Councillor quits the Labour Party

LABOUR now controls fewer than half of the seats on Newcastle City Council, after another of its councillors quit the party.

- DANIEL HOLLAND Local Democracy Reporter

Monument ward representative Jane Byrne has announced that she will see out the rest of her term as an independent, claiming that Labour was "no longer the party of ordinary people".

Her decision leaves Labour, which has run Newcastle City Council since 2011, with only 38 of the authority's 78 seats.

The council has been in 'no overall control' since last November, when former leader Nick Kemp and five others also quit Labour to become independents. While the 40 non-Labour councillors now outnumber those from the ruling party, the prospect of them banding together to take power in a coalition administration seems highly unlikely.

The political makeup of the council is now: 38 Labour, 22 Liberal Democrats, 12 independents, three from the Newcastle Independents party, two Greens and one Conservative.