Laura Jane Sandys (; born 5 June 1964) is a former chair of the European Movement UK, and a British Conservative Party politician, who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for South Thanet between 2010 and 2015 when she stood down at the 2015 general election. Early life The daughter of Duncan Sandys through his second marriage to Marie-Claire (née Schmitt), Sandys was born on 5 June 1964 and christened on 17 July 1964 in the Crypt Chapel of the Palace of Westminster. Her father was a member of parliament, and later a life peer, who served as Minister of Defence in Harold Macmillan's government and was also the son-in-law of Winston Churchill (through his first marriage to Diana Churchill). Career before Parliament In the 1980s, Sandys was a Director of Barter Group, an organisation doing business by exchange of goods or services rather than cash in the former Eastern Bloc. She moved on to lead the Parliamentary Unit at the Consumers' Association. Sandys has also worked in public relations; since 1992 she worked through Laura Sandys Associates, also known by its abbreviation LSA. She later became Head of Communications at the Shopping Hours Reform Council, an organisation which promotes allowing shops to open on Sundays. She is also a journalist, also writing for newspapers, and a commentator appearing on television and radio on a wide range of issues, including urban development and the Iraq war. She contributed the opening chapter Paul Cornish's book The War in Iraq (October 2004). Sandys completed an Open University course on Environment and Development in 1993 and is currently a trustee of the Open University Foundation, which was established in 1973 as an independent charitable trust to further the objects of the University. She is a non-executive director on the board of openDemocracy; her biography on that site describes her as: "having experience of political structures across Europe, Turkey, South America and the US". The site also states that she has worked as a journalist and policy strategist in Washington D.C. She was appointed a Trustee of the Civic Trust on 18 July 2000 and is a member of its Policy Committee. and was also a Senior Research Associate for the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College London. She also completed a Master's degree in International Relations at Wolfson College, Cambridge in 2003. Political career Before the 2005 general election, Sandys applied