Jared O'Mara: The MP who went from obscurity to criminality

Jared O'Mara spoke only three times in parliament during his 29 months as an MP

Former MP Jared O'Mara has been jailed after being convicted of six counts of fraud. The disgraced politician was convicted alongside his former chief of staff of plotting to submit fake expense claims. This is how he went from obscurity to criminality via Westminster.

As one observer put it, Jared O'Mara looked "like a rabbit in headlights" when he was declared Sheffield Hallam's new MP in the early hours of 9 June 2017.

His sudden catapulting into politics that election night surprised his party, his defeated rivals and even himself.

"Frankly, I wasn't expecting it," O'Mara admitted to supporters at the count as the bar manager turned Labour MP celebrated defeating former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.

He partied until 06:00 BST the following morning, before later turning up bleary-eyed to thank local campaigners.

But his downfall came almost as swiftly as his unlikely rise.

Three months after his stunning ousting of Mr Clegg from a once-safe seat, O'Mara's political career was on the rocks as he was suspended by Labour over accusations he had posted misogynistic, homophobic and racist comments online more than a decade earlier. It would prove to be only the beginning of his troubles.

O'Mara's torrid two years as a parliamentarian were marred by a string of controversies, his resignation from the Labour Party after being re-admitted, sexual harassment allegations, staff resignations and sackings in addition to complaints from constituents.

Finally, in July 2019, having been denounced by his closest aide as "disgustingly morally bankrupt", he declared he would stand down as an independent MP.

O'Mara would soon learn that same aide, Gareth Arnold, had contacted South Yorkshire Police with claims of fraud that have now left both men facing prison.

Jared O'Mara ousted former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg as Sheffield Hallam's MP in 2017

Only at the resulting trial, after which O'Mara was found guilty of six counts of fraud and cleared of two and co-defendant Arnold was found guilty of three counts of fraud and not guilty of three, did the full chaotic story of O'Mara's stint at Westminster emerge.

Witnesses who gave evidence at Leeds Crown Court painted a picture of a man struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, mental health issues and a job he was unprepared for.

Jurors heard O'Mara tried to claim about £52,000 of taxpayers' money for work that was never done and jobs that did not exist, allegedly in a bid to fund an "extensive" cocaine habit.

Arnold, who O'Mara appointed as his "chief of staff" after sacking long-serving constituency workers, claimed in court that the then-MP consumed up to five grams of the drug and a litre of vodka a day.

Despite claiming to be the first MP with autism, O'Mara invented a "fictitious" autism charity to defraud taxpayers.

His expenses claims for "Confident About Autism South Yorkshire" listed an address which was in fact a branch of McDonald's in Hillsborough, Sheffield.

It was a dramatic fall from grace for a man who had proudly spoken of overcoming disability to achieve his boyhood dream of becoming a politician.

O'Mara, who has cerebral palsy and was diagnosed with autism in 2018, had promised "every single disabled person out there" he would be an "ally, friend and champion in Westminster".

But by the time he left office, he had spoken just three times in the House of Commons and piles of constituency casework had been left to gather dust.

Sheffield-born O'Mara entered the 2017 snap election with little experience of politics beyond a handful of unsuccessful bids to be a local councillor.

He was, alongside friends, managing and DJing at the city's West Street Live bar and music venue when he was selected as Labour's candidate for the Sheffield Hallam constituency.

He was chosen by the party's ruling National Executive Committee and regional board members through an emergency process which bypassed local branches - a decision the chair of the Sheffield Hallam Constituency Labour Party would later condemn as "cavalier and highly irresponsible".

'Depression and self-loathing'

O'Mara's subsequent unexpected election triumph, in the wake of a campaign buoyed by the support of activists belonging to Labour grassroots group Momentum, threw him in at the deep end of politics.

Lord Scriven, the former Lib Dem leader of Sheffield Council, was at the count where O'Mara's victory was declared in June 2017 and said the night remained "etched" in his memory.

"I had to ring Nick Clegg to tell him he'd lost. Then, seeing Jared looking like a rabbit in headlights, clearly he wasn't expecting it," he told the BBC.

"I don't think his team were expecting it and from there he clearly moved forward without the support he required."

O'Mara himself admitted he "wasn't even meant to win the election". In a 2019 blog post, he wrote of struggling with "depression and self-loathing" in the "harsh and unforgiving environment" of Parliament and complained of receiving no support from his "idol" Jeremy Corbyn, then Labour's leader.

He said he had plunged into a "self-destructive nosedive" after his first months as an MP were dogged by a series of controversies.

Jared O'Mara was elected to Parliament for Labour in June 2017, but quit the party the following year

In October 2017, political website Guido Fawkes first unearthed online remarks, posted between 2002 and 2004, in which O'Mara, then in his twenties, invited members of pop group Girls Aloud to "an orgy" and mocked Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus for being "fat".

The next day, a bar worker, Sophie Evans, who met O'Mara through an online dating app told the BBC he had called her an "ugly bitch" in an outburst in a Sheffield nightclub in March 2017.

At the time, a spokesman for O'Mara said he "categorically" denied Ms Evans' allegation.

In other comments which surfaced in the following weeks, O'Mara derided gay men using homophobic language and described Arctic Monkeys fans as "sexy little slags".

O'Mara apologised for his "unacceptable" online comments but quit Labour, complaining of having been made to "feel like a criminal" during his suspension.

He sat as an independent, with no party to answer to, nor to support him, for the rest of his time as an MP.

Jared O'Mara worked as a bar manager and DJ at West Street Live in Sheffield before his election

For long spells of his time as Sheffield Hallam's MP, O'Mara was nowhere to be seen in Westminster or his constituency.

Twice, he announced he was stepping back from parliamentary duties on the advice of his GP, causing him to miss a series of key Brexit votes.

He pledged to continue dealing with local casework, but staff who gave evidence during O'Mara's trial said he was "almost non-existent" in his Sheffield office and visited "once, possibly twice" in a six-month period.

When the MP did turn up for one meeting in February 2019, he arrived an hour late and "appeared to be on some sort of substance", case worker Kevin Gregory-Coyne told the court.

Amid this turmoil, every staff member in O'Mara's office either quit or was sacked, with some taking him to an employment tribunal for wrongful dismissal.

Phone calls and correspondence went unanswered for weeks. A headline in the Yorkshire Post dubbed him "Sheffield's missing MP".

Frustrated Sheffield Hallam constituents set up a Facebook group to discuss their concerns and within days, hundreds had joined it.

Jodi Garth, who started the group, told the BBC: "Lots and lots of people were really struggling to get their voices heard. When we tried to approach him, we'd just get an out-of-office or no reply."

Another constituent, Justin Buxton, said that even "people raising issues about support for their autistic children" were getting no help from O'Mara's office.

"One would have thought that would have been a priority. It was central to his campaign," said Mr Buxton, a Labour party member, told the BBC.

O'Mara assembled a new team of people from his social circle with no political background, including Arnold - who, referring to rock band Oasis, he described as "the Noel to my Liam" - and John Woodliff, a former doorman at West Street Live and O'Mara and Arnold's co-defendant who was cleared of any wrongdoing at their crown court trial.

O'Mara declared he was approaching the job with renewed vigour with his new team beside him. In a July 2019 interview with BBC Look North - before which, Leeds Crown Court heard, O'Mara had drunk a litre of vodka - the MP described himself as a "phoenix from the flames, reborn from the ashes" and he rejected any idea he would stand down.

But days after the interview, Arnold hijacked O'Mara's Twitter account to announce his own resignation and publicly accused the MP of having "inexcusable contempt" for constituents.

A young female staffer also accused O'Mara of sexually harassing her by sending "wildly inappropriate" WhatsApp messages.

These would prove to be the final nails in the coffin for O'Mara's career as a Member of Parliament.

He soon declared he was "not in any fit state to continue" as an MP, though he still remained in the £80,000-a-year job for another four months before standing down at the December 2019 general election.

'Too vulnerable'

O'Mara, who is now 41, chose not to give evidence during his trial at Leeds Crown Court, instead watching proceedings over video-link from home.

His barrister argued he had simply been an "incompetent" politician rather than a dishonest one, while "suffering badly" from anxiety and depression.

Despite the revelations which emerged during the trial, there was a degree of sympathy for O'Mara among some of his former constituents and opponents.

Lib Dem Lord Scriven described the MP's parliamentary career as "a tragedy of a human who clearly needed better support and guidance", adding O'Mara had been "let down" by Labour.

Meanwhile, Ms Garth said: "It's a sad story. He shouldn't have ever been allowed to run because he was too vulnerable.

"For a bloke who knew nothing about politics, he didn't really know what he was getting into. He didn't know how to be an MP."

But there was anger, too. Mr Buxton said that, in his opinion: "It is fairly obvious he was in it for financial gain."

O'Mara's case has also exposed how powerless voters can be to remove an MP who is not up to the job.

Recall laws currently only allow constituents to trigger a by-election if an MP is jailed or is suspended by Parliament for at least 21 days.

Ms Garth said: "When we realised he wasn't fit for purpose, he couldn't do this job, for whatever reason, there was nothing we could do. That's still the case - nothing has changed."