I’m leaving Labour after 22 years – I hope you’ll join me
Yesterday I, along with several colleagues, took the painful and hard decision to resign my membership of the Labour Party which I joined 22 years ago. This has been one of the most difficult decisions I’ve ever had to make in life, but it’s the right one.
As I said in my speech at our event announcing our decision, the values which have driven us to take this step are shaped by who we are, where we are from, and our experiences.
I am of mixed heritage – a quarter English, a quarter Irish and half Nigerian. My forebears came to this country driven by the hope and optimism that if you put in the effort, you can get on and lead a good life in Britain. My father arrived from Nigeria with no money and worked his way up to become a successful entrepreneur. In spite of the prejudice he experienced, the platform this country gave him to succeed was Britain at its very best.
But we’ve had our ups and our downs. He, the only breadwinner in the family, was killed in a car crash when I was just 13. His death taught me that regardless of your circumstances, people need one another. We want our families to get on in the good times; but we need to support each other through the bad times.
Too many face barriers in fulfilling their dreams and potential in modern Britain and people do not get the support they need. We believe it does not have to be this way – fundamental change is needed but Labour can no longer be its agent.
In light of what we have witnessed these past three years, I do not support the Labour leader taking the office of prime minister of the United Kingdom, nor do I have confidence in him and his team to make the right decisions to safeguard our national security.
The party’s collective failure to take a lead and provide sufficiently strong, coherent opposition to Tory government policy on the UK’s relationship with Europe, with all the adverse implications this poses for the working people of this constituency, is a betrayal of the Labour interest and Labour’s internationalist principles. This started with the leadership’s halfhearted effort to campaign for Remain in 2016, followed by its refusal even to commit to the UK staying part of the single market and now its offer to facilitate a Tory Brexit. So many families in my constituency, like me, have relatives from EU countries and feel grossly betrayed by the party.
I support the liberal, international rules-based order underpinned by Nato, which Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin were instrumental in establishing in the wake of the Second World War. This demands the UK plays an active role on the international stage. Through its lukewarm attitude towards Nato, reluctance to act where necessary, and willingness often to accept narratives promoted by states hostile to this country, the party’s leadership has turned its back on this history.
Since before the last election I have made it clear in my public interventions that I had differences with the leadership of the party on these issues, so much of this will not be news to regular readers of this column. There is no doubt these differences have become much more pronounced since then.
Above all, I have observed with great alarm the changing culture within the party. Visceral hatred of other people, views and opinions – something completely contrary to progressive values – is now commonplace in the party. Bullying behaviour by supporters of the leadership on and offline is tacitly sanctioned.
It is time we dumped this country’s old-fashioned politics and created an alternative that does justice to who we are today and gives this country a politics fit for the 21st century – not the last one