Thanet Labour: Fury At Starmerite Exclusion Of Cllr Lewis From 2025 KCC Election

Cllr Lewis

Last Friday Kent County Councillor for Margate,  Barry Lewis,  announced on his Facebook page that he “had  been told by the regional Labour Party that they think I am not a suitable councillor to represent them”. In other words come the KCC elections next May,  he will not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate.

Hard working, straight talking and high profile  Lewis has been a KCC councillor for over 7 years. He  helped to save the  Richborough Household Waste Recycling Centre from closure. He bravely criticised Thanet Parkway Station  for being an underused  white elephant which has cost taxpayers over £50 million, and is currently campaigning to save  the Millmead Children’s Centre from closure.

With such an outstanding track record  of public service you would have expected the  Labour Party to have been proud of Lewis and regard him as an asset, yet without any apparent reason,  the Party decided to impose on him the most draconian sanction short of expulsion.  From where I am standing there can  be only one  explanation for this  act of punishment and public shaming  –  a  nasty political stitch up

Why? Because  Cllr Lewis supported  the selection of  local candidate, Charlotte Cornell, to be the  2024 Thanet East Labour parliamentary candidate  instead of  London based Polly Billington who  had no previous  connections with, or knowledge of, Thanet.

However, Billington,  through her connections with senior

said to be "ambitious control freak"

and very influential  Labour Party figures, was able to overcome the opposition  of local  Labour party members to ensure that she was “parachuted” into the constituency as  its parliamentary candidate.

Being someone who was described to me as  an “ambitious control freak”,  it is likley that Billington  was not inclined to forgive or forget Lewis’ opposition to her and now safely ensconced as East Thanet’s  MP she appears to be settling scores by working behind the scenes to have him banned as Labour candidate at future elections.

Also,  Lewis is a well-known figure on the left of the Labour Party whilst “Parachute” Polly is a hard line Starmerite right winger who supports the removal of the winter fuel allowance from most pensioners and keeping in place the Tory’s poverty causing two child benefit cap.

With two high profile Thanet politicians at odds with each other it was inevitable that there would be a fall out. It was also inevitable that there would only be one winner – “Parachute” Polly who has the weight of the Labour Party bureaucracy behind her. Hence councillor Lewis’ exclusion, from being a Labour candidate.

This reminds me  of the Dianne Abbot fiasco. Like Lewis she is also on the left of the Labour Party and like Lewis she was also excluded from standing as a Labour MP because she had upset the powers that be. But unlike Lewis, Abbot  is a national figure of the left, who was  able to mobilise a massive public and media outcry against her ban, which was overturned. Lacking such powerful support I doubt that Lewis will be able to overturn his ban.

I have contacted  Cllr Lewis to seek his views on his exclusion as an election candidate, but he has made no comment.

I have also spoken to several  Thanet Labour insiders who have told me that many members are less than impressed with MP Billington’s lacklustre performance as a constituency MP and who are furious about the treatment of Lewis.

It would appear, from what I have been told,  that  Thanet Labour Party is now firmly controlled by Polly Billington’s inner circle of Starmerites who are said to be suppressing democratic discussion and debate on controversial local and national issues.

I have also been told that there has been a vile whispering campaign within Thanet  Labour against Lewis which includes derogatory comments about his age and ability to continue as a councillor, and appalling allegations that he is a homophobe when he is known to a supporter of the LBGTQ+ community. 

Leader of the Thanet Council group of Independent councillors, John Worrow,  has also claimed that Lewis might be the victim of antisemitic bullying by  Thanet Labour Party members, which if true raises some very serious questions.

Last week, Lewis posted on his Facebook page comments which support the claim that he has been subject by those within  Billington’s  orbit to an utterly  shameful and clearly very distressing whispering campaign against him.

Not surprisingly  I have

heard that Lewis is not the only councillor from the left of the party who will be banned from standing as a Labour candidate. Rumours are now circulating that a councillor who has played a prominent role in supporting refugees and asylum seekers is also likely to be banned from being a Labour candidate in the forthcoming KCC elections.

This sad state of affairs is not the monopoly of the Labour Party, just look at the Tories. The truth is that all political parties are riven by sharp elbowed selfish ambition, petty jealousies and vendettas. All parties,  operate a top down leadership model which supresses freedom of expression and democratic debate,  and silences  those who speak their mind by isolating them, subjecting then to whispering campaigns, banning them from seeking office or expelling them.

Even  the Green Party,  which prides itself on being uber-democratic  found itself, earlier this year,  embroiled in an acrimonious county court case brought by its former Deputy Leader Dr Shahrar Ali, in which it was found that the Party had unlawfully discriminated against him for expressing his views. An act for which it was ordered to pay £10,000 in damages.

Such jealous infighting, abuse of power, undemocratic restriction of freedom of expression and of course the widespread taking of freebies is now,  due largely to the rise of social media and freedom of information laws, more widely reported than ever before.

This has led without any doubt to the rapid decline in trust in our political parties and politicians.  Sadly this has led to the growth of extreme right wing parties such as Farage’s Reform Party.

Having said that all is not gloom and doom. There has also been an encouraging  growth in the independent political movement, a movement which  puts people and communities before party loyalty. Some of these independents  have successfully and encouragingly broken through the barrier of our unfair electoral system and have been elected to Parliament and local councils across the country.

With this in mind I have decided to stand in next year’s KCC election for the Margate division. I intend to carry on the good work of the now banned Labour candidate Barry Lewis and hope that he may decide,  when the time is right,  to endorse my decision.

I also hope that those within the Thanet Labour Party and anyone else who feels as I do about our broken politics and our unrepresentative, self-interested, political parties and polticians,  to join me in fighting for a genuine left of centre candidate to be elected to KCC to properly represent the people of Margate and Thanet as a whole.

I will be writing more about this soon.