Labour were 'in a mess' when they picked Jared O’Mara to become an MP, mayor claims

O’Mara was jailed for fraud earlier this week after he attempted to claim £52,000 of taxpayers' money to help fund a cocaine habit, by submitting fake invoices for work that was never done and jobs that did not exist.

The 41-year-old was elected as MP for Sheffield Hallam in June 2017, when he claimed a shock victory over former deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, but quit the party a year later, amid controversy about comments he had made on social media, and then stood down in 2019.

“I think we know why Jared was selected – at that point, the Labour Party was in a mess,” Mr Coppard told BBC’s Politics North.

“I don’t think it was right. I know a number of people in the constituency thought it wasn’t right. I know a number of people in the party, higher up, who knew it wasn’t right.

“But it went ahead anyway and as a result we’ve seen what happened.

“We’re in a better place now. I think this is about the Labour Party learning lessons and we have learned those lessons, which is why people like me have been able to stand as Labour Party candidates and be confident in the leadership.”

Mr Coppard said he was asked to stand for Labour in 2017, after he finished as the runner up in the 2015 General Election, but turned down the opportunity because he wanted to focus on a new job.

He also said he “declined to stand” in 2019 due to “anti-semitism in the Labour Party”, before he became South Yorkshire’s Mayor in 2022.

During the interview, Mr Coppard said many in the Labour Party were surprised by O’Mara’s victory, but they did offer him support.

“Jared often turned down that help. Jared is the person who ultimately made the decisions he did, Jared wasn’t fit to be an MP and ultimately the Labour Party has moved on,” he added.

Alexander Stafford, Tory MP for Rother Valley, said “there seems to be something really rotten” with the process for selecting Labour politicians in South Yorkshire.

He highlighted the case of Denis MacShane, the former Labour MP for Rotherham who was jailed for expenses fraud in 2013, and the ‘Donnygate’ scandal, when 21 former Labour councillors were convicted of expenses fraud.

O’Mara was jailed for four years at Leeds Crown Court earlier this month, for submitting fake invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) between June and August 2019.

Mark Kelly KC, defending O’Mara, said the disgraced politician had struggled to cope “the stresses and strains of public life” and “resorted to taking drugs, alcohol and distancing himself in many respects from those that were around him”.

But Judge Tom Bayliss KC said the apology was “entirely disingenuous”.

“You must have realised early on that you were wholly unsuited to the role, but you carried on regardless, you brazened it out, drawing a salary but doing little or no parliamentary work."

The judge said O’Mara had financial difficulties “caused by a hedonistic lifestyle fuelled by the consumption of large amounts of vodka and, of course, cocaine”.