Richard James Ashworth (born 17 September 1947 in Folkestone) is a former British politician, who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for South East England from 2004 until 2019.

He was the Conservative parliamentary candidate for North Devon in 1997, and for the South East England constituency in the 1999 European Parliament election.

On 6 June 2008, Ashworth was appointed Conservative Chief Whip in the EP after his predecessor Den Dover was sacked following an expenses scandal.

[2] At the first stage of the Conservative Party reselection procedure ahead of the 2014 European Parliament election, he was not confirmed as going into the protected sitting members part of the ballot.

[citation needed] Ashworth and fellow MEP Julie Girling were suspended from the Conservative Party and had the whip withdrawn on 7 October 2017, after both supported a vote in Strasbourg stating that not enough progress had been made in the first-stage Brexit negotiations to allow discussion to move onto the trade-deal phase of the talks; however, they remained in the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) parliamentary group.