[8] One of her contemporaries at Brasenose was George Monbiot, who described her in his column for The Guardian as at the time "a firebrand who wanted to nationalise the banks and overthrow capitalism".

[10] She was selected in November 2009 as a Conservative candidate after Michael Ancram announced his intention to stand down from Devizes, a safe seat for her party.

[27] Perry campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU during the 2016 membership referendum, and argued after the vote that some members of her party were "like jihadis" in their support for a "hard Brexit" and said the tone of the debate on leaving the European Union "borders on the hysterical".

[33] In November 2018 the PCS, FDA and Prospect unions raised concerns with senior officials at the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy that Perry had been accused of swearing and shouting at staff.

The shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett said that the unions had raised "serious allegations" and urged officials to "look into them carefully".

[35] In September 2019, Perry was nominated as President of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Glasgow in November 2020.

[37][38][39] She later criticised actions of the prime minister's adviser Dominic Cummings, saying he "put out a deeply defamatory briefing to the media the day he fired me, claiming that the COP didn't need a President".

[41] In January 2023, Perry announced that she had resigned from the Conservative Party, despite her admiration for the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and his Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt.

[42] Perry claimed that the Conservative Party had become dominated by "ideology and self-obsession" and explained that Britain's strained relations with the European Union were also behind her decision to quit.