Leo Docherty

Leo Docherty was born in Glasgow and grew up in Gloucestershire. He studied Swahili and Hindi at SOAS, University of London between 1996 and 2000, before attending the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst the following year.[8] From 2001 to 2007 he served in the Scots Guards.[9] After being posted to London on ceremonial duties and a period spent in Germany, he served operationally in Iraq and Afghanistan as a British Army officer.

After leaving the army, he wrote about his first-hand account of the war in Afghanistan in his book Desert of Death, which was published by Faber in 2007. Living in Didcot in Oxfordshire, he created and worked as editor and publisher of Steppe magazine - a now defunct publication that covered the arts, culture, history, landscape and people of Central Asia.[10] He was appointed Director of the Conservative Middle East Council in 2010, a role in which he served until being elected as an MP.

Docherty stood successfully as the Conservative candidate in the Hagbourne ward of South Oxfordshire District Council in May 2011, standing down at the end of his four-year term when the wards were revised.[11] He stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate in the Wallingford division of Oxfordshire County Council in May 2017.[12]

Docherty in 2017

Docherty unsuccessfully applied to be the Conservative Party candidate for the Labour Party held Oxford East constituency in 2014.[13] He was instead chosen to contest the safe Labour Party held seat of Caerphilly in the 2015 general election, where he came third.

In 2017, he was selected as the Conservative Party candidate for Aldershot, after the incumbent Conservative MP Gerald Howarth announced he was standing down at the next general election. The Financial Times called his selection "the highest-profile tussle over a candidate choice, [in which] the party leadership rejected a request from activists in Aldershot to be allowed to consider Daniel Hannan, the prominent Eurosceptic MEP, for the safe Tory seat".[14][15] He was duly elected at the 2017 general election.

In the House of Commons he sits on the Defence Committee and Committees on Arms Export Controls (formerly Quadripartite Committee).[16]

He backed Boris Johnson in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election.[17] On 29 July 2019, Johnson appointed Docherty as an Assistant Government Whip.

In September 2019, Leo's brother Paddy Docherty wrote an open letter to The Guardian urging him to resign, writing: "Now I am simply appalled that this government, of which you are sadly a part, has become the principal threat to the lives and liberties of the people. Please do the decent thing, and resign."[18]

On 21 April 2021 Docherty succeeded Johnny Mercer as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Veterans.[19] He became Minister for Defence People on 7 July 2022.[20][21]

He is married to Lucy Docherty and they have two children.[27]

• Desert of Death. A Soldier's Journey from Iraq to Afghanistan, Faber and Faber, London 2007, ISBN

978-0-571-23688-6

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Leo Docherty.

• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou