Craig Mackinlay has had an eventful career after swapping chartered accountancy for politics. The 57-year-old was an original member of the pro-Brexit UK Independence party, became its interim leader in 1999 and contested elections for the party at a European and parliamentary level. He left to join the Conservative party in 2005 due to concerns about the direction that Ukip was taking. In 2007, he was elected as a councillor for River Ward in Chatham on Medway council, a unitary authority, and then re-elected in 2011. Mackinlay, who has recently spoken about having both his hands and feet amputated due to sepsis, was elected as a Conservative MP for South Thanet in 2015, narrowly defeating Ukip’s Nigel Farage and, rather more comfortably, the comedian Al Murray. He was a member of the exiting the EU select committee, the work and pensions select committee and the European scrutiny select committee, and also served on the Joint BHS inquiry, which involved questioning Philip Green and Dominic Chappell about the sale of the company in 2015. In 2019, Mackinlay was acquitted by a jury of knowingly falsifying election expenses for his 2015 campaign against Farage, who was the leader of Ukip. After studying zoology and comparative physiology at Birmingham University, he qualified as a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Mackinlay later qualified as a member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation. According to his website, he became “one of just 1,500 qualified ‘joint-hatters’ – the only MP with such qualification”. The Tory MP, who was born in Chatham, served as a magistrate on the North Kent Bench and volunteered for the charity Tax Help for Older People. He is married to Kati, a community pharmacist who is originally from Hungary. The couple have a daughter, Olivia, who turns five on Thursday.