John Stuart Agnew (born 30 August 1949) is a British

politician A politician is a person who participates in Public policy, policy-making processes, usually holding an elective position in government. Politicians represent the people, make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy. The roles ...

who served as

Member of the European Parliament A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been Election, elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and S ...

(MEP) for the

East of England East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sunrise, Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact ...

region for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) from

2009 2009 was designated as the International Year of Astronomy by the United Nations to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first known astronomical studies with a telescope and the publication of Astronomia Nova by Joha ...

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

Early life and career

Agnew was born in

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

, and educated at

Gordonstoun School Gordonstoun School ( ) is an elite co-educational private school for boarding and day pupils in Moray, Scotland. Two generations of British royalty were educated at Gordonstoun, including Prince Philip and his son King Charles III. Musician Davi ...

and the Royal Agricultural College. During the 1970s he worked in

Rhodesia Rhodesia ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state, unrecognised state in Southern Africa that existed from 1965 to 1979. Rhodesia served as the ''de facto'' Succession of states, successor state to the ...

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 counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

farmer who formerly represented Norfolk on the NFU Council.

Political career

He sits on the European Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. He was the UKIP candidate in

Mid Norfolk Mid Norfolk is a List of United Kingdom Parliament constituencies, constituency represented in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, UK Parliament since 2010 by George Freeman (po ...

at the 2001 general election, in Norfolk North at the 2005 general election, and in

Broadland Broadland is a local government district in Norfolk, England, named after the Norfolk Broads. Its council is based at the Broadland Business Park on the outskirts of Norwich. The district includes the towns of Acle, Aylsham, Reepham, Spro ...

at the

2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

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

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

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

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

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 The Met Office, until November 2000 officially the Meteorological Office, is the United Kingdom's national weather and climate service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and ...

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

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two 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 ...

following the resignation of Ray Finch, 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 n ...

. Agnew lost his seat at the

2019 European Parliament election The 2019 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 23 and 26 May 2019. It was the ninth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979. A total of 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) we ...

, 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 British farmers Politicians from Norwich British Eurosceptics 21st-century English farmers National Farmers' Union of England and Wales officials