By Gwyn Wright and Daniel Stephenson
November 14 2019, 16.36
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Vauxhall will elect a new MP for the first time in 30 years on December 12.
Labour’s Kate Hoey, who had represented the seat since 1989, announced her retirement in July.
She won 57.4% of the vote in 2017, up 3.6% from the previous election in 2015.
Hoey, a staunch Brexiteer, represented a seat which voted to remain by 77.6% to 22.4%.
Hoey, who will be voting in Northern Ireland on December 12, announced on Thursday that she intends to vote for the DUP, but said she would vote for the Conservatives or Brexit Party if she was voting in England.
The seat has returned a Labour MP at every election since it was created in 1950.
Sarah Bool (Conservative)
Lifelong Conservative Sarah Bool started canvassing for the Tories at the age of 9. The Oxford-educated real estate lawyer was selected as Vauxhall’s Tory candidate in September.
She volunteers with In-Deep, a Westminster-based charity providing music therapy for children with special educational needs, and lunches with the over 50s to help prevent loneliness.
Twitter: @Sarah_bool16
Jacqueline Bond (Green Party)
Ecology graduate and Extinction Rebellion activist Jacqueline Bond is seeking to raise £3,000 of campaign funds through crowdfunding.
She says she will take Extinction Rebellion’s concerns to the heart of parliament and wants net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Twitter: @JacquelineBond
Florence Elashomi (Labour Party)
The favourite to become Vauxhall’s next MP is chair of the London Assembly transport committee and has been a member of the London Assembly for Lambeth and Southwark since May 2016.
She beat off the restauranteur and Mayor of Lambeth Ibrahim Dogus and former MP and Corbyn ally Katy Clark for the selection.
In May, Labour launched an internal investigation into alleged irregularities after left-wingers tried to deselect her as a London Assembly member.
If elected, she will be the first MP to have gone to school in Lambeth since the seat was created in 1950.
Twitter: @floeshalomi
Salah Faisal (Independent)
The independent candidate, Salah Faisal, started tweeting last month.
In a tweet, he said: “I think each constituency should have the power to remove party affiliations from ballot sheets, as a first step towards detaching itself from the corrupting influence of party politics.”
Twitter: @salah_faissal
Sarah Lewis (Liberal Democrats)
The Liberal Democrat candidate for Vauxhall is Brixton resident Sarah Lewis. She has led the party locally since the 2017 election, and took on a particularly big role in the 2018 local election campaign and the subsequent Coldharbour by-election.
She stood in the 2018 Lambeth local election, as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Brixton Hill, but was not successful.
Beyond politics. she advises businesses and charities on how to play a positive role in society. She previously worked in communications and campaigns at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – a charitable foundation focused on global health and development.
Twitter: @SarahLewisVaux
Hortense Sheppard (Brexit Party)
Sheppard was selected as Brexit Party candidate in August this year.
Twitter: @BrexVaux
The deadline for registering to vote is midnight November 26.
