Witney (UK Parliament constituency) Witney (UK Parliament constituency) Witney is a county constituency in Oxfordshire represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first-past-the-post system of election, and was created for the 1983 general election. It is a safe Conservative Party seat. The constituency was represented from 2001-2016 by David Cameron, who was Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005-2016 and Prime Minister from 2010-2016. On 12 September 2016, Cameron resigned as the MP with immediate effect, triggering the 2016 Witney by-election, at which the seat was retained for the
David Cameron biographers Francis Elliott and James Hanning describe the two men as being "on fairly friendly terms". Cameron, advised in his strategy by friend Catherine Fall, put a great deal of effort into "nursing" his potential constituency, turning up at social functions, and attacking Woodward for changing his mind on fox hunting to support a ban. During the election campaign, Cameron accepted the offer of writing a regular column for "The Guardian"s online section. He won the seat with a 1.9% swing to the Conservatives, taking 22,153 votes (45%) to Labour candidate Michael Bartlet's 14,180 (28.8%), a majority of 7,973 (16.2%).