Sir Desmond Angus Swayne TD VR (born 20 August 1956)[1] is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for New Forest West since 1997.

[7] On 22 November 1986, as a prospective parliamentary candidate for a South Wales constituency, he was quoted in the Western Mail saying that "the surest way to protect the public from AIDS is to outlaw homosexuality and lock up offenders".

[7][9] On 2 August 1987, Swayne was commissioned into the Royal Armoured Corps, Territorial Army in the rank of second lieutenant (on probation).

[9] At the 1987 general election, Swayne stood as the Conservative Party candidate in Pontypridd, coming second with 19.5% of the vote behind the incumbent Labour MP Brynmor John.

[21] In the subsequent Conservative Party leadership election, Swayne supported Michael Howard, and later John Redwood.

[7] From 1997 to 2001, he held shadow ministerial portfolios for Northern Ireland, health and defence and as a senior opposition whip.

[37] On 30 September, it was reported that he wore blackface while attending a Blues Brothers themed party, where he was pictured posing as James Brown.

[41] On 18 August 2021, Swayne suggested in Parliament that Afghan refugees should have been joining "the resistance" against a brutal regime rather than "queuing at the airport" after the fall of Kabul.

Furthermore, he argued that the government had been following the advice of small group of scientists without doing their job as politicians and imposing "a sense of proportion" and "not be in thrall" of science.

On 15 October 2020 Swayne asked the Leader of the House of Commons if a debate could be held on censorship due to "the sinister disappearance of the link from Google to the Great Barrington declaration".

[47][48][49] He has donated money to anti-lockdown demonstration organiser Piers Corbyn who had been fined for his breaching lockdown regulations.

[50] It was reported in January 2021 that Swayne had said that some COVID-19 figures were being "manipulated",[51] and that it was "difficult to reconcile" occupation levels of intensive care units with being "told there is a deathly, deadly pandemic proceeding".

[55] Angela Rayner urged action be taken against Swayne for endorsing conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and suggesting that the official figures had been manipulated, "a deeply dangerous claim for which there is absolutely no evidence".

Swayne said that "we are getting very close to thought crime [...] that the deputy leader of the Labour Party is complaining about what another member of Parliament says and things as if this was some sort of criminal activity.

"[51] In a 2021 interview with anti-vaccination filmmaker Del Bigtree, Swayne said that Britain had become "a police state" and accused the government of attempting to enact "social control".

[52] In January 2021, Swayne was criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews for his 2020 appearance on The Richie Allen Show, which has been accused of anti-Semitism.

[56][57] In December 2021, Swayne was criticised for his arguments against compulsory vaccine passports, which included factually inaccurate comparisons between COVID deaths and those from flu and traffic accidents.