Politician whose defection from the Labour party to the SDP and then the Conservatives caused Dennis Skinner to call him a ‘dirty double-rat’
Just about every parliament in modern times has thrown up MPs who change parties, but there have been very few such as John Horam, Lord Horam, who represented three parties in the Commons and furthermore served as a government minister for two of them.
Horam, who has died aged 87, never reached cabinet rank but was a junior minister in James Callaghan’s Labour administration in the late 1970s and, after a peregrination with the Social Democratic party in the 80s, subsequently served in the Conservative government of John Major in the 90s.
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