Ex-Tory MP jokingly asks if Big Brother is looking for applicants

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

A Conservative politician who lost his seat in the General Election has jokingly asked whether Big Brother is still “looking for people”.

Brendan Clarke-Smith was unseated as the MP for Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire by Labour candidate Jo White after she received nearly 6,000 more votes on Thursday.

Following the defeat, Mr Clarke-Smith jokingly threw his hat into the ring for the next series of the ITV reality show.

He responded to a post on X, formerly Twitter, from The Sun’s political editor which claimed that Big Brother was looking for a “big political name” to take part in this year’s series.

Mr Clarke-Smith replied: “Don’t suppose they are still looking for people?”

He jokingly added that the hyphen in his surname makes it a “big name”.

Mr Clarke-Smith, who served as an MP from 2019 to earlier this week, was the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party under Rishi Sunak from November 2023 to January 2024.

He also held the position of parliamentary secretary for the Cabinet Office briefly in 2022 and was the parliamentary under-secretary for the Department for Education for a few months in the same year.

He received 12,708 votes on Thursday, nearly 6,000 fewer than the 18,476 votes received by Ms White, who is also the deputy leader of Bassetlaw Council.

A number of high-profile Tories and former members of Mr Sunak’s cabinet lost their seats this week, including former defence secretary Grant Shapps, former prime minister Liz Truss, former House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.