Education Secretary Gillian Keegan loses seat to Liberal Democrats in Chichester

The Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, has lost her Chichester seat to the Liberal Democrats.

She was beaten by the Liberal Democrat candidate Jess Brown-Fuller, who received 49% of the vote share.

Keegan received just 13,368 votes, only 25% of those cast. It means there has been a notional swing of 31% to the Liberal Democrats in Chichester.

In 2019 the Conservatives had a majority of more than 19,000, with the Liberal Democrats only receiving 10,359 votes.

When Keegan was appointed Education Secretary by Rishi Sunak in 2022, she was the fifth person to hold the role in under four months and the sixth since the 2019 general election.

Less than a year into the role she was fighting a major crisis after ordering more than 100 schools to make closures because of concerns that a crumbling aerated concrete could collapse.

She completed her secondary education at a comprehensive in Knowsley, Merseyside and unlike many other senior ministers, she did not study at Oxford University, instead taking on an apprenticeship at a subsidiary of General Motors aged 16.

While working, she obtained a degree in business studies from Liverpool John Moores University before a three-decade career in the manufacturing, banking and IT industries.

Ms Keegan’s work took her to Tokyo and Madrid before she entered the Commons in the safe seat of Chichester, West Sussex, in 2017.

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