Edward McMillan-Scott

Who is Edward McMillan-Scott?

Edward Hugh Christian McMillan-Scott is a British Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber constituency. He has been elected four times as European Parliament Vice-President since 2004. His main portfolio remains Human Rights and Democracy. He was first elected as an MEP in 1984. McMillan-Scott was a Conservative until a dispute with David Cameron over the British premier's controversial new EU alliance: he joined the Liberal Democrats in 2010.

McMillan-Scott was leader of the Conservative MEPs 1997 – 2001. He was re-elected top of the Yorkshire & Humber regional list in the 2009 election. McMillan-Scott is a lifelong pro-European. Following the withdrawal of the Conservative Party from the centrist European People's Party in order to form the European Conservative and Reformist's Group, described by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg as “a bunch of nutters, homophobes, anti-Semites and climate-change deniers’, McMillan-Scott protested. He successfully stood as an independent Vice-President against the nominee of the ECR Group, Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, criticising Kaminski's alleged past links to extremism, confirmed inter alia by the Daily Telegraph. He is the only Vice-President to have been elected without an official party candidature. As a result of this protest, he had the whip withdrawn and was subsequently expelled from the Conservative Party.