Gregory Barker

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Gregory Leonard George Barker (born March 8, 1966) is a British politician, Conservative Member of Parliament for Bexhill and Battle.

Born in Sussex, he was educated at Steyning Grammar School, Lancing College, Royal Holloway, University of London, and the London Business School.

He was a researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies in 1987, before joining Gerard Viian Gray as an Equity Analyst in 1988. In 1990 he became the Director for International Pacific Securities. He was the Vice Chair of the Hammersmith Conservative Association in 1993.

He contested the very safe Labour seat of Eccles, where he was roundly defeated by Ian Stewart. Barker then became the Vice Chair of the Tooting Conservative Association and an advisor to Conservative MP David Willetts.

Until shortly before entering Parliament at the 2001 election as the Member for Bexhill and Battle after the retirement of the sitting Conservative MP, Charles Wardle, Barker worked in Russia for the Sibneft oil group. It is somewhat unusual to see the seat of Bexhill and Battle in the political headlines, but in 2001 it was a lively affair involving Nigel Farage now the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, who had the support of the previous MP, but Barker won by over 10,500 votes from Stephen Hardy of the Liberal Democrats.

Close to Conservative leader David Cameron, as Shadow Environment Secretary Barker accompanied Cameron on his trip to the Arctic Circle in April 2006, during a fact-finding mission on global warming.

[edit] Personal life

Barker confirmed his split from wife Celeste in July 2006, after a diary report in The Observer ^[1]. The couple married in 1992, and have three children.

On 26 October 2006, British tabloid the Daily Mirror revealed that he had left his wife and children for another man. The paper confirmed the story by quoting his mother in law ^[2]. The Sun reported that the man, Willam Banks-Blaney (born Patrick Schofield in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire), was the painter and decorator employed to oversee renovations on the Barker's Peasmarsh family home ^[3]. It was later revealed that Barker was divorcing his wife.