Helen Morgan was first elected as the Liberal Democrat MP for North Shropshire in a December 2021 by-election, gaining the seat off the Conservatives with a majority of 5,925.
The North Shropshire constituency spreads across the top third of the county. It is found to the west of the Stoke conurbation, south of Cheshire and north of Shrewsbury. A rural area, the seat includes the five small towns of Whitchurch, Market Drayton, Wem, Ellesmere, and Oswestry. This had been a safe Conservative seat in which the party typically polled sixty percent of the vote in its better years and fifty percent of the vote in its poorer years. However following the resignation of the former MP, Owen Patterson, in late 2021 following a series of sleaze allegations the Lib Dems jumped from third place to comfortably gain this seat.
Born in 1975, Morgan read history at Trinity College, Cambridge University. She worked as a chartered accountant before being elected to Parliament. She initially worked as an audit manager for KMPG. She later worked as a Head of Financial Reporting for Centrica and head of margin forecasting with British gas. After moving to Shropshire in 2014, Morgan worked as financial controller for Grocott Developments.
Morgan previously served as a Parish councilor in the constituency. She unsuccessfully stood for the Liberal Democrats in North Shropshire in the 2019 General Election, coming third.
Morgan is passionately pro European. She opposed Brexit and has argued that the 2016 referendum has ‘led to increasing extremism in British politics’.
Morgan is married with one child. She lives in the Shropshire village of Harmer Hill. She has previously run half marathons and enjoys walking in the countryside in her spare time.
Website – https://www.helenmorgan.org.uk/
Twitter – @helenhalcrow
