Henry was born in Bedford,England,to a Jamaican-born father,Harry. His mother,Gloria,was from Trinidad.[4] Henry was privately educated at Rushmoor School.[5] Before entering politics,Henry served in the Royal Air Force.[4] On 8 April 1993,when he was serving as a corporal,he was commissioned as a flying officer in the supply branch,with seniority from 28 July 1992.[6] He was promoted to flight lieutenant on 28 July 1996[7] and to squadron leader on 1 January 2007.[8]
Political career
In early 2014,Henry joined the Conservatives,noting that whilst campaigning was possible in military service it had not occurred to him to do so up until this point.[9]
After a few months of membership,he sought nomination to be the Conservative candidate in North West Hampshire. He was listed,but lost to former Deputy Mayor of London Kit Malthouse.[11]
At the 2015 general election he was selected as the Conservative candidate for Wolverhampton North East,in the West Midlands.[12] He was also employed as General Manager at Harvest Fine Foods.[13] He came second to Labour's Emma Reynolds,seeing a decline of 4.4% in the Conservative vote share.[14]
Henry served as a parish councillor in Shrewton,Wiltshire before resigning in September 2019.[15]
Henry was also Conservative member of the Wiltshire Councilunitary authority from May 2017 until January 2020.[16][17] As Henry assumed office as Member of Parliament for Broxtowe on 12 December 2019,this meant that he briefly had a dual mandate for both Wiltshire and Broxtowe.
In summer 2019,he was shortlisted,along with Tony Devenish and Felicity Buchan,for the ultra-marginal West London seat of Kensington. He failed to be selected.[22] Following this,he was selected as the Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Broxtowe in September 2019.[23]
At a 2019 general election hustings in Broxtowe,Henry said that he might introduce a private member's bill for a ban on payday loans advertising,and suggested that food bank users needed help understanding money and budgeting. At the same hustings he stated;"When people are really,really down,and when people haven't got the money,one of the things they can look to do is to get a payday loan or something like that." Reaction to this speech was audibly negative.[24]
During the election,Henry is said to have leveraged an existing relationship with Robert Jenrick to have Jenrick commit to funding Stapleford (a ward within Broxtowe) with £25 million,but only if Henry won the seat and the Conservative party won a majority.[25]
In his maiden speech made on 25 June 2020,[26] which was also in the week marking 72 years since the arrival of the Windrush generation to the UK,Henry spoke negatively of Labour for its representation of immigrants and those of the Windrush generation. Henry spoke of his pride in being the first Conservative parliamentarian of West Indian heritage.[27][28] On 21 July 2020,in a debate on the Windrush Lessons Learned Review,Henry used a question to state "party politics is shameful" and also used the opportunity to criticise Labour for not working with the Government to "right the wrongs of Windrush".[29]
In March 2021,Henry apologised after a member of his staff was alleged to have turned up at the home of a blogger to get him to take down an article. Henry said he was unaware the incident had happened until it was published online.[31]
In January 2022,a briefing released by the TaxPayers' Alliance revealed Henry to be "Britain's most expensive MP..." after £280,936 of expense claims during the 2020/2021 financial year.[32][33]
Darren Henry is married to Caroline,who was elected as the Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner for the Conservative Party in 2021 and banned from driving for six months in 2022 after breaking the speed limit five times.[36][37] They have twins.[38]
Related Research Articles
Nicholas Le Quesne Herbert,Baron Herbert of South Downs,is a British Conservative Party politician and was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Arundel and South Downs from 2005 to 2019. He was Minister of State for Police and Criminal Justice,with his time split between the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice,from 2010 to 2012. On 5 November 2019 he announced his decision not to stand for re-election in the 2019 general election. On 31 July 2020 Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Herbert would enter the House of Lords.
Penelope Mary Mordaunt is a British politician who has served as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council since 2022. A member of the Conservative Party,she has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Portsmouth North since the 2010 general election. She has run twice for the Conservative party leadership in July–September and October 2022,losing to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak respectively.
Anna Mary Soubry is a British barrister,journalist and former politician who was Member of Parliament (MP) for Broxtowe from 2010 to 2019. Known for her support of pro-European policies,she was originally elected as a Conservative but left the party to join Change UK in 2019.
The Conservative A-List,also called Priority List,was a list of United Kingdom candidates drawn up by Conservative Central Office at the behest of David Cameron following his election as party leader in December 2005,aimed as a means of broadening the number of Conservative Members of Parliament,potential peers and MEPs from minority groups and women as well as other preferred candidates for candidature. Where the preferred forums for selection were held,at least two members from the list were put to every open primary,and where these were not held the A-list were recommended directly,particularly to the top target seats.
Michael Whitney Freer is a British Conservative Party politician and former banker serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Courts and Legal Services since September 2022. He was first elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Finchley and Golders Green at the 2010 general election. Freer is a former leader of Barnet Council and a former councillor for the Church End and St Paul's wards in Finchley.
Ross Thomson is a former Scottish Conservative Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Aberdeen South from 2017 to 2019. Thomson was the first Conservative MP elected for Aberdeen South since the 1992 general election,25 years earlier. He was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the North East Scotland region from May 2016 until June 2017. He was elected to Aberdeen City Council in the 2012 local elections.
Mark John Reckless is a British lawyer and former politician who served as a Member of the Senedd (MS) for South Wales East from 2016 until 2021,having previously served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Rochester and Strood from 2010 to 2015. Initially a member of the Conservative Party,he crossed the floor to join the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in September 2014. He has since changed parties a further three times.
On 5 June 2014,a by-election was held for the UK parliamentary constituency of Newark,following the resignation of Patrick Mercer. Conservative Robert Jenrick won the seat with a majority of 7,403.
Robert Edward Jenrick is a British politician who served as Minister of State for Immigration from 2022 to 2023. He previously served as Secretary of State for Housing,Communities and Local Government from 2019 to 2021 and as Minister of State for Health from September to October 2022. A member of the Conservative Party,Jenrick has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Newark since 2014.
Victoria Mary Atkins is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care since November 2023. She previously served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury from October 2022 to November 2023. A member of the Conservative Party,she was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Louth and Horncastle in Lincolnshire in 2015. Prior to her political career,she worked as a barrister specialising in the field of fraud.
Sir Jeremy Mark Quin is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Horsham since the 2015 general election. A member of the Conservative Party,he served as Minister of State for Crime,Policing and Fire under Prime Minister Liz Truss from September to October 2022. After Truss resigned and Rishi Sunak succeeded her,Quin was appointed to be Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office. Quin resigned from Sunak's government in the November 2023 British cabinet reshuffle and became Chair of the Defence Select Committee in January 2024.
The Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner is the police and crime commissioner,an elected official tasked with setting out the way crime is tackled by Nottinghamshire Police in the English County of Nottinghamshire.
Robert William Henry Seely is a British Conservative Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Isle of Wight since June 2017. He was re-elected at the general election in December 2019 with an increased vote and majority. Seely is a former journalist and soldier. From 1990 to 1995,he worked as a foreign correspondent in the USSR/post-Soviet states. From 2008 to 2017,he served in the British Armed Forces on the Iraq,Afghanistan,Libya and ISIS campaigns.
Joyce Rebekah "Joy" Morrissey is an American-born British politician who has served as the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire since 2019. Morrissey has been a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury since November 2023.
Elections of police and crime commissioners in England and Wales were held on 6 May 2021,on the same day as the Senedd election in Wales and the local elections in England. This was the third time police and crime commissioner elections have been held. The elections were originally due to take place in May 2020 but were postponed by 12 months in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. Turnout was an average of 34.1% across the elections,with Wales having much higher turnout mainly due to the simultaneous Senedd election held across Wales,whereas only parts of England had simultaneous local elections.
Felicity Christiana Buchan is a British politician and former banker who serves as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kensington in London. A member of the Conservative Party,serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing and Homelessness in the Department for Levelling Up,Housing and Communities since October 2022. Prior to this,Buchan served as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury from September to October 2022.
Lee Anderson is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Ashfield since 2019. Elected as a member of the Conservative Party,he defected to Reform UK in March 2024 after having the whip suspended. He is Reform UK's first and only MP.
Daniel Rayne Kruger is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Devizes in Wiltshire since 2019.
This article lists the election results of the Brexit Party,known since 2021 as Reform UK,in UK parliamentary elections and in elections to the European Parliament.
References
↑ Brunskill, Ian (19 March 2020). The Times guide to the House of Commons 2019: the definitive record of Britain's historic 2019 General Election. p.128. ISBN978-0-00-839258-1. OCLC1129682574.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
United Kingdom 
Royal Air Force 
