West Street to Westminster: how Jared O'Mara became an MP

Jared O’Mara was elected as the MP for Sheffield Hallam in June 2017, as Labour took control of the seat for the first time.

He ousted the former deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Lib Dems Nick Clegg, in what was one of the biggest stories of the election night – coming as a shock even to O’Mara himself.

Before that, he was a DJ and a manager at Sheffield bar West Street Live and had also stood to be a councillor.

“In Spring 2017, Theresa May announced a general election,” says Dr Alexandra Meakin, an expert in British Politics at the University of Leeds.

“It was an unexpected decision, and that left political parties scrabbling to find candidates. In Sheffield Hallam this was a particular issue because the candidate in the previous general election, Oliver Coppard, had announced that he wasn’t planning to stand again.

“So the Labour party needed to find a new candidate, and they settled very quickly on Jared O’Mara.”

He set out to make a positive impact in the House of Commons, saying he was ‘proud’ to be the first MP with autism and cerebral palsy.

But during his two years in office, he rarely went to Parliament or to his own constituency office, and he was quickly engulfed in controversy.

Within months he’d had the whip removed and had been suspended from the Labour party after some past misogynistic and homophobic comments he’d made came to light. The comments let to him resigning from the Women and Equalities Select Committee.

He also took lengthy periods of time off stating mental health issues, and missed some key Brexit votes in the House of Commons. He made a total of three oral contributions in Parliament.

“It’s really disappointing, it’s the kind of thing that puts people off voting, getting involved in politics or having any trust in what happens in Westminster,” says Dr Meakin, who is also a Sheffield Hallam constituent.

She believes the situation with O’Mara highlights issues with the way parties are vetting potential candidates – and says the Labour party have ‘a lot to answer for’ when it comes to the question of how he came to be an MP.

“It’s really down to the parties themselves to do that vetting,” she says.

“It’s a difficult situation, they didn’t have a long time to do it, but it was their responsibility to do so. Voters have to have a level of trust that a mainstream political party is not going to put somebody up for election that the public can’t have confidence in.”

The Labour party are not directly commenting, but we understand they have been working on new processes to prevent a repeat of this.

Dr Meakin says all parties have more to do though:

“We’re seeing now, candidates who’ve been selected and are having to withdraw based on things that have come out about their past so there are clearly still some problems within that vetting process.

“If the parties want to have public trust, they need to take those steps and make sure the candidates they’re putting forward are people they want to represent them in Parliament.”

O’Mara’s career as an MP came to an end when he stood down at the December 2019 general election, prompting calls for it to be easier to remove an MP when constituents feel they are not properly representing them.

Liz Aspden is landlady of the Harlequin pub in Sheffield and was heavily critical of O’Mara during his time in office. She went on to stand to replace him as an Independent:

“When you’re an MP you have a lot of responsibility to deal with people’s problems. I know from people who are constituents of his that it led to all sorts of problems with educational establishments and things like that, so these are real world impacts that had a big effect on people’s lives for a number of years.

“It brings into the question the Recall Act. So if you’ve got an MP who’s not performing, it should be easier to get rid of them.”

The Recall of MPs Act was introduced in 2015 but does not allow constituents to initiate proceedings.

It can only be triggered if an MP is found guilty of wrongdoing under certain criteria – and then the petition must be signed by at least 10 per cent of voters in the constituency.

Four years on, O’Mara has now been on trial for fraud, with prosecutors alleging that during his time in office he tried to claim up to £30,000 on expenses to fund his ‘galloping’ cocaine habit.

He denied the charges - but was found guilty of six of the eight charges on Wednesday.