David Warburton
The death of David Warburton has been announced. The former MP for Somerton & Frome passed away last Tuesday.
David Warburton 1965-2025
by Andrew Lee
The former MP for Somerton & Frome constituency, David Warburton died at his home on Tuesday 26 August aged 59. According to the paramedics who attended, he died of a suspected Pulmonary Embolism.
Full disclosure, David was a friend of mine and a friend to this news channel and the Leveller before when it was under my ownership. What follows is inevitably a personal view.
David Warburton was anything but the archetypal Conservative politician. Educated at first a state grammar school and then a local comprehensive he went on to study at the Royal College of Music. He studied under Harrison Birtwhistle and Peter Maxwell-Davis. While working with the latter on the island of Hoy in the Orkney Islands he composed an opera based on Dante’s Divine Comedies. He clearly had talent and whilst at the Royal College of Music he was awarded the United Music Publishers’ Prize, the Elgar Memorial Prize, the Herbert Howells Composition Prize and the Major van Someron Godfrey Prize.
His CV though is littered with more unexpected avenues, not the roads more travelled by your average prospective MP. He tried his hand as a nightclub bouncer, van driver and even rock guitarist (he admired AC/DC).
On graduating from the Royal College he composed a number of pieces of music, several of which were performed. However, he rapidly concluded he would not be able to make a living from it and started a career as a peripatetic music teacher based at an inner city secondary school.
That was when he discovered ringtones. That led him, in 1999 into a business where he would provide ringtones using pop music that could be downloaded onto phones. The business mushroomed rapidly adding web services and mobile content with deals with most of the major TV and video providers, notably the BBC and MTV.
By 2005 the company now named Pitch Media moved to Covent Garden. It continued to grow rapidly until in 2008 it was sold on to San Jose company PlayPhone for an undisclosed sum.
By 2013 David had turned his attention to politics. He had always been a Conservative. When hanging out with friends around Islington in his student days, he was always known as “Tory Dave.” Tories weren’t common in Islington in those days (they’re not that common there now).
Whatever his pros and cons, David never did things half heartedly. I mean, you don’t write an opera that never gets performed on a whim.
His selection as Conservative candidate for Somerton & Frome in 2013 coincided with two years of severe floods that were devastating for the southern end of the constituency. It always helps being a candidate when you are working for the party in power. But David organised ministerial visits and campaigned hard to raise awareness for the issues facing those who had been flooded out. He was literally everywhere and the ultimate reward, a visit by then Prime Minister David Cameron, paid dividends with promises of funding and action.
I don’t think it is unfair to say that when the 2015 election came round, a lot of people thought he was their MP already. Suffice it to say he won with a majority of over 20,000. At the 2017 General Election that was 23,000 and even in 2019 he managed a reduced majority of 19,000.
It has been noted elsewhere today that David’s was a “safe seat”. That is to profoundly misunderstand Somerton & Frome. For context, before he arrived in the constituency, it had been a marginal seat but one held by the LibDems for the past 18 years. And when he left, it became a much safer LibDem seat.
That he achieved such large majorities, is testimony to his work as an MP campaigning on issues such as rural broadband, the closure of pubs, reduced duty for cider makers and a railway station for Langport.
It is no secret that my own personal political views were very different from David’s. But we both came from a generation where we didn’t sit in echo chambers waiting for the sound of our own views to bounce back. You engaged with those around you who had differing views and perhaps learned from the experience.
David was a good listener and a good debater. I enjoyed our conversations. We rarely agreed but always enjoyed the exchange and the argument. And although many of his constituents didn’t like having a Conservative MP, the majority he had at each election spoke volumes.
But sadly, the reason most people in these parts will remember David Warburton is for his downfall. The allegations screeching across the front pages of several national newspapers in March 2022. And this is a subject where more needs to be said.
First though, I should acknowledge that David was not a saint. He did things he should not have done. He took a loan from a Russian businessman that was perhaps ill-advised. He admitted to taking drugs (I wonder how many of 650 MPs can say they have never taken drugs?). He did things that hurt some of those who were closest to him. That is a fact that I do not seek to hide or defend.
What he did not do was most of the things that were alleged in those front-page headlines. Primarily these related to sexually harassing young women.
David was restricted in his access to Parliament because of the allegations. With hindsight, he probably should have resigned then. It is really difficult to serve constituents while denied full access to the Parliamentary estate.
Meanwhile the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme took an eternity to conclude its investigations. Eventually it upheld two of the three complaints against David.
He was shocked at the outcome and appealed. An Independent Expert Panel (IEP) was convened and it found the ICGS investigation to be deeply flawed. Evidence had been ignored, not investigated, defences put forward by David had not been properly investigated and the credibility of a witness that the IEP deemed should have been challenged, was not.
The IEP themselves explained: “The collapse of these claims against Mr Warburton means that, of the three long investigations he has faced over the past 15 months, the first was concluded and (he was) cleared, the second was closed with all claims dismissed, and the last has now been dropped with all allegations withdrawn. He is no longer subject to any investigation."
Scandalously in my view, this decision and the detail of it was not widely reported and received little or no prominence by the newspapers that had gleefully reported the allegations in the first place.
There is another issue, too, that needs to be raised here. The shock of the breaking news story in March 2022 derailed him and unbalanced him. He received treatment for his mental health and was admitted to a clinic. A lot of people, in the press and elsewhere, while indulging in hand-wringing about mental health being important, and how one should not be scathing about those with mental health issues, either snarkily implied or suggested directly, that David had been admitted to a psychiatric ward to avoid press scrutiny.
The fact is that David was still being treated for mental health issues right up to the day of his death. Long after he had withdrawn from public life. I had lunch with him a couple of months ago and he was still experiencing difficulties with depression and the mental scars left from his sudden fall from grace.
We either need to decide that we take mental health seriously as a society or we do not. If we do, then we should take it seriously for all those who suffer regardless of who they are and their personal circumstances. That did not happen in David’s case.
His fall from grace had cost him his job and his marriage. But he was determined to rebuild his life and, somewhat unexpectedly, took his HGV test and started on a career as a long-distance lorry driver. Something he clearly enjoyed and talked about with great relish.
But your average long-distance lorry driver does not get the sort of break that David got. Out of the blue he was asked to lead Capenex Energy Group as Chief Executive for the company based in Battersea. The company is involved with solar panels, battery technology and a carbon trading platform. It was growing rapidly and David was asked to take it on to the next level.
As ever he jumped in with both feet and quickly exchanged his lorry drivers cab for a flat in central London and the perks of being the CEO of a rapidly growing company.
His tragedy is that he had just got his life back together again, back on track, when he was cut down in his prime.
David Warburton was not everyone’s cup of tea. Who is?
He may have been flawed but he was also a man who lived life to the full, who wanted to try different things. Extraordinarily talented he was also warm and engaging on a personal level. He made friends on both sides of the House of Commons.
He was a good friend to me and as I have said already, to this news channel. We will miss him.
If you enjoyed this article, please share our website link so others can read it too:
Why not gift a subscription as a present for a friend or family member? You can do that here:
Somerset Confidential® is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
A very fair and well judged assessment, Andrew. A tragic end.
Thanks for a brilliantly-judged piece Andrew. Didn’t know David but you clearly did & the fact your political differences failed to drive a wedge between you speaks volumes for you both. To have achieved so much so quickly when elected then hold his seat with a significant majority also speaks volumes about DW. And the scurrilous treatment meted out by politicians, media & the tattling classes - all swallowed hook, line and sinker by the ill-informed & impressionable should be a source of deep, eternal shame to all!! This kind of vicious, totally unprincipled behaviour is exactly why Reform are making the weather - not that we’re neophytes or saints - a level of honesty and forthrightness that has been achingly missing in UK politics for far too long!!