George Barrington "Barry" Porter (11 June 1939 – 3 November 1996) was a British lawyer and Conservative Party politician who was the MP for Bebington and Ellesmere Port from 1979 to 1983, and then for Wirral South from 1983 until his death.
Porter was elected to the Birkenhead Borough Council in 1967, which was subsumed into the Wirral Council after 1974. He remained a councillor until 1979.[1]
His vigorous right-wing populism—it was characteristic that he advocated both cricket and rugby tours of South Africa while apartheid was still in force—did not find an entirely comfortable home at Westminster even under Margaret Thatcher. Although he started off by admiring her, he came to feel it was time for her to "hang up her boots", and in 1990 he emerged as one of Michael Heseltine's more supervising supporters.
Porter believed that his role in Thatcher's downfall would end his political career, and there was an effort to deselect him ahead of the 1992 general election, but it was unsuccessful.[2]
Porter married Susan James in 1965, and they had five children.[2] His wife worked as his secretary in the Commons, which she continued to do even after they separated in 1989.[1]