Nicholas Soames

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The Honourable Arthur Nicholas Winston Soames (born 12 February 1948) is a British Conservative politician. He is Member of Parliament for Mid Sussex and was Minister of State for the Armed Forces. His main political interests are defence, international relations, rural affairs and industry.

He was born in Croydon and is a grandson of Sir Winston Churchill, the son of Lord Soames and Baroness Soames, a nephew of the former Defence Secretary Duncan Sandys and Diana Churchill; the journalist Randolph Churchill and the actress and dancer Sarah Churchill. His cousin Eveline Soames has become a successful public relations consultant. He has been married twice. His first marriage (1981-1988) was to Catherine Weatherall (the sister of the Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne), by whom he has a son and his second to Serena Smith (a niece of the Duchess of Grafton) since 1993. They have had a son and a daughter.

Soames is a close friend of HRH The Prince of Wales and publicly criticised Diana, Princess of Wales during the couple's estrangement. He is a rugby union fan and admits being moved to tears by the England team's victory in the Rugby Union World Cup. He says that acts of courage and military bands playing Land of Hope and Glory also cause him to cry (Broadcasting House, BBC Radio 4, 19 September 2004).

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Career

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Education and military career

After attending St. Aubyns in Sussex, he received his secondary education at Eton College. Later, he studied at Mons Officer Cadet School. He served in West Germany and his native United Kingdom with the 11th Hussars of the British Army.

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Early career

In 1970 he became Equerry to the Prince of Wales. In 1972 he left to work as a stock broker. In 1974, he became a personal assistant; first to Sir James Goldsmith and then in 1976 to United States Senator Mark Hatfield, whose service he left in 1978 to become a director of Lloyds Brokers. Between 1979 and 1981, he was an assistant director of Sedgwick Group.

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Parliamentary career

Soames has been an MP without interruption since the 1983 general election. He has represented Crawley from 1983 until 1997, when his party lost the general election, and has sat for Mid Sussex since 1997. He has served as Minister of State for the Armed Forces at the Ministry of Defence under John Major and as the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence 2003-2005. He is also the chairman of Framlington Second Dual Trust PLC.

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Leadership Ambitions

On 9 May 2005, shortly after Michael Howard announced his intention to resign as leader of the Conservative Party, Soames resigned from the shadow cabinet. He immediately ended speculation that he intended to stand for the post of leader, saying that he merely wanted to be free to think about and influence the future of the party. He added that he was interested in joining the executive of the 1922 Committee. He later announced his support for David Cameron.

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Criticisms

Soames has been referred to in Private Eye and by some Members of Parliament as Bunter after the famously portly public schoolboy in Frank Richards' Billy Bunter books. He is also commonly referred to as Fattie Soames.

In 1996, he was criticised by political comedian Mark Thomas in his Channel 4 television programme, who suggested that 14 May 1996 should be National Soames Day. [1] Thomas accused him of dishonestly registering some inherited heirlooms, including a "three tier mahogany buffet with partially-reeded slender upright balustrade supports", as conditionally exempt works of art, which do not attract inheritance tax if the public has access to them. Thomas claimed the public had not been granted access. [2]

Soames, known as a bon viveur (he was once called a 'one man food mountain' by Tony Banks, Labour MP) with little appetite for political correctness, clashed with a businessman at a top Chinese restaurant in summer 2004. Afterwards, The Sunday Times (18 July 2004, p3) dubbed him Fat Boy Dim. It has been suggested that Soames was the unnamed senior Conservative at the 2004 party conference who was quoted in The Guardian as allegedly saying that "the trouble is that the Tory party is being run by Michael Howard, Maurice Saatchi and Oliver Letwin, and none of them really know what it is to be English" (The New Statesman and The Sunday Telegraph have printed a similar quote bemoaning the fact that "Saatchi, Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin are in charge; could they know how Englishmen felt?"). Soames' alleged anti-Semitism and general cultural fogeyism seems to put him at odds with much of the modern Conservative party.

Soames often heckles 'Old Labour' MPs such as John Prescott during Prime Minister's Question Time.

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See also

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External links

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