Jared O’Mara is what happens if your candidate is chosen by the party without a proper selection process
Yorkshire's missing MP: In Tomorrow's The Yorkshire Post our Features & Comment section demands answers on behalf of Sheffield Hallam residents – particularly the 21,000 people who put Jared O'Mara in his £74,000-a-year job. pic.twitter.com/T21Jhvm7am
— James Mitchinson (@JayMitchinson) January 15, 2018
Jared O’Mara’s office said in December he is working “very hard” for the people of Sheffield Hallam. But his office manager won’t say when the MP last turned up for work and when asked if she could give any examples of him helping a constituent, replied: “No, I can’t.” https://t.co/yaYtVAdLTJ
— Chris Burn (@ChrisBurn_Post) January 15, 2018
The pressure mounts on the MP who’s never spoken in the Commons & hasn’t been there for three months
The politically influential Yorkshire Post has now got its teeth into Jared O’Mara – the Labour MP who was suspended in October after revelations of homophobic and misogynistic comments online. He’s being described with the prefix “Shamed“.
He was elected for Sheffield Hallam last June winning the seat from Nick Clegg but has yet to make a maiden speech or even speak at all in the House. When his comments were revealed LAB opened an enquiry and he was suspended from the party. That was back in October and still we don’t know what the outcome is going to be.
What is clear is that O’Mara did not become the Labour candidate in what was a key target for the party by going through a normal selection process. Because of the surprise nature of the last election LAB short-circuited the process in some seats in order to get candidates in place. Why this should have happened is far from clear given that other parties were able to have normal selections in the normal way within the extended time period of the campaign.
His absence from the House means that LAB has been one person short in the key votes which could have been critical giving how close some of the decisions have been. there are, of course, more of these to come given the precarious position of the Tory parliamentary situation.
Quite what LAB can do about him is hard to say you given that they can’t force O’Mara to resign his seat. If he stays in such a situation he will become a continuing embarrassment for Team Corbyn. The Yorkshire Post, for one, is not going to let this go.