Kent councillor Harriet Yeo is now backing Ukip. She was – until recently – a member of the Labour Party.
Incredibly, she is a previous chair of Labour’s ruling national executive committee. More incredibly still, she is a former president of transport union TSSA.
Yeo, who will now sit as an independent, has said she will not be joining Farage’s party. She claims to back Miliband as leader, and that she is supporting Ukip for a referendum on EU membership.
The Socialist Party is also opposed to membership of the EU. It is an undemocratic bosses’ club. The treaties it is based on hardwire austerity into member states’ policy. We want European unity based on workers’ solidarity, not exploitation.
But Ukip is an anti-working class party whose leaders stand for austerity on overdrive. Yeo’s decision restates what most ordinary people already know: Labour’s leading figures don’t fundamentally disagree with this.
James Ivens
- Elsewhere in Kent, Councillor Rozanne Duncan has been expelled from Ukip after a BBC documentary crew filmed her saying “I really do have a problem with people with negroid features.” Duncan has refused to accept that her statement was racist
