During more than a quarter of a century in parliament, Crispin Blunt has become known as an often single-minded politician and an occasionally unusual Conservative, even if a career largely on the backbenches means he is far from a household name.
Blunt, however, received significant attention on Thursday after announcing he was the MP arrested on suspicion of rape and possession of drugs, an investigation he said he was confident would end without any charges.
In a statement identifying himself, the Reigate MP, who has lost the Conservative whip and been told to stay away from parliament during the investigation, said he had previously reported an allegation of extortion to police in relation to the same incident.
Blunt, 63, who was released on unconditional bail, has represented the Surrey town since 1997 but is perhaps best known to those with less interest in politics as the uncle of the actor Emily Blunt – which also means he is related to the US actor Stanley Tucci, who is married to Emily Blunt’s sister, Felicity.
On joining parliament, Blunt carried out a series of junior shadow ministerial roles while the Conservatives were in opposition. This is when he first began to show his independent side, resigning in 2003 from the frontbench of Iain Duncan Smith, who Blunt likened to a failing football manager in need of the sack.
When the party took office under David Cameron in 2010, Blunt spent two years as prisons minister, but courted trouble through his tendency to speak his mind.
Cameron lost patience with his colleague after Blunt provoked ire from the tabloids by saying he would relax the rules to allow parties inside prisons. Their relationship was not helped by Blunt’s earlier half-joke that Oxford University’s riotous Bullingdon Club, of which Cameron had been a member, allowed well-off young people to break the law without fear of prosecution.
A former army captain who spent 10 years in the military before entering politics, including working as an adviser to the foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind, Blunt spent two years from 2015 chairing the foreign affairs select committee, but has otherwise occupied his time championing a series of causes.
These have included an adherence to humanism – he has questioned the way parliamentary sessions begin with prayers – and a willingness to criticise Israel and back Palestinian causes. Shortly before he lost the whip, Blunt was the only Conservative MP to sign an early day motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
In his most recent spoken contribution in the Commons, on Tuesday, Blunt asked the government how it planned to tackle the issue of Israeli settlers forcibly occupying Palestinian land.
Blunt is a noted advocate of LGBT rights, despite having voted against some LGBT-friendly measures early in his parliamentary career, something for which he later apologised.
In 2010, while Blunt was prisons minister, his office announced that after being married for 20 years to his wife, Victoria, with whom he has two children, they had separated and he was “coming to terms with his homosexuality”.
This news prompted some disquiet among Conservative members in his constituency, and for a time there was a possibility he would be deselected.
Blunt announced 18 months ago that he planned to stand down at the next election, and months later he was one of the first Conservative MPs to call publicly for Liz Truss to quit as prime minister, saying it was “blindingly obvious” that she must go.
