Name Richard Coke Role Politician | Spouse Anna Coke | |
Richard Townshend Coke (born 1 February 1954), known as Toby Coke and as Richard Toby Coke, is a politician of the UK Independence Party and a landowner and forester in Norfolk, in the east of England. Until May 2017 he was the UKIP leader in Norfolk County Council. His surname is pronounced "Cook".
Born in 1954 at Weasenham, near Great Massingham in Norfolk, Coke is the elder son of Major Richard Lovel Coke (1918–2001), by his marriage to Molly, a daughter of Walter Townshend Fletcher. His father was a grandson of Thomas Coke, 2nd Earl of Leicester (1822–1909). He was educated at Radley College and Sandhurst and commissioned into the Scots Guards. After four years in the army, he followed a financial services career in the City of London, before going to work in Canada and the United States. He returned to Norfolk to run the family estate, which consists largely of woodland, and now operates a training course at the Weasenham estate called "Extreeme Adventure."
A climate change sceptic, Coke has said he is
"fundamentally opposed to the climate change scam which is causing fuel poverty and the monstrous wind turbines that threaten so much of our most picturesque countryside."
At the Norfolk County Council election on 2 May 2013, Coke was elected to represent the Gayton and Nar Valley electoral division and a few days later was chosen as leader of the county council's UKIP group of fifteen councillors, making him leader of the opposition".
Coke unsuccessfully contested Mid Norfolk for UKIP in 2010 and North West Norfolk for UKIP in 2015. He commented that before 2010 he had no involvement in politics apart from "dabbling in parish politics".
He stood down from his seat at the Norfolk County Council election, 2017.
Private life
On 19 November 1996, Coke married in the United States Carrie-Lee Early, an attorney, the daughter of Neil Early, of New York.