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Bury South MP defects from Conservative to Labour
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Bury South MP Christian Wakeford has announced his defection from the Conservatives to Labour moments before Boris Johnson faced MPs at today’s PMQs.
Wakeford told the prime minister in his resignation letter that ‘you and the Conservative Party as a whole have shown themselves incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves’.
His letter read: “From today I will be sitting as the Labour MP for Bury South because I have reached the conclusion that the best interests of my constituents are served by the programme put forward by Keir Starmer and his party.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he is ‘delighted’ and welcomed Wakeford’s defection, saying in a statement: “I would like to welcome Christian Wakeford to the Labour Party. He has always put the people of Bury South first.
“The policies of the Conservative government are doing nothing to help the people of Bury South and indeed are only making the struggles they face on a daily basis worse.”
At the PMQ’s, Boris Johnson was quick to address Wakeford’s defection, telling the commons: “As for Bury South… The Conservative party won Bury South for the first time in generations under this Prime Minister with an agenda or united and levelling up for the people of Bury South.
“And we will win again in Bury South at the next election under this prime minister.”
Wakeford’s resignation comes as Boris Johnson comes under increasing pressure to resign following the revelation of a number of Downing Street lockdown parties.
Yesterday, Johnson told Sky News reporters that ‘nobody told me’ attending a Downing Street garden party during the May 2020 lockdown was breaking the very Covid rules he had set and imposed upon the nation.
He said: “I’m saying categorically that nobody told me, nobody said this was something that was against the rules, doing something that wasn’t a work event because frankly, I can’t imagine why it would have gone ahead, or it would have been allowed to go ahead if it was against the rules.”