I must say I wasn’t a fan of Kate Hoey when I lived in her Vauxhall constituency a few years ago (mainly because she’s eurosceptic), and it seems that since her stint as a Junior Minister ended in 2001 she’s ended up becoming madder and madder. She’s a Labour MP for an inner-city constituency and is nevertheless chair of the Countryside Alliance. She wants the right to send the hounds after urban foxes on the estates in Lambeth I assume?
Then today she has ended up in fresh controversy by apparently having been willing to appear on a panel at a ballet school with Tory mayor candidate Boris Johnson, although she claims it wasn’t an endorsement of him and was ‘ill’ at the last minute. So, Kate, what would Boris do for the poor people in your constituency? And why would you not back Ken Livingstone if you were the Labour MP for such a constituency?
The Three Line Whip blog has an amusing idea – to swap Hoey for John Bercow. Plus if you look at Kate Hoey’s and Boris Johnson’s pages at They Work For You, so see that with the (admittedly major) exception of the Iraq war, there’s not too much to separate them on the major issues.
So, Labour, is it time to up the pressure and deselect Kate Hoey?
[UPDATE – 30.4.08]
More on Labour’s dilemmas with Hoey at my old MP Paul Flynn’s blog – incisive as ever.
[UPDATE – 31.5.08]
Apparently Hoey has fought off a deselection attempt, apologizes for having done wrong and caused offence, and promises to do better. How many times Kate? And are you going to apologize for the permanent aberration of being chair of the Countryside Alliance? Of course not. I’m not in the slightest convinced by her latest defense.
why do you want to DESELECT one of the few HONEST politicians left. Roby.
Not many of them are these days unfortunately.
It’s not being nasty – it’s arguing that she’s not an appropriate representative of the Labour Party!
I don’t know how you can all be so nasty about lovely little Kate.
I once did argue for her deselection at a branch meeting of Vauxhall CLP a few years back, but didn’t manage to persuade a majority of fellow members to go along with it. In this part of London, Labour has a fractious and factional history and people are loath to go down that road. A surprising number still refer to the bitter Bermondsey by-election just across the border in Southwark, even though it was well over 20 years ago!
But yes, she’s a real disgrace and ought to have had the Labour whip withdrawn long ago. But she takes care to stay well in with some important local groups in the south of the constituency and would appear – alas – fairly secure.
Hoey is a disgrace. When Labour MP Dan Norris was attacked and his assistant punched by Countryside Alliance thugs she refused to condemn it. Not only that a few days later she stood on a platform not far from where the incident happened and clapped as hunt thug after hunt thug called for the downfall of the Labour government. Not once did she condemn the attack.
The organisation she chairs (the Countryside Alliance) has a Chief Exec who is a Tory PPC with close links to Cameron and it has direct links to an organistion targeting Labour MPs in marginal seats.