Kate Hoey

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Kate Hoey is the Labour MP for Vauxhall.[1] She is also an advisor to the Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson on Sport.[2]

Background

Hoey was born in 1946 in Antrim, Northern Ireland, where her parents were farmers.[3][4]

Education

Hoey attended the Belfast Royal Academy and the Ulster College of Physical Education. She subsequently took an economics degree in London.[5]

She was elected a sabbatical Vice-President of the National Union of Students.[6]

During her time, as a student, Hoey was a member of the International Marxist Group.[7]

Political career

According to the Independent, Hoey joined the Labour Party in 1972.[8]

She served as a councillor in the London Borough of Hackney from 1978 to 1982.[9]

Hoey contested the Dulwich consituency in the 1983 and 1987 general elections.[10] In 1987, she was defeated by just 180 votes, the smallest majority in the country.[11]

She served a councillor in Southwark from 1988 to 1989.[12] At the time of here election, she was working as a freelance sports writer.[13]

She was elected to Parliament on 15 June 1989, winning a by-election in Vauxhall.[14]

Hoey served as Opposition Spokesperson for Citizen's Charter and Women 1992-93; PPS to Frank Field as Minister of State, Department of Social Security 1997-98; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State: Home Office (Metropolitan Police, European Union, Judicial Co-operation) 1998-99, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Minister for Sport) 1999-2001.[15]

In April 2008, Hoey agreed to act as an advisor to Conservative Boris Johnson if he was elected as Mayor of London. This led to a meeting with Labour chief whip Geoff Hoon, following which Hoey announced that her role for Johnson would be on a non-partisan basis, and she would be voting Labour in the Mayoral election.[16]

In May 2009, Hoey said she would not be devastated by a Conservative electoral victory:

"Because the Conservatives have changed their image a bit we don't get that venom that used to come out of people when the word Tory was mentioned.
"You're asking me 'would I be devastated?' No absolutely not. Even people who are voting Labour, that Thatcher (comparison) is no more meaningful to them than Tories talking about us and rubbish on the streets and not burying the dead.[17]

Along with Frank Field, Hoey was one of the first MPs to nominate John McDonnell during the Labour leadership election in 2010.[18] This was greeted with suspicion by some who questioned why MPs seen to be on the right of the party were nominating a figure associated with the left. The New Statesman's James Macintrye said of Field and Hoey: "Both are the subject of Tory dreams that they may defect"[19]

Northern Ireland Policy

In 1989, as a junior front-bencher, Hoey attended a Labour conference fringe meeting organised by the Campaign for Labour Representation in Northern Ireland. John Pienaar reported:

they were pressing on with the task of handing leaflets to anyone prepared to take one, and taking limited encouragement from the presence of a junior Labour front-bencher, Kate Hoey, at their conference fringe meeting.
The party leaders show no sign of relenting. Extending Labour's front into Ulster, they say, would run counter to the policy of reunification of Ireland by consent.
There is also a suspicion in some circles that the campaign is to some extent driven by a form of 'closet unionism'; a motive the Belfast campaigners attribute freely to their Tory counterparts.[20]

Connections

Joan Hoey, sister.

Resources

Notes

  1. ↑ Kate Hoey, www.parliament.uk, accessed 5 April 2011.
  2. ↑ Kate Hoey, Greater London Authority, accessed 5 April 2011.
  3. ↑ Home page, katehoey.com, accessed 5 April 2011.
  4. ↑ Brian Viner, Hoey a tireless captain of the awkward squad, The Independent, 1 March 2003.
  5. ↑ Home page, katehoey.com, accessed 5 April 2011.
  6. ↑ Home page, katehoey.com, accessed 5 April 2011.
  7. ↑ Ministers on the up, BBC News, 29 July 1999.
  8. ↑ Brian Viner, Hoey a tireless captain of the awkward squad, The Independent, 1 March 2003.
  9. ↑ Brian Viner, Hoey a tireless captain of the awkward squad, The Independent, 1 March 2003.
  10. ↑ Kate Hoey, www.parliament.uk, accessed 5 April 2011.
  11. ↑ Jane Slade, War of Words, The Times, 2 November 1988.
  12. ↑ Brian Viner, Hoey a tireless captain of the awkward squad, The Independent, 1 March 2003.
  13. ↑ Jane Slade, War of Words, The Times, 2 November 1988.
  14. ↑ Kate Hoey, www.parliament.uk, accessed 5 April 2011.
  15. ↑ Kate Hoey, www.parliament.uk, accessed 5 April 2011.
  16. ↑ Sam Johnson, Labour MP denies defection in mayoral campaign, The Guardian, 30 April 2008.
  17. ↑ Melissa Kite, Kate Hoey: I would not be devastated if the Conservatives won the election, Telegraph, 5 April 2011.
  18. ↑ McDonnell gets first backing in Labour leadership fight, BBC News, 26 May 2010.
  19. ↑ Kiss of Death for Labour's most leftist candidates, James Macintyre, New Statesman, 27 May 2010.
  20. ↑ John Pienaar, The Labour Party Conference: Voices labouring for a lost cause, The Independent, 3 October 1989.
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