'Keir has to leave right away ...go back and be a lawyer'

After decades of flying the Eurosceptic flag from within the Labour Party, Kate Hoey has a brutal message for a Prime Minister she believes is trying to return Britain to the EU fold

- David Williamson

K VATE HOEY would be a star defection for Reform UK, but this veteran of the Brexit wars wants cast-iron commitments from Nigel Farage's party for a part of the country dear to her heart. The former high jump champion divides her time between the House of Lords, Belfast and Rathlin, an island off the coast of Northern Ireland famed for its puffins and seals.

And she wants Mr Farage to champion Northern Ireland's place in the UK and loathes the deal designed to avoid border checks with the Irish Republic. "Nigel has to step up to the plate on Northern Ireland," she says. "And I think he will." She was a torchbearer of Labour's Eurosceptic tradition from when she won the Central London seat of Vauxhall in the 1989 by-election to her exit from the Commons in 2019.

She voted against the UK joining the European Economic Community in the 1975 referendum, and defied the whip to oppose the Maastricht treaty in 1993. Labour leader John Smith rang her at home to tell her she should resign.

She remembers: "I'm amazed at myself when I think about it. I said, 'Oh well, if you want me to resign, why don't you sack me?' And he said, 'Well, you're sacked'." When Tony Blair appointed her to the Home Office she visited Brussels with Home Secretary Jack Straw, whom she knew well from their days as student activists. But seeing the EU machine from the inside did nothing to win her over to the European project. "I hated the whole wheeling and dealing stuff," she says Representing one of the most pro-Remain constituencies in the country did not dent her passion for pulling out of the bloc or supporting causes that would scandalise the Labour Left.

This daughter of County Antrim farmers became chairman of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance in 2005 and served for nearly a decade.

The former PE teacher worked on educational programmes for top football clubs including her beloved Arsenal, before entering politics.