Kate Hoey

Baroness Hoey in 2022

Catharine Letitia Hoey, Baroness Hoey (born 21 June 1946), known as Kate Hoey, is a Northern Irish politician who served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Home Affairs from 1998 to 1999 and Minister for Sport from 1999 to 2001. By the late 1970s, Hoey was active in the British Labour Party and served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Vauxhall from 1989 to 2019. On December 14 that year, Hoey announced she had left the Labour Party and became a life peer the following year.

Quotes

• Then there is the crucial issue of the Irish border. If, in any deal, Northern Ireland is to be treated differently from the rest of the UK then anyone who believes in the Union could not possibly support that deal. No doubt there will be some flowery EU-speak designed to hide the true intention and we will be told that as it is never intended to be needed then we shouldn’t worry.
• While I understand that Ireland was quite shocked at our decision to Leave, so much of the controversy over the border has been manufactured by it to try to keep Northern Ireland bound by EU regulations and different from the rest of the UK.
• I’m pro-union, I’ll do anything to make sure that the United Kingdom has Northern Ireland as an integral part of it on the same terms as any other part of the United Kingdom when we leave the EU.
  • Kate Hoey: an Antrim-born MP who said Ireland should pay for Border, The Irish Times (10 December 2017).
• I don't have to believe in conspiracy theories to see that the Irish Government and the European Union have been from day one working closely on tactics particularly relating to the border question.
  • "It is hard to see how I and fellow Labour MPs can back the PM's potential travesty of a deal", The Telegraph (14 November 2018).
• I thought our Shadow Foreign Secretary saying she would be campaigning for Remain is quite shocking and goes 100% against our manifesto. More and more people are feeling more confirmed in their views that politicians say one thing in their manifestos and then change their view.
  • Kate Hoey speaking on LBC, as cited in "Kate Hoey Says Emily Thornberry Is Wrong To Support Remain In Second Referendum", LBC, (26 February 2019).
  • The shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, had indicated she would back 'remain' if a second referendum was announced. Labour's 2017 general election manifesto had stated party policy was to support the result of the 2016 EU membership referendum.

• I'm actually going to be voting in Northern Ireland and unfortunately the Labour Party is so anti-democratic in Northern Ireland that they allow people to join but they don't put up candidates. [...] So I'll be voting for a pro-union candidate in Northern Ireland.
• I'm pro-union. I would not dream of voting for Sinn Fein, I wouldn't dream of voting for the SDLP.
  • In a LBC interview, as cited in "Watch: Former Labour MP Kate Hoey says she will vote DUP in General Election", Belfast Telegraph (13 November 2019).
  • Hoey said she was, in her probable location on election day, "likely to be voting" for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and if in London would have voted for the Conservatives or the Brexit Party.

• [The vote for the Conservative Party in the 2019 general election was] what we needed for stability because now the European Union knows that we're not going to revoke Article 50. We're not going to have a second referendum. We're going to get out, and they will have to change their attitude, too, to the negotiations. And we will get, I hope, within the next year a good free trade deal with the European Union. And of course, then we will be discussing with the United States to get an even closer relationship with you as well.
• We can be a successful independent country like the United States, working, cooperating with the rest of the world.
  • "British Former MP Kate Hoey On Conservative Election Wins", NPR (13 December 2019).

• I think we all kind of know how we got here, that Northern Ireland was sacrificed because it could have been that we weren’t going to get Brexit at all.
• I personally couldn't vote for the Withdrawal Agreement because of Northern Ireland but I could understand many of my colleagues in the Leave campaign because they have to do it.
  • "Kate Hoey says Northern Ireland was 'sacrificed' to get Brexit done", The Irish Times (1 September 2021)

• There are people in Northern Ireland, leading politicians, who say, and it's true, that Northern Ireland has now become a form of colony. The EU’s first kind of colony.
• If Stormont goes back with the present Windsor Framework, they in fact would be almost like what happened during the war with the Vichy government, where all those [w:Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)|MLAs]] [Members of the Legislative Assembly] would be collaborators with a kind of colonial government.
• Taking foreign laws from a foreign legislature, governing much of our economy in Northern Ireland and keeping us in a foreign customs code whereby GB, Great Britain, our country, where our capital is, becomes a third country, becomes our foreign country – it’s just not acceptable.
  • "Brexiteer compares NI politicians who accept Sunak deal to Nazi collaborators", The Independent (30 March 2023)
  • Baroness Hoey was speaking after a failed attempt in the House of Lords by the Democratic Unionists to block the Windsor framework. Prime minister Rishi Sunak spoke about the newly negotiated Windsor framework on a visit to Belfast on 28 February 2023.

• [On Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK] I don't think anyone from a pro-union background should fear Keir Starmer becoming the next prime minister of the United Kingdom.
• [T]he tricolour is not my flag ... I genuinely don't feel Irish. Is there something wrong with that?
• I was always very cynical about the European Union.
• I don't fit into a mould.
  • Red Lines podcast, BBC News NI, as cited in "Red Lines: Kate Hoey - from international Marxist to Brexiteer", BBC News (9 August 2023).

About Hoey

• Kate Hoey is an asset to the Labour Party. She has been a brave and principled fighter for what she believes, and yesterday’s announcement, though understandable, is regrettable. I wish her well.
  • Tom Harris "Labour was once a tolerant and diverse party. Now it treats Left-wing Brexiteers like apostates", The Telegraph (9 July 2019).
  • Kate Hoey had announced she was leaving parliament at the next election.