In the 2019 general election, Conservative Peter Bone held his seat in the Northamptonshire constituency of Wellingborough with more than 60% of the vote. Four years later, although there hasn’t been another election, he is no longer an MP. Bone, who was found to have bullied and exposed himself to a member of his staff, is one of the few examples of a member of parliament being thrown out in a recall.
The recall is a mechanism introduced in 2015 to deal with elected representatives who misbehave in office. While recalls have a longer pedigree in some parts of the world, they are a relatively new phenomenon in the UK. Bone is only the fourth MP to lose their seat via recall and only the fifth MP to face a recall petition (the very first was survived by Ian Paisley Jnr in 2018).
Bone could still return as a local MP since his recall will be followed by a byelection in which he has the right to stand as an independent. He may believe he has a chance given the strength of his 2019 result. But the reality is that recalls generally end careers.
