Early life and career
Goldsworthy was born in Camborne,Cornwall,where her mother was a local teacher. She was educated locally at the St Meriadoc Primary School in Camborne before winning a scholarship to the independent Truro School. She took a gap year between school and beginning university in 1997,and in 2000 she graduated from Cambridge,with a BA (Hons) degree in History,having read for her degree at Fitzwilliam College. She then spent a year at Daiichi University of Economics in the Fukuoka Prefecture,Japan,and the following year completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Economics at Birkbeck College,London,in 2002.
Between 2002 and 2004,Goldsworthy worked in Westminster as an economics researcher for Matthew Taylor,the Liberal Democrat MP for Truro and St Austell,the seat adjacent to the one she would later represent. In 2004,she was appointed as a regeneration officer with the Carrick District Council where she worked until her election to Westminster less than a year later.
At the 2002 Lambeth Council Elections,Julia contested the Herne Hill ward. She polled 486 votes,finishing behind the Labour Party and Green Party.
Parliamentary career
Goldsworthy was elected to the House of Commons at the 2005 General Election for Falmouth and Camborne when she defeated the sitting Labour MP Candy Atherton. She gained the seat with a majority of 1,886 and made her maiden speech on 19 May 2005. [1] She names former Cornish Liberal MP David Penhaligon (1944–1986) as her greatest hero. Her election in 2005 meant that the Liberal Democrats held all the Westminster Parliament seats in Cornwall,for the first time since 1923.
In 2005,she was appointed as a spokesperson on health by Charles Kennedy,and promoted in 2006 by new leader Sir Menzies Campbell as Vince Cable's deputy in the Treasury team. She was also member of the Public Administration Select Committee from 2005 until mid-2006. [2] Julia Goldsworthy was promoted again in December 2007 to become the Liberal Democrat shadow secretary on Communities and Local Government. As an MP,she worked on issues such as the 'Axe the Tax' campaign against council tax,pensions,student tuition fees,health funding formulas and the abolition of central housing targets on local communities.
During her parliamentary career,Goldsworthy also used the social networking website Facebook as a way of gauging the opinions and views of her constituents,and this has led her to campaign for various issues. On 14 May 2008 in the House of Commons debates,she presented a petition on behalf of many thousands of people living in Cornwall who would like to see Cornwall be recognised as a network region on the website. [3] [4] Goldsworthy is a supporter of the Facebook Cornish Tickbox for the 2011 Census campaign. [5]
Goldsworthy co-sponsored the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Act 2010. [6]
Expenses
The Daily Telegraph showed that in 2006 Goldsworthy bought a "£999 television, £1,500 of furniture in House of Fraser, a £1,111 sofa bed and a £1,200 rocking chair from Heal’s, an upmarket furniture store", as part of moving into an unfurnished flat, but she did not claim the full amount for these items. [7] Between 2005 and 2008, she also regularly claimed £400 per month for food, as many other MPs did at the time, without providing receipts to prove the expenditure. She has responded with a full account of her transactions and a statement that she opposed steps to block the publication of MPs' expenses claims. [8] In February 2010, it was again reported that she repaid £1,005 for the "designer pink rocking chair" (this was repaid in June 2009) and £171.32 over-claimed in mortgage interest in 2005–06. [9]
Mebyon Kernow – The Party for Cornwall is a Cornish nationalist, centre-left political party in Cornwall, in southwestern Britain. It currently has five elected councillors on Cornwall Council, and several town and parish councillors across Cornwall.
Candice Kathleen Atherton was a British Labour politician and journalist. After serving as a councillor in Islington, where she was mayor, she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Falmouth and Camborne from 1997 to 2005. In later life she lived in Cornwall and was a member of Cornwall Council.
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Falmouth and Camborne was, from 1950 until 2010, a county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elected one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.
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Cornwall Council is the unitary authority for Cornwall in the United Kingdom, not including the Isles of Scilly, which has its own unitary council. The council, and its predecessor Cornwall County Council, has a tradition of large groups of independent councillors, having been controlled by independents in the 1970s and 1980s. Since the 2021 elections, it has been under the control of the Conservative Party.
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Cornish nationalism is a cultural, political and social movement that seeks the recognition of Cornwall – the south-westernmost part of the island of Great Britain – as a nation distinct from England. It is usually based on three general arguments:
The region of South West England has, since the 2010 general election, 55 parliamentary constituencies which is made up of 15 borough constituencies and 40 county constituencies. At that election the Conservative Party held the largest number of constituencies, with 36. The Liberal Democrats had 15 and Labour had 4. At the 2015 general election the Liberal Democrats lost all of their seats, while the Conservatives gained one seat from Labour, leaving the Conservatives with 51 and Labour with 4. In the 2017 general election, the Conservatives remained, by far, the largest party with 47 seats, though losing three to Labour, who won 7, and one to the Liberal Democrats, who won 1. In the 2019 general election, the Conservatives increased their number of seats to 48 by regaining Stroud from Labour, who held their other six seats, while the Liberal Democrats retained their sole seat in Bath.
Charles George Eustice is a British politician and former public relations executive who held office as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs between 2020 and 2022. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Camborne and Redruth since 2010.
Sarah Louise Newton, is a British Conservative Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Truro and Falmouth from 2010 to 2019.
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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Cornwall: Cornwall – ceremonial county and unitary authority area of England within the United Kingdom. Cornwall is a peninsula bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall is also a royal duchy of the United Kingdom. It has an estimated population of half a million and it has its own distinctive history and culture.
The 2021 Cornwall Council election took place on 6 May 2021 as part of the 2021 United Kingdom local elections. It was contested under new division boundaries as the number of seats on the council falls from 123 to 87.
Doris Martyna Ansari is a former Liberal Democrat politician from Cornwall and Chairman of Cornwall County Council from 2005 to 2009. She was then opposition leader on Cornwall Council from 2009 until she stood down in 2011.
