Former Deputy Leader at Edinburgh Council Susan Dalgety quits Labour party

Former Director of Communications, Councillor, and Deputy Leader at Edinburgh Council Susan Dalgety has quit the Labour Party.

In a Facebook post outlining her decision, the former director of communications for Labour said that the party had “been the subject of a hostile takeover” and said that the Labour Party she loved “is dead.”

The former councillor and chief press officer also blamed the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn as one of the main reasons for her departure.

In a post on social media, she wrote: “I am leaving the Labour Party, the organisation that has been a huge part of my life since I joined, as young mother, in 1980.

“I met my husband through the party, made lifelong friends, worked for a Labour First Minister. I was even lucky enough to be a Labour councillor for seven years, on Edinburgh City Council.

“I marched behind Labour banners, delivered countless leaflets, cried at election results, especially in 1997 when we won that famous landslide. I was Labour for life…or so I thought.

“Then came Saturday, 12 September 2015.

“As Jeremy Corbyn was announced as leader of our party, I turned to my husband, and said, through tears, “well, our party has just been subject of a hostile takeover…we are finished.”

“And so it has turned out. The hostile takeover is complete. An unlikely coalition of grumpy old blokes in Lenin caps and wide-eyed Millennials in Converse, aided and abetted by some sinister apparatchiks, now controls our party. The numbers are against us.

“I have no heart to go over the reasons I am leaving…there are too many…but in the final analysis it boils down to this: the Labour Party I loved is dead.

“I am not anti-Semitic, I am not pro-Brexit and I don’t believe a command economy will work in Britain.

“And I am no longer a member of the Labour Party.”