said.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Charmaine Morgan, an independent councillor and former Labour activist in Grantham, remembered him attending a party quiz night shortly after his defection.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">&#8220;We had a whole section on the history of the Labour Party and he got the top score,&#8221; she said.<!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cm29w27xvzgo\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Lincolnshire MP Lord Davies of Stamford, whose political career spanned almost four decades, has died aged 80. Born in Oxford, Quentin Davies had a career as a diplomat before going into banking. He was first elected to the then Stamford and Spalding seat in 1987 and famously defected from the Conservatives to Labour in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227875,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/48cb\/live\/538e1300-df12-11ef-a75f-9dd268073925.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[5406,58978,16,178728,33764,64890],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227876,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227874\/revisions\/227876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}