Priti Patel becomes the first Conservative Asian Woman MP in Britain
11th May 2010

Priti Patel has become the first Asian Woman MP in Britain from The Conservative Party. She won the Witham seat with 24,448 votes, some 52% of the vote – nearly triple that of her rival Liberal Democrat candidate.

Priti Patel was born in 1972 in London to Ugandan Indian immigrant parents and grew up in South Harrow and Ruislip. Her parents ran a post office in rural Norfolk and then a successful small shop in the south east England. Patel attended a comprehensive school in Watford, before studying economics at Keele University and then going on to the University of Essex.

After graduating, Patel persuaded Andrew Lansley (now a frontbencher, then a Head of the Conservative Research Department) to give her a job at Conservative Central Office. From 1995 to 1997, she worked for the Referendum Party, for Sir James Goldsmith, heading up the press office. After the 1997 General Election, the Referendum Party broke up, and Patel rejoined the Conservative Party to work for the new leader William Hague in his Press Office dealing with media relations in London and the South East.

After unsuccessfully challenging the Nottingham North seat in the 2005 election, Patel was placed on the 'A-List' of Conservative Party candidates. On 20 November 2006, she was adopted as the Prospective Parliamentary Conservative Candidate for the notionally safe Conservative seat of Witham in Essex.