Councillor quits Labour Party over ‘infighting’
ABRISTOL councillor has quit Labour because he said he was tired of “infighting” within the party.
Sultan Khan, who represents the Eastville ward, said it was not one issue that had caused him to leave, but a “number of small issues”.
Mr Khan said he still wanted to serve his ward and intended to stay on as an independent councillor.
This is an independent without party affiliation, not a member of The Independent Group, which was set up by a number of breakaway Labour MPs earlier this year.
His decision to quit the party and stay on as an independent has not been well received by the Labour group at Bristol City Council, who are calling on Mr Khan to “do the right thing” and resign as a councillor in order to trigger a by-election.
Leader of the Labour group, Marg Hickman, said: “We’re all dis
appointed that Councillor Khan has decided to leave the Labour Party after Eastville residents emphatically elected a Labour MP, two Labour councillors and a Labour mayor.
“He must now do the right thing – resign to trigger a by-election.”
A page providing information about Mr Khan on Bristol City Council’s website has already been amended to say ‘Independent’.
He has also lost his position as chair of the authority’s development control B committee and it appears that he has been removed from the committee altogether.
Mr Khan, who has served the Eastville ward for almost 10 years, said he had taken the decision to quit the Labour Party with a “heavy heart”.
He added: “It has come to a point now that I feel like I cannot work with certain people within the party locally anymore.
“Also I feel like the party is not in good shape nationally, it has broken into many different pieces and I am tired of the infighting.”
He said that the party could have done more around the issues of anti-Semitism and Brexit – but said that none of the main political parties were free from fault.
Mr Khan said he wanted all political parties to be “proactive rather than reactive” when it came to dealing with issues such as antiSemitism and Islamophobia.
He said that while he was currently an independent councillor he would probably be looking to join another party before next year’s local elections in the city.
However, he would not say which political party he was going to join.
And said the main issue locally was that central government needed to do more to support local authorities.