Ex-Labour MP Frank Field has announced he is forming his own party to stand against Labour at the next election.
The renegade MP unveiled the ‘Birkenhead Social Justice Party’ almost a year after resigning from Labour in a bitter row over anti-Semitism and Brexit.
The 77-year-old – who declined to force a by-election in the Merseyside seat – will face a huge battle to convince lifelong Labour voters to back him instead of a rival Labour candidate.
When part of Labour he won 77% of the vote in 2017 with a majority of 25,514. The second-placed Tory had just 8,044 votes.
Mr Field said: “I will be standing again as a candidate at the next election with the aim of doing what I have done for 40 years.Always putting the interests of our town and our country first while championing the views and interests of the underdogs in our society.”
Labour confirmed they plan to stand a candidate against Mr Field, as they do in every seat in the UK.
A Labour Party spokeswoman said: “The people of Birkenhead voted for a Labour MP in 2017 with a near 10% increase in vote share, and deserve a Labour MP again.
“Birkenhead CLP is currently selecting its Labour candidate to fight the next general election whenever it comes, so we can defeat Boris Johnson’s hard-right government offering tax cuts for the super-rich, and elect a Labour government that will transform society in the interests of the many not just a privileged few.”
(Image: PA)
Mr Field, 77, has been MP for Birkenhead on Merseyside since 1979 and is one of the longest-serving MPs in the Commons.
Last September he quit the Labour whip, saying the party was “increasingly seen as racist” and slamming “a culture of intolerance, nastiness and intimidation” among local members. He was later told he had to resign from the party altogether.
It came weeks after he lost a no-confidence vote by local members in July 2018 for backing Theresa May over Brexit .
Mr Field was only of the only Brexiteer MPs in the Labour Party – backing Leave in 2016 and opposing a bid to delay Brexit in order to stop No Deal in April. Last year he joined three other Labour MPs opposing a customs union with the EU – which allowed Theresa May to block the policy by six votes.
Mr Field stood alone today outside Birkenhead Town Hall to announce his move.
With bookies predicting a snap election before Christmas, Mr Field has claimed he plans to unveil a full-blown manifesto with plans on social security, health and social care, housing, homelessness, education, jobs, apprenticeships, Brexit, taxation, transport, justice and crime, immigration, culture, defence and foreign affairs, climate change, animals and food.
- Deliver a ‘first class service’ for locals
- Abolish child poverty locally
- Eliminate youth unemployment locally
- Build safe, secure and affordable housing
- ‘Fight back’ against crime and anti-social behaviour
- Gain ‘the transport network Birkenhead deserves’
- Protect local workers against low pay
- Introduce a more compassionate benefits system
- Support WASPI women and other pensioners
- ‘Strengthen’ local health and care services
Born to a Tory labourer and teaching assistant during the Second World War, Mr Field was briefly a member of the Young Conservatives before joining Labour for most of his life.
He first stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in South Buckinghamshire in 1966 when he was 23.
He did not make another run for Parliament for 13 years, 10 of which he spent as director of the Child Poverty Action Group.
After being elected in 1979 Mr Field became Michael Foot’s education spokesman and claimed he “led the campaign” against the Trotskyist group Militant on Merseyside.
(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)
He was briefly a welfare reform minister under Tony Blair in 1997 with the job of “thinking the unthinkable”. But quit after barely a year in office over differences with the PM.
Later he advised the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition on welfare reform. leading an independent review into poverty in 2010.
Since 2015 he has chaired the Work and Pensions Committee, where he became a leading critic of Tory benefit cuts, disability tests and the error-strewn system of Universal Credit.
He is close friends with his committee deputy Heidi Allen – who quit the Tories to join Change UK – and joined her on an anti-austerity tour earlier this year.
Mr Field prompted anger last year for writing a column in The Sun, despite the newspaper being reviled and boycotted across Merseyside for coverage of the Hillsborough disaster.
He has also previously come in for criticism over his comments on immigration.
In 2011 he said the number of new jobs going to migrants was a “disturbing pattern”. In 2006 he said: “Movements of population on this scale are having a massive social impact which will, if not addressed, cause sweeping political changes.
“Mainstream Britain has to be thankful that the BNP has yet to throw up a leader of even modest political skills.”
When he resigned the whip last year Mr Field had said he would remain a Labour member. But he was told that was impossible by the party’s Chief Whip, and resigned from the party altogether.
