After serving for 27 years as the MP for Barking, Labour’s Dame Margaret Hodge has said that she will step down at the next general election.
In a video released last week announcing her "tough" decision to step down, Dame Margaret thanked local party members for their “warmth, friendship, support and love” over many years, and fondly recalled defeating British National Party leader Nick Griffin at the polls in Barking when he ran against her at the 2010 general election, calling it her proudest achievement in politics.
First elected to the Commons in 1994, Dame Margaret was later handed ministerial roles in education, culture and work under the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
She has been both credited and criticised by her peers throughout her career for her ruthless methods of questioning, and notably chaired the Public Accounts Committee between 2010 and 2015, scrutinising the government’s spending of public funds.
She stood down from the committee after entering the running to become Labour’s candidate for the role of Mayor of London but subsequently withdrew after stating that capital city mayor ought to be a “non-white” person. The candidacy eventually went to Sadiq Khan.
An outspoken MP, she made headlines in 2012 with her remarks about corporations not paying enough tax in the UK, calling for a boycott of businesses such as Amazon, Google and Starbucks over their tax avoidance.
She also once said that she wanted to “put a bomb under” senior civil servants within HMRC and was one of the fiercest critics of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party from within, accusing him of being in “permanent denial” about the anti-Semitism issues within its ranks.
Fellow Labour MPs have paid tribute to Dame Margaret in the aftermath of the announcement, with shadow Northern Ireland secretary Peter Kyle describing her as “courageous and driven” while Wallasey MP Angela Eagle said that she will walk away from politics with a “record to be proud of”.
The Labour MP for Camberwell and Peckham and chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Harriet Harman, said that Dame Margaret was “forever Labour”, hailing her an “outstanding local government leader, fierce opponent of fascism and anti-Semitism” and the “scourge of tax evaders”.
Elsewhere, tributes have been paid to Lord McKenzie of Luton, former councillor of the Bedfordshire town and member of the House of Lords, who passed away last week at the age of 74.
Lord McKenzie served Luton as a councillor for 22 years and was made a Baron in 2004.
Photo taken from Wikimedia Commons
