Two big names in East End politics, longtime mayor of Newham Sir Robin Wales and former Newham cabinet member Clive Furness, have left the Labour Party. They've both been in the party for decades.
Their statement covers a lot of ground about Labour losing its way, but a couple of points of particular interest:
Then there is the grooming-gangs scandal. The party’s reluctance to hold Labour-run councils to account over their role in the scandal has only compounded the harm suffered by thousands of girls and young women. For years, it failed to even acknowledge the gangs’ existence. Even now, following the revelations made in Louise Casey’s National Audit on Group-based Child Exploitation and Abuse, London mayor Sadiq Khan refuses an independent inquiry into the extent of the problem in the nation’s capital – presumably for fear of what it might find.
And I don't think they're about to jump ship to the Greens:
Labour’s embrace of transgender ideology has been particularly dispiriting. Back in April 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that the terms ‘man’, ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act 2010 refer to biological sex. The case, brought by For Women Scotland, clarified the law, making it clear that sex triumphs over wishful thinking. New guidelines from the Equality and Human Rights Commission followed. Nonetheless, a full nine months later, secretary of state for education Bridget Phillipson, who has the backing of unions GMB and Unison (both cheerleaders for gender self-ID), has yet to publish any updated guidance on single-sex spaces. The fact that Keir Starmer has come around to the idea that women can’t have a penis is certainly progress – but behind the words of frontbenchers lies an unreconstructed activist hinterland. Rather than confront them, party leadership quietly appeases them.
More here:
Why we’re leaving the Labour Party - spiked