Dudley Labour group chief resigns from social gathering over profit cuts

The Labour group chief of a Conservative-run council has resigned from his social gathering over enormous adjustments to the advantages system and can sit as an impartial member.

Dudley councillor Pete Lowe mentioned welfare cuts introduced on Tuesday have been “the ultimate straw” after months of heart-searching and tears.

He mentioned he objected to the “stigmatisation of essentially the most weak” together with the Labour authorities’s selections over girls’s pensions and cuts to pensioners’ winter gasoline funds.

A Labour spokeswoman mentioned the social gathering inherited a damaged welfare system from the Conservatives and would ship a social safety system match for the long run.

Lowe mentioned he resigned from his place, as chief of the Dudley Labour Group and had left the social gathering after he being a member for 41 years.

“I all the time believed I might higher serve my group from throughout the Labour Social gathering. I now not imagine that’s the case,” he mentioned.

He mentioned he would sit as an impartial alongside two different councillors who he mentioned had additionally spoken out in opposition to Labour – Steve Edwards and Karen Westwood.

Lowe mentioned he would take a look at “all choices that give the folks of Dudley an actual voice and various”.

“One based on anti-austerity, tolerance and inclusion, a voice for the folks of our group – one free from the constraints of Westminster,” he added.

After Lowe wrote to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a West Midlands Labour spokesperson mentioned: “It’s disappointing councillor Lowe has taken this determination.

“Labour inherited a damaged welfare system from the Conservatives which risked a technology of younger folks being written off and tens of millions of people that wish to work not getting the assist they want.

“Labour will ship a social safety system that’s match for the long run.”

By Anna Whittaker, BBC Political Reporter, Black Nation

In one other blow to Dudley’s Labour Group, Pete Lowe has raised his head above the parapet to criticise the federal government.

Resigning from the social gathering he has served for 41 years is actually a press release.

Dudley councillor Andrew Tromans stop the social gathering in September to take a seat as a Liberal Democrat as he mentioned the final election outcome had changed into a “bleak imaginative and prescient of continuity austerity”.

With Lowe the newest to stop, Dudley Labour is diminished to 29 councillors whereas the Conservatives have 35.