A former member of the Labour Party's national executive committee, Liz Davies, has announced her resignation from the Labour Party after two decades of membership, and declared her support for the Socialist Alliance and other left candidates in the coming general election.
"My criticism of the New Labour government is not that it is going in the right direction, too slowly, but in the wrong direction, too quickly", said Davies, a member of the party's NEC from 1998 to 2000.
"New Labour has presided over a widening gap between rich and poor. It has persecuted asylum seekers and treated pensioners and single parents as second-class citizens. It has pushed privatisation beyond anything [former Tory Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher dreamed of. It has continued and deepened the Tory attack on our civil liberties.
"It is now profoundly compromised by its entanglement with big business. In the coming general election, I cannot endorse the record or support the policies of the New Labour government. Consequently, and with deep regret, I have ... submitted my resignation to the Labour Party.
"While I urge voters to give the fullest support to the handful of socialists standing as Labour Party candidates in the general election ... I believe that the interests of the poor, the excluded, and working people in general will be best served in this election by the largest possible vote for the Socialist Alliance and others, like the Leeds Left Alliance, offering a real alternative to New Labour cynicism."