Labour have lost their first councillor to the ultra-left party former leader Jeremy Corbyn recently founded with dissident MP Zarah Sultana.
Grace Lewis, 22, defected from Sir Keir Starmer‘s party on Friday to join the new political grouping – which at present is only a 600,000-person-strong mailing list.
Ms Lewis, a vocal pro-Palestinian voice on Coventry City Council, represents the ward of Westwood in the southwest of the city.
In a post on social media she laid into Labour’s record in government, citing Sir Keir’s raid on winter fuel payments, cuts to disability allowance and the party’s retention of the two child benefit cap.
In the statement she said: ‘Today, after 5 and a half years, I resigned my Labour Party membership. I will now serve the residents of Westwood on Coventry City Council as an Independent.
‘The Labour Party promised ‘change’, yet since entering government, Labour has cut support for disabled people, kept the Tories cruel Two Child Benefit cap and slashed Winter Fuel Payments – driving record numbers into poverty.
‘Rather than address the real crises facing people in our city, they have chosen the side of the rich and powerful.
‘They have joined Reform in targeting minorities, including migrants and trans peple, all whilst being atcive participants in the genocide in Gaza, ramping up spending on war, and arming Israel – criminalising peaceful protestors in the process.’
Coventry councillor Grace Lewis, 22, (pictured) is the first serving Labour politician to defect to Your Party, the new political grouping formed by former leader Jeremy Corbyn and ex-MP Zarah Sultana
Ms Lewis left Labour to join the new party co-founded by former leader Jeremy Corbyn (left) and Zarah Sultana (right), the former Labour MP who quit to link up with the septuagenarian leftwinger
Ms Lewis was elected in the City Council Elections on May 2, 2024, two months before Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘loveless landslide’ at that year’s General Election.
She won her seat with 1936 voters on 47 per cent of the ballot, with the Conservative candidate Asha Masih finishing second on 1415 voters on 35 per cent of votes.
Ms Lewis began her two-year term on May 7 and also sits on the City Council’s Planning Committee, Health and Social Care Scrutiny Board and Communities and Neighbourhoods Scrutiny Board.
In her short time as an elected councillor she has courted controversy on several occasions – most noteable in her vocal support for the Palestinian cause.
Last December she lambasted Israel in a council meeting for carrying out a ‘genocidal assault on Gaza’, The Telegraph reported.
In the same meeting she called for the West Midlands Pension Fund to divest from any investments with companies involved in arms sales to Israel.
Ms Lewis also carried over her advocacy into her personal life, wearing a badge of the Palestinian flag to her graduation day last year at the University of Warwick.
In another graduation picture she can be seen holding a hand-painted banner with two other students that reads ‘Free Palestine’.
Grace Lewis (right) pictured with Zarah Sultana, one of the co-founders of Your Party, who has been a close supporter of the youngster
In the Instagram caption accompanying the photo she wrote: ‘My degree may be over, but Warwick’s complicity is not #freepalestine.’
Mr Corbyn and Ms Sultana’s movement has the website yourparty.uk, with a welcome message saying ‘this is your party’.
Already 600,000 people have signed up to the party’s mailing list, although the name is only a placeholder, with Mr Corybn suggesting the members will be handed the final say.
Government ministers who used to sit alongside Mr Corbyn in the House of Commons mocked the ‘chaotic’ launch of the veteran MP’s new party.
Yet Mr Corbyn shrugged off the criticism and said there had been an ‘enormous’ response to the launch.
Speaking during a visit to a bin strike picket line in Birmingham on Jult 25, he pointed out that hundreds of thousands had already flocked to the new outfit.
The party is expected to hold its inagural conference in November and Mr Corbyn has outlined a focus on peace, social justice and an end to austerity economics.
In her statement outlining her reasons for quitting Labour, Ms Lewis attacked Labour’s spending plans which she said locally included cuts to libaries and charities.
Mr Corbyn and Ms Sultana’s movement has the website yourparty.uk, with a welcome message saying ‘this is your party’
But Ms Sultana immediately sowed confusion by insisting a name had not yet been chosen. She frantically posted on social media: ‘It’s not called Your Party.’
She wrote: ‘They have continued austerity and failed to properly address the deepening crisis of Local Government finance, with many authorities still at risk of bankruptcy.
‘Here in Coventry, the Labou Council cuts library services, cultural funding and support for local charities.
‘And when workers stand up to fight for decent living standards Coventry City Council responds by strike-breaking, sending Tom White Waste trucks to Birmingham, insulting the very trade unions which the party was founded to defend.
‘This is not the change peple voted for, not the changed I joined the Labour Party for when I was 16, and certainly not the change which people deserve.
‘Therefore, I welcome the launch of a new left party, one rootred in working-class communities and committed to real change.’
Cllr Lewis added: ‘When Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn announced its inception, I felt a sense of genuine political hope for the first time in a long time.’
In a post on X commenting on the defection, Zarah Sultana said: ‘Grace is a formidable force in local government and I’m proud to welcome her to the new political party we’re building!
‘Across the country, millions feel politically homeless. Labour is dead. To councillors everywhere: are you really delivering the change Keir Starmer promised?’
Polls have suggested the new party headed by Mr Corbyn and Ms Sultana could take between 10 and 18 per cent of the vote at the next General Election, which would prove disastrous for Labour nationally.
The so-called ‘Hastings Independents Group’ – which consists of MPs who left Labour in December 2023 – have already affiliated with Your Party.
Councillors Paul Barnett, Andy Batsford, John Cannan, Nigel Sinden, Mike Turner, and Simon Willis are all onboard with the new grouping, which seems set to shake up the left of British politics.
In an email to supporters, Your Party confirmed their first conference will be held before the end of 2025.
They wrote: ‘This conference will be the moment where, together, we will decide the direction, structure and platform of this party.
‘To make it as accessible and democratic as possible, the conference will be hybrid – both in-person and online – so that everyone can take part in the decisions that will shape its future. Make no mistake: whatever the name, it is always going to be your party.’
However, those inside the Labour cabinet have been scathing about Your Party.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle told Times Radio: ‘I was an MP in the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn was leader.
‘And the chaos and instability that he brought to our party I’m now viewing him wreak in his new party.
‘I’m just very glad that I’m looking on it from the outside this time, rather than having to experience it from the inside.’
Mr Kyle, who campaigned for Mr Corbyn to become prime minister at the 2017 and 2019 general elections, said the veteran left-winger was ‘not a serious politician’.
He added: ‘The thing that worries me the most about what he says is that he doesn’t want to spend money defending our country.
‘He is against the money that Labour is investing into the defence of our country.
‘At the moment, these are the things that should fundamentally worry us about the words of Jeremy Corbyn.
‘He’s not a serious politician. He doesn’t think about governing, he thinks about posturing.’
