About Kate Hoey
Catharine Letitia Hoey, Baroness Hoey (born 21 June 1946), better known as Kate Hoey, is a Northern Irish politician and life peer who served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Home Affairs from 1998 to 1999 and Minister for Sport from 1999 to 2001. During the 1970s Hoey was involved in radical far-left groups but by the end of the decade became involved with the Labour Party. Hoey remained a member of the Labour Party for several decades while she was Member of Parliament (MP) for Vauxhall from 1989 to 2019, but resigned from the party in 2020. Hoey has attracted a high level of attention throughout her career, but particularly in the 2010s, holding many socially conservative views that brought her into conflict with fellow members of Labour. Early in her life, Hoey was radically in favour of a United Ireland; however, in more recent decades she has pulled away from this view, declaring in 2017 "I'm pro-union, I'll do anything to make sure that the United Kingdom has Northern Ireland as an integral part of it on the same terms as any other part of the United Kingdom when we leave the EU." In July 2020, Hoey was nominated for a life peerage in the House of Lords in the 2019 Dissolution Honours and was created Baroness Hoey, of Lylehill and Rathlin in the County of Antrim, on 14 September 2020. Sinn Féin vice-president and Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill labelled the piece "outrageous" and called on Hoey to withdraw the remarks, saying they were a throwback to a "bygone era". Hoey is known for her objection to the ban of fox hunting: a rare position among Labour MPs.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.