David Stoddart, Baron Stoddart of Swindon

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David Leonard Stoddart, Lord Stoddart of Swindon (born 4 May 1926) is a British independent Labour politician (that is, unaffiliated to the Labour Party).

David Stoddart was a member of the County Borough Council of Reading from 1954-1972 and was the Leader of the Council from 1965-72.

He was the Labour Member of Parliament for Swindon from 1970 to 1983, when he lost his seat to the Conservative Simon Coombs. Stoddart was a government whip from 1975 to 1978.

Stoddart was raised to the peerage as a life peer in 1983 as Baron Stoddart of Swindon, of Reading in the Royal County of Berkshire. He was expelled from the Labour benches in the House of Lords in 2002 for backing a Socialist Alliance candidate in the 2001 general election, an action he took because he strongly opposed the parachuting of a defector from the Conservative Party into a safe Labour seat.

Stoddart was for many years the Chairman of the Campaign for an Independent Britain, which campaigns for the United Kingdom to end its membership of the European Union, a position he held until May 2007.