Nici voted for the UK to remain in the EU in the
2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. She subsequently became a supporter of leaving the EU and supported her party's approach to the exit process. In December 2019, she stated that the reason the UK had not left the EU was "a failure of people who live in northern towns like Grimsby who have Labour MPs who have consistently voted against the democratic vote in their constituencies."
Elections After failing to be selected as parliamentary candidate in Great Grimsby and
Scunthorpe, In
May 2018, Nici was elected as a councillor for the Scartho ward of
North East Lincolnshire Council. She won the seat with 54.9% of the vote and a margin of 7,331 votes over Labour, who had held the seat for 74 years; defeating the sitting Labour MP
Melanie Onn, who had represented Great Grimsby since
Austin Mitchell's retirement in 2015. constituency. Labour's
Melanie Onn, who had held the Great Grimsby seat from 2015-2019, won the seat with 15,336 votes, with
Reform UK's candidate Oliver Freeston receiving 10,533 votes and Lia Nici coming third with 8,269 votes
Parliamentary career In March 2020, Nici became a member of the
Backbench Business Committee in the
House of Commons. In May 2020, Nici supported
Prime Minister Boris Johnson's refusal to take action against his chief adviser
Dominic Cummings after the latter breached
COVID-19 lockdown regulations, maintaining only that it was possible "he may have committed a minor breach", and should have apologised. In August 2020, Nici was one of 25 Conservative MPs and peers to sign a letter to
Home Secretary Priti Patel urging "stronger enforcement" against
people crossing the English Channel in small boats, considering it to be "strikingly clear that, rather than a 'hostile environment', invading migrants have been welcomed". In October 2020, Nici was appointed a
Parliamentary Private Secretary in the
Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, making her part of the
payroll vote. Later that month, however, after being absent from voting on a Labour motion calling for the extension of free school meals into the school holidays, Nici said that she would have voted against the government had she been present. During the
United Kingdom's second national lockdown in November 2020, Nici self-isolated after attending a meeting in 10 Downing Street with the prime minister and several other Conservative MPs including
Lee Anderson, who subsequently tested positive for
COVID-19. In March 2021, Nici used Twitter to suggest that people who "are not proud to be British, or of our flag or Queen [...] should move to another country". Following criticism, she refused to apologise for her comments, saying that "the flag and the Queen are big parts of life in this country, so if you dislike it, you can happily move elsewhere". In a September 2021 interview with
YouTuber Mahyar Tousi, Nici expressed her belief that "there are some very sinister, extreme left-wing things going on in our country and they're trying to lobby government and companies". In December 2021, amid the
Westminster lockdown parties controversy, Nici maintained that Johnson's moral authority had not been lost, and expressed her displeasure with whistleblowers who had brought attention to the matter, declaring that they "should be ashamed". Following Johnson's subsequent admission that he had attended a Downing Street garden party during the
United Kingdom's first national lockdown, Nici defended him, stating that "nobody is perfect. The prime minister is a good man who wants to do the right thing for the UK and Grimsby." The following day, she asserted her belief that both the party and the leaks surrounding it were part of a plot against the prime minister by civil servants who did not want the United Kingdom to leave the EU. In February 2022, Nici defended Johnson after his false claim that
Keir Starmer was responsible for the failure of the
Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute
Jimmy Savile, alleging that the purported link between the two was "the number one issue for local people on social media" in the week before Johnson raised it in his response to the
Sue Gray investigation into lockdown parties within government. The following week, Nici was appointed as a
parliamentary private secretary to the prime minister. In the
2022 vote of confidence in the Conservative Party leadership of Boris Johnson, Nici voted in favour of the Prime Minister. She later continued to openly support Johnson in the subsequent weeks up to his eventual resignation of the Conservative Party on 7 July. The day after Johnson's resignation, she was appointed as a parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Department for Levelling Up. On 10 July she repeated on the BBC allegations that Labour MP
Angela Rayner crossed and uncrossed her legs to distract male MPs, an allegation originally made by an unnamed Conservative politician to the
Mail on Sunday newspaper in April 2022. At the time Boris Johnson described the story about Rayner as "the most appalling load of sexist, misogynist tripe". On 19 June 2023, Nici abstained in the Commons vote to approve the Privileges Committee's report, which had found that Boris Johnson misled the House. ==Post-Parliamentary career==