Parliamentary Career
In 1995 John Baron became the treasurer of the Streatham Conservative Association. In 1997 David Amess decided not to risk standing again in his ultra marginal Conservative seat of Basildon and was successfully selected and subsequently elected for the safer seat of Southend West. Baron won the Conservative nomination to defend Basildon at the 1997 General Election, but Amess's judgement proved accurate and Angela Smith won the seat for Labour comfortably.
In November 1999 Teresa Gorman announced that she stand down at the next general election from her seat in Billericay, the neighbouring constituency to Basildon. Baron was selected to defend Billericay at the 2001 General Election and he held the seat with a majority of more than 5,000, which he doubled at the 2005 General Election. He made his maiden speech on 20 July 2001.
John Baron was a member of Iain Duncan Smith's frontbench team, but resigned in March 2003 in protest at Duncan Smith's support of the Iraq War. He was reappointed by Duncan Smith as a health spokesman just four months later, a position he held until July 2007 when he was moved to the Conservative Whip's Office.
Baron was a strong backer of David Davis in the most recent Conservative leadership election, having also supported him in the 2001 leadership contest won by Iain Duncan Smith.
John Baron was the only Tory among just 15 MPs who voted against British participation in the attack on Libya in the Commons on 21 March 2011.
In June 2012, Baron delivered a letter, signed by over 100 Tory MPs, to the Prime Minister David Cameron urging him "to place on the Statute Book before the next General Election a commitment to hold a referendum during the next Parliament on the nature of our relationship with the European Union".
He is also to set up an all-party parliamentary group for an EU referendum.
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“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
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