Oprah Flash
BBC News, West Midlands
Councillor Grace Lewis
Grace Lewis said Labour was not bringing about the change people voted for
A Coventry councillor has announced that she is resigning from the Labour party.
Grace Lewis, 21, who represents the city’s Westwood ward, was elected last year after beating the incumbent Conservative councillor by 521 votes.
However, in a statement released on Friday, the politician said she will now sit as an Independent, and has pledged to help Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in setting up their new political party.
A Labour Party spokesperson said they were working to deliver results for the British people.
Councillor Grace Lewis
The councillor intends to continue serving her constituency as an Independent
Lewis has said she was dissatisfied with the Labour Party’s policies and slammed “its failure to deliver real change for working class communities across Coventry as they pledged.”
She said: “This is not the change people voted for, not the change I joined the Labour Party for when I was 16, and certainly not the change which people deserve.
“The Labour-led Coventry City Council has failed to stand up for working people.
“When workers fight for decent living standards, the Labour council responds by strike-breaking, undermining unions—the very foundations which the party was founded to defend.”
Addressing the claims made by councillor Lewis, Mary Creagh, Labour MP for Coventry East said: “Labour changed from being a party of protest because that’s not how you deliver results for the British people.
“This Labour government has secured historic trade deals with the US, EU and India saving thousands of jobs in Coventry’s car industry.
“We are expanding free school meals to half a million kids, lifting 100,000 out of poverty and we’ve given workers a pay rise worth £1,600 this year because we’ve boosted the national minimum wage.
“It’s real action to improve the lives of working families that people in Coventry want to see, not placards at picket lines.”
Last month, Corbyn issued a joint statement with Sultana, who recently quit Labour to become an independent MP, saying: “It’s time for a new kind of political party – one that belongs to you.”
Responding to the launch, a Labour Party source said: “The electorate has twice given its verdict on a Jeremy Corbyn led party.”
In a statement announcing plans to form a new party, Corbyn and Sultana vowed to fight injustices, such as child poverty and giant corporations making “a fortune from rising bills”, with the government saying “there is no money for the poor, but billions for war”.