Michelle Donelan

Michelle Donelan has been the Conservative MP for Chippenham since 2015. Donelan was born in Cheshire and attended a state school in the area before studying History and Politics at the University of York. She is the first member of her family to finish university. Before her career in politics, Donelan worked in marketing for The History Channel, Pacific Magazines, and WWE. Donelan was also a member of the Steering Group of Wiltshire Carers and a trustee of the charity Help Victims of Domestic Violence. She first ran for parliament at the 2010 general election as the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Wentworth and Dearne, but was unsuccessful. Five years later, she contested Chippenham and was successful, defeating the incumbent Liberal Democrat Duncan Hames on a swing of 11.5 per cent. Since entering parliament, Donelan has sat on several committees including the Education Committee, the Education, Skills and the Economy Sub-Committee, and the Petitions Committee. Though she had been in favour of the in campaign during the 2016 referendum, she has since supported Brexit. She was appointed assistant whip in 2018 and, following Boris Johnson’s successful campaign for the Conservative leadership, she was promoted to government whip (Lord commissioner of HM Treasury). She served as parliamentary under-secretary of state (minister for children and families) to cover Kemi Badenoch while she was on maternity leave. Since February 2020, she has been the Minister of State for Universities. In July of the same year, there Donelan suffered a backlash after she stated that attendance at university was not the “best route” to success or “true social mobility” but about their outcomes, the Guardian reported. During She was re-elected in 2019 with a reduced majority of 11,288.