Shona McIsaac
Shona McIsaac (born
3 April 1960,
Scotland) is a
British politician, and since
1997, she has been the
Labour Member of Parliament for the
Lincolnshire constituency of
Cleethorpes.
She studied
Geography at
St. Aidan's College the
University of Durham and graduated in
1981.
McIsaac wrote for magazines and was elected to the
London Borough of Wandsworth.
McIsaac was selected for
Cleethorpes from an
all-women shortlist and attracted a great deal of local press attention in the run-up to the
1997 General Election.
Typical of many marginal constituencies that year, Cleethorpes had a large amount of support from the central Labour Party including visits by
John Prescott and a high-profile, high-visibility poster campaign.
During the various debates between the candidates, McIsaac's relaxed, conciliatory style was in stark contrast to that of her election-hardened
Conservative Party opponent,
Michael Brown.
On polling day, McIsaac spent most of the day knocking on doors in the town of
Immingham, the strongest Labour supporting area of the constituency, ironically reminiscent of
Jeffrey Archer when he represented the town over 20 years earlier.
McIsaac and neighbouring MP
Austin Mitchell tabled an early day motion in
1998 affirming support for
Grimsby Town Football Club's trip to
Wembley for the
1998 Auto Windscreen Shield Final and the
1998 Nationwide Division 2 Play-Off Final.
McIsaac was re-elected in
2005 following a local Conservative Party campaign that was widely considered to be a disaster, despite all the local government issues that should have supported them. This included the Conservatives deselecting their candidate just 4 months before polling day and even the former Member of Parliament,
Michael Brown, using his old constituency as the perfect example of how the Conservative Party is "dying" at a local level (
Finchley & Golders Green being the other example).
McIsaac presently serves as
Parliamentary Private Secretary to a government minister and was described as asking "sycophantic questions in the Commons" by the national newspapers in their post-2005 General Election coverage.
*
Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Shona McIsaac MP*
TheyWorkForYou.com - Shona McIsaac MP
