Politics
Massow was first attracted to the politics of the Conservative Party when he was a boy. He joined his local Young Conservatives and at age 14 became its chairman, the youngest in the country at the time.
In the 1990s Massow's flatmates were for a time current Conservative Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove and MP and former head of Conservative policy Nicholas Boles, a situation Massow described as "Tory Friends".
However Massow, along with many espousing "compassionate conservatism", was frustrated by the Party's apparent reluctance to alter its stance on gay rights issues and discrimination in general. In 2000, following John Bercow MP's resignation from the front bench and the defection of Shaun Woodward MP to Labour, Massow too left the Conservative Party to join the Labour Party, where he was welcomed by Mo Mowlam. However Massow later returned to the Conservatives, subsequently claiming that the brief defection to Labour had a particular motivation: "I knew if I switched it would be front page news. I thought it would help the party focus on repealing Section 28. I had one meeting with Labour, that's all. I never wanted to be a candidate."
Massow is currently head of the Conservative Technology Initiative for London.
Read more about this topic: Ivan Massow
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