I remain one of your most loyal supporters and I shall continue to support you in the House of Commons.”His decision was also influenced by his wife Jan’s cancer. The couple plan to return to Northern Ireland and repurchase part of their old family farm in Co Londonderry.Mr Hunter has a long-held interest in Northern Ireland affairs; he served on the House of Commons’ Northern Ireland Affairs Committee between 1994 and 2001.A former Territorial Army major who taught English and classics at Harrow school, Mr Hunter is a controversial figure on the right of the Conservative Party. He was forced to stand down from the board of the magazine Right Now earlier this year over inflammatory articles about race.Mr Hunter is also a former member of the Monday Club, but left after Mr Duncan Smith suspended the organisation from the Tory party a year ago.Mr Duncan Smith said: “I’m very sorry that Andrew has decided to retire from Westminster politics but I fully understand his reasons. “I wish his wife Jan a full recovery and hope they will be very happy in their retirement. I appreciate the dignified way that Andrew has conducted his announcement. He will always be a friend of the party and a friend of mine.”. Michael Meacher, the 62-year-old Environment minister and the bravest man in Blackpool.

He took a dip in the sea to prove that the beach’s once-notorious water standards were improving. Good day
Michael Meacher, the 62-year-old Environment minister and the bravest man in Blackpool. The issue has preoccupied many delegates through the week.Rebels of the dayDiane Abbott, Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn, Ken Livingstone and other stalwarts of the far left kept the flame alive at the Campaign Group rally.Best partyTickets to the Mirror’s bash ­ traditionally the most raucous of the conference season ­ were in high demand. The Bootleg Beatles provided music from an era before many guests were born.Best ovationBill Clinton matched Tony Blair’s two-and-a-half minutes on stage, and seemed he could have comfortably outstripped that..

The last time Edwina Currie, the former minister turned broadcaster turned revelatory diarist, found herself presenting her BBC Radio 5 Live programme, Late Night Currie, there was a minor earthquake. Yesterday, as she returned to the airwaves to sell the virtues of her memoirs and reply to unflattering comments about her morality, she was facing an equally bumpy ride.
Her day began at home in South Nutfield in Surrey, where a 7.30am interview, her first since Saturday’s revelations of the Major affair, was conducted over the telephone, keeping her within the grounds of the £800,000 detached house for an extra hour and away from the reporters and photographers gathered outside.But if Ms Currie was expecting a debt of professional loyalty from fellow BBC network presenters Julian Worricker and Victoria Derbyshire, she was out of luck.Ms Derbyshire said: “People look at your ex-husband and the way you’ve described him in these diaries. I’ve got some quotes here, ‘looking fat’, ‘lackadaisical’, ’stubborn and pigheaded’ – why does he have to go through this all over again?”Mr Worricker added: “We’ve lots of e-mails and text messages coming in as we speak, a lot of them hostile, a lot of them actually saying, ‘I don’t think I want Edwina Currie on the radio any more because future programmes will be about her rather than the issues she might want to talk about.’ What do you say to that?”Awkward, but manageable for a woman who has been taking on all-comers for four years during phone-ins on her 10pm-to-1am show. “I have a feeling, you know, this is nine-days-wonder territory and it will die down,” she said.In the safe surroundings of her living room, Ms Currie was giving as good as she was getting and demonstrated the depths of her anger at Mr Major’s insistence that he had been “ashamed” of their liaison.”He may say now that he was ashamed of it, but he wasn’t ashamed of it then and he wanted it to go on,” Ms Currie said. “It started because we were, I suppose, healthy, handsome people in very pressurised jobs.”Ms Derbyshire asked if her former love still set her pulse racing On Saturday, an answer to that was “difficult”, she replied. But if a week is a long time in politics, it’s an eternity in affairs of the heart “The events of the last few days have .. put paid to any lingering regard or affection or admiration. He behaved in an atrocious fashion and it’s a shame,” Ms Currie said.