Political experience

I believe too many people enter politics noawadays with little experience of the harsh realities of the real world. They go from university, work for an MP, get a job in the party research department, become a special advisor and then go straight into parliament. Sure, we need some idealists in parliament, and not all people who take this route turn out to be one dimensional MPs. But there are too many of them.

Yes, I have done quite a bit in my political life, but I have also started and run eight successful companies over the years.

I joined the Conservative Party in the autumn of 1978 after I became inspired by Margaret Thatcher’s vision for the country. In 1982 I formed my university Conservative Association and started volunteering for Peace Through NATO, debating CND all over the country. In 1985 I started a two year stint working for Conservative MP for Norwich North, Patrick Thompson, the first year in London and then the second in the constituency running his re-election campaign. I also stood for council seats several times in the mid 1980s in Norfolk and the early 1990s in Walthamstow and Tower Hamlets. I took the fight to the BNP on the Isle of Dogs in 1994.

Because of the commitments of my business career active politics took a back seat for the second half of the 1990s, but in 2003 I decided to apply to join the Conservative Party Candidates List. I was then selected to fight North Norfolk at the last election, a seat the Liberal Democrats had won from the Conservatives in 2001. I led community campaigns against hospital closures, got bus services reinstated and lobbied hard on the issue of coastal erosion, which is a huge problem on the Norfolk coast.

I am Director of the Conservative History Group, which I formed in 2002, and also the founder of the all party Campaign for Fixed Term Parliaments.

My blog, Iain Dale’s Diary, is one of the three biggest political blogs in the country and is read by 130,000 people each month.

I have written or edited more than 20 books including Margaret Thatcher: A Tribute in Words & Pictures (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005) and Memories of the Falklands (Politico’s, 2002).