Matthew Parris

Matthew Parris (born 1949) is a politician and journalist in the United Kingdom.

Parris grew up in South Africa and several other countries where his British father was working at the time. After obtaining a degree in law from Clare, Cambridge, and studying Law at Yale University, he worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, then served as the Conservative Member of Parliament for West Derbyshire from 1979, leaving in 1986 to pursue a career in journalism. He has weekly columns in The Times newspaper and The Spectator magazine.

Parris announced he was gay in one of his weekly newspaper columns. During the Michael Portillo scandal of 1998, he famously told a Newsnight interviewer that there were two gay members of the current Labour Cabinet, one allegedly being Peter Mandelson.

Parris is also a television presenter and pundit. He left Parliament specifically to take over as host of ITV's Weekend World. He has appeared on Have I Got News For You, and took part in a documentary requiring him to live for a week on nothing but social security payments.

Books by Matthew Parris include:

• Great Parliamentary Scandals: Four Centuries of Calumny, Smear and Innuendo (1995)
• Chance Witness: An Outsider's Life in Politics (2002)