Crispin Blunt

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Crispin Jeremy Rupert Blunt (born 15 July 1960) is the Conservative Member of Parliament for the English constituency of Reigate. He replaced rebel Eurosceptic George Gardiner in 1997.

Crispin Blunt was born in 1960 and is married with two children. He was educated at Wellington College, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he won the Queen's Medal, gaining a Regular Commission, before reading Politics at the University of Durham between 1981 and 1984, where he was elected President of the Union Society in 1983 and graduated with a 2/1 degree. In 1991, he gained an MBA at the Cranfield University School of Management.

Blunt was commissioned as an Army Officer into the 13th/18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary's Own) and served until 1990. During the 1980s, he was stationed in Cyprus, Germany and the UK, serving as a Troop Leader, Regimental Operations Officer and Armoured Reconnaissance Squadron Commander. He resigned his commission as a Captain in 1990.

He contested his first Parliamentary seat in West Bromwich East for the Conservative Party. From 1991 to 1992, Blunt was a representative of the "Forum of Private Business". In 1993, he was appointed as Special Adviser to Malcolm Rifkind the Secretary of State for Defence, and worked in the same capacity when Malcolm Rifkind became Foreign Secretary between 1995 and 1997.

At the 1997 general election, Blunt was elected to Parliament as Member for Reigate in Surrey, replacing he long-serving euro-sceptic MP George Gardiner, who had been deselected by the local Conservative Party. Blunt and was subsequently appointed to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. In July 1997, he was elected as Secretary of the Conservative Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Committee and the Conservative Middle East Council. In May 2000, he joined the House of Commons Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee.

The new Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith appointed him to the Opposition front bench as Shadow Minister for Northern Ireland in September 2001. In July 2002, he was appointed as deputy to Tim Yeo, Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. On 1st May 2003 he resigned his position on the front bench saying that Iain Duncan Smith was a "handicap". His decision to resign at this time, was taken in the expectation that the Conservative Party would make over 500 gains in local government seats, but that these were gained in spite of, rather than because of Iain Duncan Smith's leadership. Blunt timed his resignation so that it did not become public until after the polls closed but before the results were declared. The following day he was unanimously reselected by his local party as their prospective parliamentary candidate but he failed to persuade 25 of his fellow conservative MPs to call for a vote of confidence in May 2003 and he accepted that no challenge for the party leadership would be immediately forthcoming and retired to the back benches. In November 2003 the challenge came and Michael Howard replaced Iain Duncan Smith after a vote of no confidence.

He subsequently became a party whip under Duncan Smith's successor, Michael Howard, but on June 9 2005 took leave of absence to support the expected leadership bid of Sir Malcolm Rifkind. However, when Sir Malcolm was knocked out of the leadership race of the Conservative Party, Mr Blunt returned to the whips' office and wrote to all Party members in his constituency asking for them to rank the remaining contenders in order of preference so he could best represent his constituents.