Dalton’s mayor has left the Conservative Party due to Rwanda and Boris Johnson’s leadership.
Sam Ronson, who represents the Dalton North ward on Barrow council, said Johnson’s time as Prime Minister had been ‘a bit of a stain on the nation’ and felt his former party was veering further towards the right wing.
“I felt that I couldn’t get to the next election with Boris Johnson in a leadership role and I certainly couldn’t, in good conscience, campaign for the party on that basis,” said Cllr Ronson.
“I think his actions over the last couple of years – creating laws, disobeying laws – as well as his actions in the public domain, I don’t think they are a good representation of British politics.”
Cllr Ronson, 29, stressed, however, that his resignation was about more than just the Prime Minister’s actions. “The party have broken election promises, namely, the promise not to increase taxes,” he said.
He said he had not been in favour of proposals – now dropped – to overhaul England’s planning system. He believed ‘a lot of corruption within the party’ had been ‘overlooked or ignored’.
And he criticised the Government’s contentious plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
“I think the policy is immoral and quite contemptible,” he said. “They have gone to great lengths and great struggle to get to our country, I think it’s wrong to then shift them off elsewhere.”
Cllr Ronson’s departure comes as another blow to the Conservatives at a regional level, with three more of the party’s councillors resigning in March of this year.
Cllr Hazel Edwards, who was then the leader of the borough council’s Conservative group, issued a joint statement with Cllrs Wendy McClure and Martin McLeavy at the time in which they accused the Barrow and Furness Conservative Association of being ‘dysfunctional’.
Cllr Ronson, who is the mayor of Dalton and works as a project engineer at BAE Systems, will serve out the remainder of his time as a borough councillor as an independent, but will not be joining the Furness Independent Councillors group.
He will cease to be a borough councillor when the Westmorland and Furness unitary authority begins operating in April of next year. He stood for election in May but was not voted in.
