The locals in London
Labour’s Newtownabbey-born Kate Hoey and former Inst pupil Glyn Chambers are preparing to stand against each other for the Vauxhall seat in London. Ryan Jennings spoke to both candidates as they prepared to fight it out.
Northern Irish people move around the place, that’s no secret. In London, it would not be hard to find a few but in Vauxhall, an inner area of the city, there are two who will be fighting for the same seat.
Kate Hoey is well-known. She has sat as an MP for the area for over 20 years and yet still holds onto her accent. Lesser-known Glyn Chambers, the Conservative contender, also stood in 2007 in East Belfast.
Come election time the two will be contesting the London constituency. Hoey has a clear majority of 10,000 from her nearest rival and will likely hold the seat but Chambers has his own point to prove.
Having always felt aligned with the Conservatives, it is natural that he should seek to further his political career over the water rather than here. “If you are going to be involved in politics, you want to be in a position to influence at the highest level. With respect to political parties in Northern Ireland, most of the time they’re not in terms of getting involved at that level of politics.”
While there is a national swing in favour of the Tories, Vauxhall has not subscribed to that theory and indeed the second party in the area is actually the Lib Dems.
However, Chambers says that in general London very much mimics the national trend. “Labour traditionally poll stronger in London than overall,” he says, before pointing out that in spite of Northern Ireland’s probable pivotal position at the general election, the capital will have a big role to play as “a big swing in London is quite possible”.
London, for the Newtownabbey-born Hoey, is like a lot of other places. “There are peculiar issues to every constituency. There are London constituencies, just like across Great Britain, which are solid Labour or solid Tory constituencies,” she says.
Chambers is good friends with members of the East Belfast branch of his party and it was through them that he found himself contesting that constituency’s seat in 2007; he won 427 first preference votes. He had already stood for office, as it were, in Clapham Town where he lost by just 109 votes.
With all the main candidates standing in the area not being Londoners let alone local Vauxhallians, constituents could be forgiven for feeling something of a deficit. Neither candidate feels this is the case.
The long-standing Hoey has never had any problem with that. “London is a very multicultural city, with people coming from many different countries,” she says, citing both the Afro-Caribbean influx along with the Portuguese. In short, the 75,000 constituents aren’t all locals either.
Chambers also rejects that idea. “Parties go through a process and they select the best person that they find available. They do not have to be local members.”
Conversely though, Chambers believes the situation would be different if their roles were reversed. Applying the situation to an Englishman standing for election in Northern Ireland, he thinks that person might encounter more of a barrier than there would be in GB. Northern Ireland, he says, is “a bit more parochial, it is a bit more of a close-knit community.” Interestingly, he says if the community here was a bit more “cavalier”, it would perhaps look towards the person who would simply do the best job rather than the local person.
Although the system at the Assembly is generally considered not to be a model of best government, both Hoey and Chambers see merit in getting cross-party consensus on some matters.
Hoey goes one step further, saying: “It is my belief that party politics should not come into most issues at all. The public is very [smart], they understand the difference between local council elections and general elections.”
Constituents, she says, could vote in very different ways between the two polls. “One constituent might vote for the Lib Dems in the local elections but vote Labour in the general.” It is more likely, she adds, for people in Northern Ireland to have stuck with one party or one branch of the party.
In the Lambeth Borough, where Vauxhall sits, there are three parliamentary constituencies so cross-party consensus on local issues, Hoey says, is “very important between elections”.
She also maintains a keen interest on Northern Ireland in Parliament and believes that it is vital to keep the debate on Northern Ireland alive, citing Scotland, which still takes up time in Parliament despite having more devolution.
