Neoliberal Labour: Derbyshire Councillors Resignations Expose Party’s Rightward Shift

Derbyshire Councillors Leave Labour: ‘It’s Not the Party I Joined

Three Derbyshire councillors have resigned from the Labour Party, exposing the growing chasm between Sir Keir Starmer’s neoliberal government and the working-class communities it once claimed to represent. 

Councillors Chris Kane, Emma Stevenson and Sandra Peake—all veterans of Bolsover District Council—have abandoned their Labour affiliation in the latest rebellion against the party, becoming independents in a principled stand against what the Party has become under its current leadership. 

“I’ve got principles, it’s not the Labour Party I joined over 30 years ago,” Peake told the BBC, cutting through the PR-managed messaging from Westminster. Her assessment of today’s Labour couldn’t be more damning: “The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.” This isn’t mere rhetoric—it’s the lived experience of millions watching a supposedly progressive government implement Tory policies with a ruthless efficiency that would make Thatcher blush. 

A Growing Rebellion Against Betrayal

The Bolsover resignations represent an acceleration of dissent that began weeks earlier in West Yorkshire, where Hemsworth councillor Jakob Williamson delivered a blistering condemnation of both local and national Labour policies in early March. Facing a £29m package of cuts and around 270 job losses at Wakefield Council, Williamson refused to toe the Party line, denouncing the proposals as “a litany of broken promises.” 

“I’m not coming in here after my working class residents are struggling through benefit cuts by national government and voting for more austerity at a local level,” Williamson declared in a passionate council chamber speech. “And voting for another hike in council tax and pushing my residents further into financial hardship. I just won’t do it.” 

His critique extended beyond local issues to the core betrayals of Starmer’s government: “They are attacking welfare. The government has refused to lift the two-child benefit cap, betrayed WASPI women, raised the bus fare cap and took the winter fuel allowance off vulnerable pensioners. And now they are going after those on disability benefits.” 

The cost? An indefinite suspension from the Labour Party—the predictable punishment for speaking truth to power. In a defiant online statement, Williamson emphasised his commitment to his constituents over Party loyalty:

“I joined the Labour Party to represent my union and ensure genuine, working class voices were heard… Public office is not an end in itself. For me, it is the means by which we can bring much needed change to our communities and for our class. Sadly, that change cannot be brought about through the Labour Party, as it currently exists – it does not represent us anymore.” 

His closing assessment speaks volumes: “I have not drifted away from the values and principles it is supposed to represent – it is the Party that has left us.” 

Why is it that there’s one law for the rich and one for the poor

What began in Wakefield has now spread to Bolsover. The councillors who resigned this week cited multiple betrayals: savage welfare reforms that target society’s most vulnerable, continued indifference toward WASPI women systematically denied their pensions, and a shameful lack of support for victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal. Meanwhile, the Party that once championed public ownership now courts billionaires at exclusive dinners while imposing austerity on those who can least afford it. 

Perhaps most telling is Peake’s poignant comment: “We miss Dennis Skinner.” The contrast between the Beast of Bolsover—a principled, working-class firebrand who served his constituents for 49 years—and today’s corporate-friendly Labour MPs couldn’t be starker. Where Skinner fought relentlessly for miners and the working poor, many of today’s Labour representatives seem more comfortable in corporate boardrooms than community centres. 

The hollow response from Labour headquarters reveals everything about the Party’s priorities. A spokesperson claimed they’re making “tough choices” to fix a “broken welfare system”—conveniently ignoring that their “fixes” involve stripping £4.8 billion from disabled people and vulnerable families. This calculated cruelty is packaged as necessary pragmatism, while billions flow unhindered into defence contracts and foreign wars. 

What’s unfolding isn’t an anomaly but a strategy. Labour hasn’t abandoned its principles by accident but by design. As the Party courts conservative voters and corporate donors, it deliberately sheds its working-class base, treating traditional Labour heartlands as electoral footnotes in its pursuit of middle England. 

The resignations in Bolsover represent just the visible tip of a much deeper discontent. Across former industrial communities, Labour members and voters are asking the same question: what exactly is the point of a Labour government that implements Tory policies with a red rosette? 

We salute these principled councillors for standing firm on true Labour values rather than surrendering to Starmer’s hollow pragmatism. Their courage reminds us that while the Party machinery may have abandoned its founding mission, individuals committed to genuine economic justice and community welfare refuse to follow suit. 

As May’s local elections approach, voters across Britain’s forgotten Labour Heartlands face a stark choice: reward a Party that has betrayed them, or support independents and alternatives who still believe that government should serve people, not capital. The councillors’ resignations aren’t just a rebuke to Starmer—they’re the beginning of a reckoning for a Party that forgot who it was meant to fight for. 

We didn’t abandon Labour. Labour abandoned us. 

Paul Knaggs