Tory chief whip on Wakefield Council quits party to sit as an independent days after resignation of group leader

Annemarie Glover made the announcement three days after Conservative group leader Tony Homewood announced he was leaving the party with immediate effect.

Coun Glover described the Tories as "detached from reality" as she took aim at the party nationally in a resignation statement.

Coun Glover was elected as councillor for Wrenthorpe and Outwood West in 2021, nine years after a previous stint on Wakefield Council.

She represented the same ward between 2008 and 2012.

Coun Glover said: "After many years in the Conservative Party and having served two terms as a Conservative councillor, it is with some regret that I have decided to resign as Conservative chief whip and as a member of the Conservative Party.

"The Conservative Party has become detached from reality and is not representative of ordinary working people across the Wakefield District, who voted for it in their droves in December 2019.

"People understandably feel that the Prime Minister doesn't have a mandate and although that is how our constitution works, it is unnerving to have had three Prime Ministers in a six-week period.

"The unedifying scenes of MPs wielding the knife as they jockey for position has been extremely damaging to politics.

"I am interested in local issues that affect the people who elected me in Wrenthorpe and Outwood West and I don't believe that either Labour or the Conservatives do that, compelled as they are to follow diktats set in Westminster by their political leaders.

"I will now sit in the Council chamber as an independent councillor, to do what is best for the Wakefield district and I will fight the next election as an independent and free voice for people in my ward."

Last Friday (November 25) Coun Homewood resigned as Tory group leader, blaming his “frustration” with the direction of the party and its “woeful performance” in the polls as his reasons for leaving.

The number of Conservatives on Wakefield Council is reduced to 11 following Coun Glover's resignation.

Labour has 45 seats and the Lib Dems three. Four councillors now sit as independents.