‘The Party Is Over’: Guardian Commentator Owen Jones Quits Labour Party, Blasts Keir Starmer’s Leadership

Owen Jones joins cleaners in 2022 staging a protest outside Downing Street in London, following revelations in Sue Gray’s report into parties in Whitehall during the coronavirus lockdown, of how cleaners and security staff were treated. (Jonathan Brady/PA Wire URN:67147364 Press Association via AP Images)

Guardian commentator and vocal Labour member Owen Jones publicly announced he’d severed his ties with the Labour Party in a scathing critique of party leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Writing for the newspaper on Thursday, Jones highlighted his family’s proud history of supporting Labour and its policies but expressed his disillusion with the party’s current leadership and direction. He accused Starmer of embracing policies that “drive hundreds of thousands of kids into poverty and hardship.”

He wrote: “Labour has become a hostile environment for anyone believing in the very policies Starmer relied upon to secure the leadership.”

Jones highlighted Labour’s adherence to the controversial two-child benefit cap and their stance on uncapped bonuses for bankers as evidence of the party’s shift from its foundational principles.

He further cited the party’s handling and stance on the conflict in Gaza, which he called “the great crime of our age”, saying it added to the “moral indecency to the pile of dishonesty and vacuity.”

While leaving Labour Jones warned against the allure of a false binary choice between Labour and Conservatives: “Despite the Tories having comprehensively nuked themselves, you think you’ve got to vote Labour or you’ll just let the Tories back in.”

Jones suggested that those seeking real change should consider supporting Green or independent candidates, emphasising the difference an ongoing collective effort for transformative policies.

Jones continued: “A new initiative – We Deserve Better – is raising money to support such candidates, judged on whether they believe in, say, taxing the well-off to invest, or public ownership, or opposing war crimes. Those seeking transformative policies are now fragmented, but they don’t have to be, even if they differ on this or that. The premise of this new initiative is simple: if the left doesn’t band together, the only pressure on Labour will come from the migrant-bashing, rich-worshipping right.”