Sam Tarry

Sam Tarry   (politician)
Born	1983
Shadow Minister for Buses and Local Transport In office 7 January 2021 - 27 July 2022  Member of Parliament for Ilford South In office 12 December 2019 - Present  Councillor In office 2016 - Present Employer London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

Sam Tarry is a Labour Party politician who is the Member of Parliament for Ilford South constituency. He is also a local councillor in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and is National Political Officer with the TSSA trade union.

On 22 October 2019, Tarry was selected to stand as Labour's PPC for Ilford South at the UK/General election/2019 instead of Blairite defector Mike Gapes. On 12 December 2019, Sam Tarry was elected with 35,085 votes, defeating the Conservative Ali Azeem by a majority of 24,101 votes and pushing Mike Gapes (who stood for the Independent Group for Change) into third place on 3,891 votes.

Anonyvoter system

In March 2024, Sam Tarry – Angela Rayner’s former partner – claimed Labour's Anonyvoter online voting system has been used to disadvantage left-wing candidates:

"Since October 2022 I have stayed silent, seeking to right the wrong done to me and the people of Ilford.

"I want to be absolutely clear - the Anonyvoter system was used to deselect me, rigged to change the result against the wishes of my local Labour Party."

Picketing

Sam Tarry was dismissed from his position as Shadow Minister for Buses and Local Transport on 27 July 2022 after joining a picket line during the 2022 rail strikes and conducting broadcast interviews next to striking workers at Euston railway station. His sacking was criticised by trade union leaders including Sharon Graham of Unite. Keir Starmer's office cited a "breach of collective responsibility". Tarry tweeted that he was proud to have been on the picket line standing in solidarity alongside workers and members of the RMT and TSSA, and that he was on the side of members, not the establishment.

Antisemitism

At a hustings event sponsored by Revive FM on 27 November 2019, Sam Tarry was accused of making an antisemitic remark. Rivkah Brown disputed the claim on Twitter:

"This is not antisemitic. Depending on the context (which, conveniently you haven't provided), it *might* be an insensitive framing of antisemitism in the Labour Party. But it is not antisemitic."

Sam Tarry tweeted:

"Please watch my full response to a question about anti-semitism during last night's Ilford South hustings."

Mission

It is time we had a fresh start in Ilford South. We don’t need an establishment politician, we need an MP from the grassroots who went into politics not for the prestige and power, but to fight for the simple belief that a better world is possible. I will be an MP who believes in and fights for Labour Party democracy. I’ll be a true representative: listening to members, and constituents and standing with clear moral, socialist principles about transforming our country, in order to rebalance power and wealth in favour of working people.

Momentum

Tarry is the former National Chair of Young Labour and a spokesman for the Jeremy Corbyn-supporting Momentum group:

“The Labour party had become very hollowed out, actually. Because I think the people who had been in control of it – and some of the people who are still in control of it at the bureaucratic level – have just been a self-replicating cadre of types of people. And it has just meant that it has become very conservative in the way it approaches things, very technocratic. It has lost its sense of being an actual movement.”

Corbyn supporter

On 9 August 2016, Sam Tarry appeared on Channel 4 News and debated with John McTernan on the state of the Labour Party, saying that McTernan was responsible for Labour's dreadful performance in Scotland in May 2015, for the defeat of Australia's prime minister Julia Gillard in June 2013 and for this year's failed coup against Jeremy Corbyn.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Zarah Sultana could face re-selection as a Labour candidate	Article	11 November 2021	Politics.co.uk staff	At 5:56pm on 6 December 2021, Zarah Sultana tweeted: "I've submitted my application to be re-selected as the Labour MP for Coventry South. Determined to beat the Tories at the next general election!"

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