Folkestone councillor defects from Labour to Breakthrough Party

 3rd February 2022

The Breakthrough Party has gained its fifth councillor following the defection from Labour of Folkestone Councillor Jonathan A. Graham.

Graham has been a Councillor in Cheriton since 2019. Explaining his decision, Graham says:

I cannot, in good conscience, stay in an undemocratic and unsocialist party. I have no confidence in Keir Starmer’s leadership or the direction he and his disastrous team are taking Labour.

Starmer has moved to the right and abandoned class politics, embracing failed public relationship stunts and appealing to banks and big businesses. 

It is unfathomable that Christian Wakeford, who laughed at the Labour Party being a ‘bunch of c****’ and has voted against everything socialists believe in, can be allowed to join Labour.

We rightly talk about holding the Conservative Government to account for lying, but we also need to hold Keir Starmer to account for not keeping his leadership pledges, which is just another form of lying.

When speaking to Breakthrough Party leader Alex Mays, I heard a passionate person who shares many of my views. I see the Breakthrough Party as a pioneer left party — a party that can hold both centrists and the right to account.

Alex Mays, founder and leader of the Breakthrough Party, says:

When I spoke to Jonathan his passion, energy and commitment to his community really stood out.

He’s young, ambitious and full of ideas, with a strong focus on issues that are close to our hearts, including environmentalism and empowering the vulnerable and the marginalised.

Jonathan is exactly what we want from our local government representatives and we’re excited to have him with us!

Breakthrough is a youth-led democratic socialist party founded in January 2021. It describes itself as ‘a new home for those determined to disrupt the failed status quo and build an alternative: a society that uses its considerable wealth to provide dignity, security and justice for all.’ 

In 2021, three sitting Labour councillors defected to Breakthrough, and last month the Party welcomed the Mayor of Bangor, Councillor Owen Hurcum.

Breakthrough recently announced that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with other left-wing parties, forming a political coalition known as the People’s Alliance of the Left (PAL).