Malcolm Thornton - Political Career

Political Career

Thornton was first elected to Parliament in the 1979 general election, winning the marginal seat of Liverpool Garston from Labour's Eddie Loyden. In the early 1980s, however, all seats were re-organised with the new boundaries set to come in at the next election. Liverpool Garston would lean strongly towards Labour, so Thornton sought a safer seat in Crosby, just outside Liverpool. However, following the death of Sir Graham Page in 1981, Shirley Williams, a former Labour Cabinet minister who had founded the centrist SDP a few months earlier, won the seat. That by-election had been held at the zenith of Margaret Thatcher's unpopularity; however, after that the economy returned to growth and Britain won the Falklands War, so Thatcher called an election in 1983 which was a Tory landslide. Thornton regained the seat, while Eddie Loyden won a redrawn Garston for Labour. However, by 1997, the Conservatives were deeply unpopular and Thornton lost, by a surprisingly wide margin to Labour's Claire Curtis-Tansley.

In 2007, Sir Malcolm Thornton became the 4th and current Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Board of Governors for Liverpool John Moores University.