Politics
Rowntree has been a keen activist and supporter of the Labour Party since becoming a member in 2002, and is chair of London's West End branch. In April 2007 he unsuccessfully contested the safe Conservative seat of Marylebone High Street on Westminster City Council. In July 2008 he fought the safe Labour seat of Church Street, a Labour stronghold since its creation in the 1960s, however a swing from Labour to the Conservatives of 14.1% meant that he was again unsuccessful as the Conservatives gained the seat.
In February 2008, he was selected by the Cities of London and Westminster Constituency Labour Party to stand against Conservative MP Mark Field at the 2010 general election. He was defeated at that election. In 2011, Rowntree contested to become the Labour candidate for Norwich South at the next election. He lost to Clive Lewis, a journalist and former soldier but came second. It is rumoured that he will contest the candidacy for Norwich North, instead.
Rowntree supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq and in 2007 said, "I’m not a pacifist, I do believe that some things are worth fighting for, and dying for. I understand that that’s easier to say, I’m not being the one who’s asked to die, but Saddam was such an illegal ruthless bastard I didn’t shed any tears for it ."
Read more about this topic: Dave Rowntree
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs.”
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“Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.”
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“His talk was like a spring, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
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It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.”
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