𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Kate 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 kingdom 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. 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 had voted against the UK joining the the European Economic Community in the 1975 referendum, and she 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. 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 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 she served for nearly a decade.

The former PE teacher worked on educational programmes for top football clubs, including her beloved Arsenal, before entering politics. Boris Johnson would bound into her office and quiz her for advice when he had to write an article on sport. When he became Mayor of London he enlisted her help in championing grassroots sports, and in 2020 he gave her a seat in the House of Lords.

From the red benches, she has followed Sir Keir Starmer’s EU activities with alarm. When he served as Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Brexit Secretary she was appalled at what she describes as his “awful, awful chicanery”.

She believes Labour was determined to “stop us leaving despite the huge vote” in the 2016 referendum and she is “absolutely” sure his long-term ambition is to see the UK back in the EU fold.

“[He] is obviously a total Europhile,” she says.

His Brexit “reset”, she claims, is “just another polite word for getting us back in”.

Today, she says, Brussels, is “missing our money”.

She considers it “very depressing” so many EU laws remain on the British statute book but she has no regrets about campaigning so hard to get the country out of the club.

“Ten years on, there are lots of problems about what’s happened but if there was a vote tomorrow I would vote to Leave again,” she says.

She was one of a small clutch of pro-Brexit Labour MPs in the Commons but when she campaigned in traditional Labour territory, in so-called Red Wall seats, she was struck by the strength of support for breaking away.

“I remember during the big rallies in working class areas up north,” she says. “People would come up to me at the end and say, ‘Oh, thank goodness there’s a Labour MP here’.”

She is sorry not to see a new generation of maverick MPs in Labour ranks today who are prepared to challenge party orthodoxy.

Looking at the current crop of MPs, she says: “You wonder, ‘Do they have an independent thought ever, any of them’?’’

She has ready advice for how Sir Keir can rescue the party.

“Leave right away,” she says, adding: “Go back to the law. You’re obviously obsessed about international law. Go back and be a lawyer.”

There was a flurry of speculation in January that she would join Reform UK after Mr Farage said a Labour defection was imminent.

Technically, she sits as an unaffiliated peer. And she says it is “lovely” not to have to deal with party whips (“not that I ever really listened to the whips much”). But she can see the appeal of Reform.

“I think the country is looking for a big shake-up,” she says. “I think the country’s fed up with the established two-party system.

“I think a lot of people will vote Reform because they think they couldn’t do any worse.”

She is “very friendly” with Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice and sees Mr Farage “now and again” – and admitted she would have voted for the party in the recent Gorton and Denton by-election.

But she wants Mr Farage to be “a bit more upfront on support for the union and support for Northern Ireland” with a very clear commitment to finding a way of “getting right out of the Windsor Framework” – the deal which governs Northern Ireland’s relations with the EU.

When she entered the Lords she took the title of Baroness Hoey of Lylehill and Rathlin, giving a fond nod to the Ulster townland where she grew up and the island where she has her cottage. She has no time for Sinn Fein or attempts to justify the IRA’s violence during the Troubles.

“I think the sheer random cruelty of the way the IRA behaved was something that you couldn’t in any way tolerate and accept,” she says, claiming their killings in border areas were an attempt at “ethnic cleansing”.

The present power-sharing arrangements in Stormont, she says, mean “pro-union people are having to work with a party that actually wants to destroy Northern Ireland”.

And while she is devoted to this part of the UK she does not feel a sense of Irish identity.

“I genuinely don’t feel Irish,” she says. “I would describe myself as coming from Northern Ireland, and I’m British. I had my DNA done not long ago and I was absolutely delighted to discover I was 74% Scottish.”

At the age of 79 she has lost none of her taste for debate or adventure – she has just returned from cross-country skiing with her sister. Her life journey has taken her from days as a young Marxist to her status today as a hero of Brexiteers, but she does not believe her views have changed radically.

“I just think that there’s a common sense solution to most problems,” she says.

She is still bewildered as to why Tony Blair and leading figures of the New Labour generation were so enamoured with the EU, and today she is baffled as to why anyone would want to return to the confines of the club.

“Anyone who doesn’t think that we’re better off making our own decisions and being an independent country, I can’t understand it,” she says. “I can’t.”

And if any ardent Remainers should try and reverse Brexit in the near future, they will have to deal with this indefatigable campaigner. As she has shown in so many decades, she is up for the fight.