Coventry Labour councillor resigns to help Jeremy Corbyn’s new party

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.

The Labour Party in the West Midlands has been contacted for comment.

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.”

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”.