Former Tory leader to set up new Ossett Borough Independents party

Tony Homewood confirmed he has applied to the Electoral Commission to register the Ossett Borough Independents.

Coun Homewood, a councillor for Ossett, resigned as opposition leader on the Labour-run council to sit as an independent in November last year, blaming the Tories’ “woeful performance”.

He said he planned to set up the new party to concentrate on issues in his own ward.

Coun Homewood said: “As far as I am concerned, the Conservative Party are a complete joke.

“It’s not even the Conservative Party any more, let’s be honest. Amusingly, they sent me a letter from HQ in London telling me I couldn’t leave. Well, I’ve left.

“The party doesn’t even do the things which all governments are supposed to do. Things don’t work and they are too politically cowardly to take the action necessary to fix them.

“You can’t get a doctor’s appointment and NHS dentists are almost extinct.

“They are the basic things people really value and government don’t seem to understand that.

“The French philosopher, de Maistre, said that the people deserve the politicians they get.

“But nobody deserves the Westminster Kindergarten. It’s utterly tedious and pathetic.

“I would even suggest that if you took 100 typical MPs from each side and swapped them around, nobody would notice the difference.

“There are still some very good MPs but they are few and far between.

“There is a huge contingent on both sides, whose only unshakable belief, is in them being an MP.

“Governments of both stripes, going back to WW2, have let us down. But it has got worse and it isn’t just me who thinks it.

“Senior Conservative MPs are announcing their intention not to stand at the next election, with alarming regularity.

“Admittedly, Covid presented huge challenges but the government has presided over all the things Conservative governments don’t do, to the point that it has even lost its long-standing reputation as a reliable steward of the economy, even if it’s not all their fault.”

Coun Homewood is not due for re-election until 2024 and said that he hopes to announce a candidate within the next week who will stand for the Ossett Borough Independents at May’s local elections.

He added: “We are at the mercy of the Electoral Commission to some degree in terms of branding but we will be standing a candidate.

“In council we will be aligning with a growing number of other independent councillors in the council chamber, sitting as a group.

“Ossett Borough Independents will be truly independent councillors. There will be no whipping.

“We will answer to the people who elected us and our own individual conscience, not some centrally dictated orthodoxy.

“The big issue for people in Ossett is getting a fair share of the cake we provide through our council tax and general taxation.

“We all know that the council has been under a lot of financial pressure, sometimes as a consequence of its own negligence.

“My focus, as it always has been, will be to ensure that Ossett gets as big a slice of that cake as we can get it and I will work with anyone to make that happen.”

Coun Homewood took a swipe at the Tory party both locally and nationally when he stood down two months ago.

He also described the recent party leadership contest between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak as a “fiasco” and commented that he had no confidence in either of them.

Coun Homewood was elected as Tory councillor for Ossett in May 2021.

He first joined the Conservatives in 1983 and became Conservative group leader in May last year after the previous leader, Nic Stansby, was deselected ahead of the local elections.

In August 2021 the Wakefield Conservative Group’s long-serving leader, Nadeem Ahmed, was ousted in a coup.

Coun Homewood has been replaced as Tory group leader by Pontefract South ward councillor Tony Hames.