Local MP is new Chairman of the Conservative Party...

When Kevin Hollinrake achieved his dream in 2015 of becoming the MP for Thirsk and Malton as successor to Anne Macintosh, he could not have imagined that 10 years later he would become Chairman of the Conservative Party, but that is what has happened as part of the summer reshuffle by Party leader Kemi Badenoch.

This is the latest step in the busy political career of a man who once described himself to me as “a very normal person”.

When I spoke to him after has was first selected as the parliamentary candidate he described being brought up in Easingwold in a family where it was very community focused.

“We always tried to help each other and people in the community.”

His father, Geoffrey, was a West Yorkshire sheep farmer who moved to Easingwold and bought the local milk round.

“As kids we used to deliver milk up and down the street in milk barrels.”

His father became an Easingwold town councillor - and talk around the kitchen table was always of politics. “We were encouraged to have our say and our view, right from early on.”

He has continuously represented the constituency both when it included Easingwold and since it was reshaped by the Boundary Commission, through general elections in 2017, 2019 and most recently 2024.

Under the Conservative government he was appointed as a junior minister in the Department of Business and Trade and then as Minister for Postal Affairs, where he gained approval from both sides of the House of Commons for his efforts to progress compensation for victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal.

He was helping ordinary folk who had taken on the job of running a sub post office but had become entangled in the cover-up for the flawed computer system that was supposed to run their accounts.
















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