John Stuart Agnew (born 30 August 1949) is a British politician who served as

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

(MEP) for the East of England region for the

UK Independence Party The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...

(UKIP) from 2009 to

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

Early life and career

Agnew was born in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...

, and educated at

Gordonstoun School Gordonstoun School is a co-educational independent school for boarding and day pupils in Moray, Scotland. It is named after the estate owned by Sir Robert Gordon in the 17th century; the school now uses this estate as its campus. It is located ...

and the

Royal Agricultural College ;(from Virgil's Georgics)"Caring for the Fieldsand the Beasts" , established = 2013 - University status – College , type = Public , president = King Charles , vice_chancellor = Peter McCaffery , students ...

. During the 1970s he worked in Rhodesia as a soil conservation officer, as well as being a reserve in the Rhodesian Army. A long-time UKIP member, he is a

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

farmer who formerly represented Norfolk on the NFU Council.

Political career

He sits on the

European Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) is a committee of the European Parliament. Responsibilities of the Committee AGRI is the European Parliament committee responsible for: #The operation and development of the Common Agricul ...

. He was the UKIP candidate in Mid Norfolk at the 2001 general election, in

Norfolk North Norfolk North was a federal electoral district (Canada), electoral district represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1867 to 1904. It was located in the provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario. It was created by the Br ...

at the 2005 general election, and in

Broadland Broadland is a local government district in Norfolk, England, named after the Norfolk Broads. The population of the local authority district taken at the 2011 Census was 124,646. Its council is based in Thorpe St Andrew. In 2013, Broadland w ...

at the 2010 and 2015 general elections. As UKIP's Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Agnew has described

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

science as "the global warming scam". In the European Parliament in 2015, he stated that plants need

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide ( chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is trans ...

as food, so "if you succeed in decarbonising Europe, our crops will have no natural gas to grow from". Richard A. Betts of the Met Office described this as a misunderstanding, since cutting emissions did not mean reducing existing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the 2017 UKIP leadership election, he was the running-mate of

Anne Marie Waters Anne Marie Dorothy Waters (born 24 August 1977) is a far-right politician and activist in the United Kingdom. She founded and led the anti-Islam party For Britain until its dissolution in 2022. She is also the director of Sharia Watch UK, an or ...

. In April 2019, Agnew was appointed Deputy Leader of UKIP in the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

following the resignation of

Ray Finch Raymond Finch (born 2 June 1963) is a British politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England between 2014 and 2019. The fourth named candidate on the UK Independence Party (UKIP) list for the South Ea ...

, and it was reported that he spoke to the

Springbok Club The London Swinton Circle (otherwise known as the Swinton Circle) is a long-running British right-wing pressure group. The group states that its purpose is to uphold traditional conservative and Unionist principles. The group formed part of a numb ...

. Agnew lost his seat at the

2019 European Parliament election The 2019 European Parliament election was held between 23 and 26 May 2019, the ninth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979. A total of 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) represent more than 512 million peop ...

, when UKIP dropped to seventh position with 3.42% of the regional vote.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Agnew, Stuart 1949 births Living people People educated at Gordonstoun Alumni of the Royal Agricultural University UK Independence Party parliamentary candidates UK Independence Party MEPs MEPs for England 2009–2014 MEPs for England 2014–2019 20th-century English farmers Politicians from Norwich British Eurosceptics 21st-century English farmers