Shamed former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya has been jailed for lying to police over a speeding ticket. Onasanya compared herself to Jesus after being found guilty of perverting the course of justice last year. But her explanation that she was ‘in good biblical company, along with Joseph, Moses, Daniel and his three Hebrew friends, who were each found guilty by the courts of their day’ didn’t convince a judge at the Old Bailey who this afternoon sentenced Onasanya to three months in prison. When she was first elected as MP for Peterborough in 2017, Onasanya had said:
‘I would like one day in the future to become the first black, female Prime Minister of this country’
Instead, Onasanya becomes the first female MP ever to be sent to prison. Her jail sentence also means that a recall position to remove her as an MP is now expected to be triggered. Labour, which booted Onasanya out of the party following her conviction, has said it will field a candidate in Peterborough. But the party’s pitch –that, according to a Labour spokesman, ‘Peterborough needs a Labour MP to stand up for the people in this great city against the chaotic mismanagement of the Tory Government and Council’ – is unlikely to wash with voters in the marginal constituency given their last choice of candidate. Onasanya won by 638 votes at the snap election in 2017. It seems certain that, at an upcoming by-election, the Tories will win back the seat they lost two years ago.
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