The Green Party candidate for Gillingham & Rainham at the last general election, Neil Williams, has defected to the Labour Party. Williams cited Jeremy Corbyn’s recent victory as the main motivation for his decision.
Williams, who presumably only a few weeks ago didn’t ‘support the aims and values of the Labour Party’, hasn’t always been quite so happy with the way the party does things:
Labour in chaos? Harriet Harman supports the cruel Tory austerity attacks on the welfare state cussing revolt. Red becomes a shade of blue
— Neil Williams (@Neil4Labour) July 13, 2015
Still, it’s all happy families now, with Medway Labour leader Cllr Vince Maple saying “it is great to welcome Neil to the Labour Party”.
Medway Labour have apparently seen a surge in membership over the past few weeks, presumably inspired by Jeremy Corbyn. It’ll be interesting to see how well these new members manage to work with the more traditional members of the party, and if any other candidates from the Greens or TUSC decide to make the jump to the party.
Added 25 September:
Of course, we’ve been here before, and that didn’t exactly go well.