This week the campaigning lawyer Liz Davies posted on Facebook her letter of resignation from the Labour Party. While Labour Hub would disagree with Liz’s decision to leave the Party, it needs to be said that it’s both shocking and saddening that someone who has given so much to the movement and helped to make the world a better place feels there is no room for their ideals under Starmer’s authoritarian leadership. Below we reproduce Liz’s resignation letter, followed by a short response by Bryn Griffiths.

Liz Davies:

It is with a heavy heart that I am informing you that I am resigning my Labour Party membership.

I believed that the Labour Party was a broad church and, whilst I had disagreements with aspects of national policy, I was happy to support Labour. However, the general election has brought into sharp focus profound disagreements with Labour nationally.

Those disagreements include Labour’s shameful failure to condemn Israel’s bombing campaign, and killing of civilians in Gaza, most recently exemplified in Labour’s failure to comment on the possibility of International Criminal Court arrest warrants, or on the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice requiring Israel to stop its offensive in Rafah, and in its lack of comment today when 35 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli strike on Palestinians sheltering in tents outside Rafah.

I also fail to understand how abolishing the two-child benefit limit cannot be a priority for an incoming Labour government and I cannot see that Labour’s programme includes realistic, costed, effective measures to tackle poverty and undo the appalling austerity measures that have led to so much suffering in the last 14 years.

Labour’s treatment of my longstanding friend and comrade, Jeremy Corbyn, has added to my sense of alienation from the Party. I support his candidacy to be re-elected MP for Islington North. I hope that, even at this late stage, Labour will see sense and allow Diane Abbott, the first black woman MP, to be a Labour candidate in her seat of Hackney North and Stoke Newington. The blocking of former MPs, and other members in good standing, from putting themselves forward to Labour Party members for possible selection was the beginning of the end of the broad church.

I am sad to be leaving friends and comrades in New Forest West. I campaigned hard last year for John, Glenys, Peter, Helen and James to be elected and have supported Leila in Fordingbridge. New Forest West has been a broad church, we have debated issues in a comradely manner and have campaigned cheerfully together. I wish Sally, and all of you campaigning for her, all the very best for the general election.

I shall take steps to cancel my direct debit and inform the Party nationally.

Bryn Griffiths:

I am disappointed to hear that my friend Liz Davies has today left the Labour Party. It is a damning indictment of the narrowness of today’s Labour Party that Liz no longer thinks she has a place within it.

I’m staying in the Labour Party, campaigning for a Labour victory and I want to kick the Tories Out but I can only empathise with Liz given the treatment of her friend Jeremy Corbyn.

I want to see a broad church and a pluralist Labour Party which can accommodate all of those that want to see the end of the Tory Government. 

It looks likely that Diane Abbott will also face the same fate as Jeremy Corbyn which saps my campaigning energy. I want to be out on the streets  for Labour full of enthusiasm, not with a heavy heart.

If you don’t know Liz you might want to watch this podcast to learn about who Labour lost today.

Liz Davies was selected as Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Leeds North-East in 1995 but was blocked by the Blair leadership from running. She was later elected to the Party’s National Executive Committee. She left the Party in 2001 and was Chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers between 2006 and 2014, before rejoining Labour in 2015.

Bryn Griffiths is the host of Labour Hub’s spin-off, the Labour Left Podcast, and an activist in Momentum and The World Transformed in North Essex. He is standing for election in the National Policy Forum CLP Representatives  Eastern Region Division 1 as part of the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance.