Ronald Buxton (British politician)

Ronald Carlile Buxton (20 August 1923 – 10 January 2017) was a Chartered Structural Engineer, a successful businessman and a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom.

Buxton relished the lifestyle of a country gentleman on his Norfolk estate. He came to national attention for a spectacular showing at the polls, prompting Sir Alex Douglas-Home to declare "The best epitaph on hundred days of socialist government...my friend the member for Leyton". The unconcealed joy was not to last; he was a Member of Parliament for a little over a year, after winning an unexpected by-election victory in 1965.

Buxton was the Conservative candidate in the safe Labour constituency of Leyton at the 1955 general election, losing by 8,244 votes to the long-serving Labour MP Reginald Sorensen. He was unsuccessful again at the 1959 election and at the October 1964 general election, when Sorensen's majority was 3,919 votes. Buxton had cast around for another seat but was refused the nomination for the constituency where he lived, and failed to secure the Conservative nomination for South-West Norfolk.

Shortly after the 1964 election, Sorensen was persuaded to accept a life peerage to make way in a safe seat for the Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker, who had lost his seat in Smethwick. However, the plan failed and on 25 January Buxton won the 1965 Leyton by-election by a narrow margin of only 205 votes, on a reduced turnout.David Dimbleby, later to become the anchor (from 1979) of the BBC Election results programmes, reported the result live from a snowy Leyton town hall for the BBC.

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