Kate Hoey faces threat of deselection for Commons vote

ONE of the four Labour MPS who helped prop up the Government in a crunch Brexit vote is facing the threat of deselection after her local party passed a vote of no confidence in her.

Kate Hoey helped save Theresa May from a damaging House of Commons defeat earlier this month as the Prime Minister narrowly fought off a bid by Tory rebels to keep the UK in the customs union.

But Ms Hoey’s Brexit stance has prompted anger among Labour activists in her London constituency of Vauxhall, with local party members voting on Thursday evening in favour of a bid to oust her.

Frank Field, another one of the four Labour MPS who backed Mrs May, was reportedly last night facing his own fight for survival.

Labour activists in Mr Field’s Birkenhead constituency were preparing an attempt to have him suspended from the party, with a vote demanding action expected to take place yesterday evening. Ms Hoey and Mr Field have faced jeers and heckling from Labour MPS during Brexit debates in the Commons when they have sought to make the case for leaving the European Union.

Activists in Vauxhall called for Ms Hoey to be stripped of the Labour whip and for the party’s ruling National Executive Committee to declare her “ineligible for re-selection or endorsement as a Labour Party parliamentary candidate”.

Ms Hoey said: “After 29 years as an MP I am quite relaxed about the vote and it won’t influence in any way how I vote in future.”

The effort to deselect Kate Hoey, a pro-brexit MP, tells us everything we need to know about the modern Labour Party, namely that it hasn’t changed. Members in her Vauxhall constituency have censured her on the grounds that she opposed a customs bill amendment, saving the Government’s bacon. Many suspect that if Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t leader of the party he would have voted exactly the same way: there was a time when he and Ms Hoey agreed on Europe. It’s everything else they vigorously disagree on that has made her a hate figure for the hard-left for years.

Ms Hoey was effectively imposed by the national Labour Party as a candidate in the 1989 Vauxhall by-election. Local members preferred Martha Osamor, then associated with the so-called Loony Left and now, thanks to Mr Corbyn, a life peer. Ms Hoey turned out to be a hardworking, independent-minded MP. A serial rebel, under Tony Blair she was against the Iraq War, tuition fees and the foxhunting ban. In 2016 she campaigned for Brexit. In 2017, Vauxhall voters – who, yes, voted 77 per cent for Remain – returned her to Parliament with a majority of over 20,000. Clearly, they were happy with her.

The Left, however, wants control of that majority. In ultra-safe Labour seats, the constituents exercise less power than the local party that selects the candidate, because Labour always wins. Corbynites dream of a Labour in which MPS face mandatory reselection and moderates are replaced by ideologues whose primary loyalty is not to constituents but to a tiny nucleus of party activists: just 42 people voted to censure Ms Hoey. This vanguard strategy nearly destroyed Labour in the Eighties: the centrists won, thank heavens, and fanatics like Mr Corbyn limped off to the fringes. Now, the fringe is in control of the national party, and what is happening in Vauxhall could become the norm.

This is a threat to our democracy. Britain is essentially a two-party system and if the only alternative to the Tories is a radicalised Labour controlled backstage by activists, that leaves the country hostage to fortune. Labour’s moderates must unite and fight. Even those Labour MPS who backed Remain must look at Ms Hoey or Frank Field, another freethinker under threat from deselection, and realise: “Today, it’s them, but tomorrow, it could be me.”