Fiona Onasanya is lucky. She’d be out of a job were it not for Brexit | Martin Kettle

The disgraced MP has pledged to carry on despite her conviction. And Westminster is too preoccupied to remove her

It seems a strange thing to say about the disgraced Labour MP for Peterborough, but Fiona Onasanya is a lucky woman. Onasanya was found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice last month. She faces a prison sentence. She is contemplating the ruin of a career that included her public aspiration to become Britain’s first black female prime minister. I’m not sticking my neck out very far to say that this last is not now going to happen.

Onasanya’s offence: she repeatedly denied to police that she was behind the wheel when her car was caught speeding in Cambridgeshire in 2017. She refused to say who was driving. In fact it was Onasanya, who is a qualified solicitor as well as an MP. After a first trial failed to agree a verdict, Onasanya was found guilty at the retrial. She will be sentenced soon.

Related: Convicted MP Fiona Onasanya intends to stay in parliament

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