In 2019 a recall petition was launched in the Peterborough constituency to remove the Labour Member of Parliament, Fiona Onasanya. This was the first to successfully remove an MP.
The petition was triggered in March 2019 after Fiona Onasanya failed to get permission to appeal against her conviction for perverting the course of justice and its resulting 3 month prison sentence. She, together with her brother Festus, had misled the police over a speeding offence in 2017 and was convicted in December 2018.
She was expelled from the Labour Party following her conviction but refused to resign from parliament. The recall petition ran between 19th March and 1st May 2019 and was signed by 19 261 people out of the 69 673 eligible electors, greatly exceeding the 10% required to vacate the seat.
A by-election was run on 6th June 2019 and was won by Lisa Forbes of the Labour Party, the Brexit Party’s Mike Green came in second place.
On 6 August 2019 Fiona Onasanya was struck off as a solicitor by the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal which found she had failed to "uphold the rule of law and proper administration of justice" and "acted dishonestly". (BBC News)
Following a snap election called by Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, the Conservative candidate in Peterborough Stewart Jackson, who had been the Member of Parliament for 12 Years, lost his seat to Labour's Fiona Onasanya by 607 votes. The national result of the election meant that the Conservatives lost their Commons majority and were the largest party in a hung Parliament. The Conservative party remained in government by making a pact with 10 Democratic Unionist Party MPs.
