The membership of Vauxhall constituency Labour party (CLP) has formally distanced itself from its own member of parliament over positions she has taken in relation to the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, saying it does not believe she is “effectively representing” their views or those of “our wider communities”.
A statement voted through at an “all members meeting” last Thursday says that the south London CLP “fully supports the Labour Party policy to unilaterally grant residency rights for the three million EU citizens already in the UK” and “the rights of unaccompanied child refugees to be granted access to the UK (the so-called Dubs amendment)”.
Hoey voted earlier this month against seeking to protect the residence rights of EU citizens and their family members who were lawfully resident in the UK on 23 June 2016, the day of the referendum. Prior to the referendum she had voted in favour of EU nationals to retaining the right to live and work in the UK should it choose to leave the EU.
She has tended to vote for stronger enforcement of immigration rules and stricter controls on asylum seekers in the past. However, last spring she voted in favour of the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act 2016, which eventually saw the government agree to a number of unaccompanied refugee children in other European countries being settled in Britain. The government announced to protests earlier this month that only 350 children would be accepted.
It is not the first time Hoey, a Eurosceptic of long standing, has been rebuked by constituency members for her approach to Europe. Last autumn they censured her for what they deemed providing “seemingly enthusiastic support and comradeship” for the then Ukip leader Nigel Farage and an alleged “lack of action and failure to publicly condemn” the controversial “breaking point” poster produced by Ukip during the EU referendum, which used a photograph of people crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border in 2015 to claim that the EU “has failed us all”.
Hoey has a history of rebelling against her party line on a range of issues, including on ID cards, going to work in Iraq and the fox hunting ban. There have been rumours of a campaign to deselect her as Vauxhall MP.