The role of a member of parliament is to represent his/her constituents, including those who did not vote for them or even did not vote at all. Kerry McCarthy MP seems to have other ideas, especially if your name is Chris Packham.
Earlier this year she took the unprecedented steps of providing the BBC’s celebrity broadcaster with a private filmed audience in the Palace of Westminster in response to the launch of his latest petition. Given that she remains a Vice-President of the League Against Cruel Sports and is happy to campaign alongside the convicted criminal Luke Steele’s Moorland Monitors, this is perhaps no surprise.
Under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, McCarthy served as former Shadow DEFRA Secretary. During her tenure she was widely criticised for falsely claiming grouse are imported to the UK ‘in their millions’.
McCarthy, the MP for Bristol East, said publicly during a meeting of the Agriculture Bill committee, that ‘grouse are imported into this country in their millions just so they can be shot by people on an away day’.
In many ways McCarthy’s refusal to recognise any of the positive impact of managed moorland, the benefit grouse shooting brings local communities and the wildlife that live in our uplands is reflective of the Labour party’s rural problem. It is why, by constantly neglecting rural voters, Keir Starmer will not be able to ever form a government. Perhaps that’s why McCarthy has now been shuffled out of any meaningful parliamentary role.
But between her and her former staffer, Adam Barnett, who now runs the RSPB’s Public Affairs team, the two of them continue to do everything they can to push their anti-grouse shooting agenda amongst their Labour colleagues.