Britain’s political year pivoted on then prime minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an election on May 22nd, but the most emotional moment of 2024 in Westminster occurred five hours earlier.
Craig Mackinlay (58), then Tory MP for South Thanet in Kent, made his return that day to the House of Commons after a near-deadly bout of sepsis months earlier. Doctors saved his life, but not his limbs. Following his miraculous survival and just two months after leaving hospital, Mackinlay walked into the chamber on May 22nd as a quadruple amputee with prosthetic hands and legs.
Nobody present that day will ever forget the moment that Mackinlay – quickly known as the Bionic MP – came in. It was a Wednesday, just before the weekly prime minister’s questions at noon.
The House of Commons has rules of decorum: no clapping, no sustained cheering without a thwack of admonishment from the speaker. That day all rules were allowed to fly out the window. MPs from all sides gave Mackinlay a rousing, rhapsodic ovation as a wave of joy swept the house at his return.
“It’s emotional now even thinking about it,” he says, recalling the event in an interview with The Irish Times. “That moment will take a lot of beating. Parliament, right across the divide, was unified in being nice. It was ... just lovely.”
Here was one of their own, almost taken by a sudden illness, back to do his job as an MP. In that moment Mackinlay appeared to personify a set of values that Britons like to recognise in themselves, and which they venerate above all others: perseverance, duty, grit, the refusal to yield.
“I had expected just a little bit of waving papers, a bit of a rah rah. I didn’t expect the whole house to be on its feet, the public gallery, everybody clapping,” says Mackinlay, now a Bionic Baron after his ascension to the House of Lords as a peer.
Yet the moment, with his wife Kati and their little daughter Olivia watching from the gallery, almost didn’t happen.
Sitting in his office in the House of Lords, the now Baron Mackinlay of Richborough explains that he wasn’t feeling great that morning. He was on his first set of prosthetic legs – the ones he uses now are his third ones – and the early version had no ankle movement and were uncomfortable.
“Easily that morning I could have just gone: ‘Oh, let’s just do it in a couple of weeks’.”
As Sunak called an election later that day and parliament was dissolved shortly afterwards, Mackinlay’s chance to make his triumphant return would have been lost.
Later that afternoon, after his moment in the Commons but before Sunak called the election in the pouring rain, Mackinlay and his family sat down with the prime minister in Westminster. Rumours of an imminent election had been sweeping the press gallery all morning but Mackinlay knew nothing of what was to come.
“I thought: ‘It can’t be true because who’d be that stupid to call an election when you’re 15 or 20 points down.’ So we met Rishi and there wasn’t even an inkling of it. He was very decent and we had a nice time with him. This was now only a couple of hours before he called the election. I said to him: ‘Thank you, I expect you’re busy.’ Prime ministers are always busy. He said: ‘You can say that again’. It didn’t mean anything at the time, but it became a bit clearer after 5pm what he meant.”
In the immediate aftermath of the election being called, Mackinlay said he would run again. Yet he soon realised he wasn’t physically up to it.
“I was out of hospital two months. I’d just about got on my feet. I knew I was just not ready for this. I really wanted to fight the election – it’s what I do. But it was going to be tough. You can’t traipse the streets, you can’t deliver leaflets.”
The expected massacre of the Tories after 14 years of government was also a factor in his decision: “If it was the 2019 election I might have thought: ‘I’ll stand because I’ll win and I’ll do things in my own time.’ But I knew this would be a tougher election.”
Nothing, however, could be as tough as his battle to stay alive. His illness occurred during the conference recess in autumn 2023. He began to feel unwell one afternoon, as if he had a cold coming on. The family were due to take a flight to Turkey in the morning for a holiday. He went to bed early.
“I was sick during the night. Really sick,” he says. Next morning, his wife, a pharmacist, saw how unwell he was and called 999. Initially paramedics hesitated about bringing him in as his vital signs were okay, but she insisted, already fearing it might be sepsis.
“My wife said my hands were so cold. I was feeling the most dreadful I had ever felt. The doctors said afterwards I had pneumonia and that led to the sepsis,” says Mackinlay.
He reached the hospital at 10am. “Within an hour I had gone blue, my whole body. That was me going into septic shock. I was aware when I went blue – I was awake. Then they put me into a coma.”
He stayed in a coma for 16 days. When he awoke all four of his limbs had turned black and in December they were amputated – his legs below the knee and his arms and hands from below the elbow. He also has scarring on his lips and his torso, and he lost part of an ear.
“I was quite stoic about it. Maybe it was the morphine and ketamine. I kidded myself that things could be normal-normal again. But it’s not – it’s a new normal. It’s okay, but it’s not anything close to the way it was before,” says Mackinlay.
“My wife has been absolutely incredible, and my little daughter – she helps me put my legs on. But I was very independent as a character, and now I’m not. I have to ask for help. So that’s a struggle.”
Politics has been part of Mackinlay’s life for more than 30 years. An ardent Brexiteer, he was one of the founders of the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip), and was briefly its leader. He fought his first parliamentary election as a Ukip candidate in 1992 but defected to the Tories in 2005.
He was elected a councillor in 2007 and entered parliament in 2015, beating Nigel Farage. Mackinlay says he will never understand why Farage, a fellow Brexiteer, ran against him in South Thant.
“I spoke to Nigel 18 months ago. We had a chat at a funeral. I thought the hatchet was buried. Then I was ill. I am less than impressed with the character of the man. I have known him 32 years. He has my number. He didn’t even do a 10-second text – ‘sorry you’re unwell, mate’,” says Mackinlay.
“That tells me more about you than anything you are ever likely to do – I’m not impressed with that.”
Earlier this year Sunak appointed Mackinlay to the House of Lords.
“I think everybody who gets these things, they sort of know and there are discussions beforehand. I had negotiated – not negotiated, but discussed – with the prime minister and his PPS [parliamentary private secretary]. I told them: ‘I’m just not sure I can do this [the election]. Other members told them: ‘I think this is the right thing for Craig. Look at what he’s been through – he has quite literally been cut off at the knees in the middle of his career in politics.’”
Mackinlay’s ascension to the House of Lords wasn’t confirmed until election day, July 4th.
“I was going to a medical appointment, a friend was driving me. My phone rang and it was the prime minister. He said: ‘The dissolution honours list comes out at nine tonight and you’re on it.’”
Mackinlay now uses his position and profile in the House of Lords to advocate for greater awareness of sepsis and better resources for amputee victims. His current prostheses were obtained privately. He says the National Health Service would have made him wait three years for high-end ones. “There is no other area of the NHS where they will give you substandard stuff.”
[ How to spot symptoms of sepsisOpens in new window ]
He recently met Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to lobby for better resources for amputees. He also visits others who have had similar illnesses, including an 18-year-old who, like him, has just lost his limbs. Mackinlay hopes that relaying his own experience will help the young man face the challenges ahead. They may even campaign alongside each other.
“We’ve got a new terrible duo coming who will be hitting the market together,” says Mackinlay.
For some, the battle never ends.
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