Photo by Hazel Plater/Alamy
Jamie Driscoll has joined the Green Party. A former Labour mayor for the North of Tyne, Driscoll quit the Labour Party in July 2023 after he was barred as standing as a candidate. He announced he had joined the Greens at an event in Newcastle this morning, alongside the Green Party’s deputy leader, Mothin Ali.
Driscoll is the Green Party’s highest-profile joiner since former Corbynite MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle defected to the Greens in November. Since 2024, Driscoll has been running his own local independent political movement, Majority, and was, until September, involved in the initial stages of Your Party – the new left-wing party co-founded by his former Labour colleagues, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.
Speaking to the New Statesman ahead of the announcement, Driscoll said: “If we look at the state of British politics, it’s in a serious mess.” He added: “It’s not the fault of immigrants, despite the fact that some of the major parties seem to think it is.” He pointed to the cost-of-living crisis, energy prices and housing as key pressure points: “everyone’s flogging that dead horse of trickle-down economics”. Driscoll said that the Green Party can “mount a serious challenge to that. I’m joining to back them.”
A Labour member since 1985, Driscoll was mayor of North of Tyne between 2019 and 2024 and was known to be on the party’s left and close to Corbyn. He was barred from standing for the party in the mayoral elections for the expanded North East combined authority in 2023 after appearing on a panel with Ken Loach. He left soon after, before going on to stand as an independent in 2024. He lost to the Labour candidate Kim McGuiness. The Green Party has been encouraging Driscoll to join since his departure from Labour.
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Newcastle City Council will face all-out elections next year, and Driscoll is planning to run for election, now as a Green candidate. His political operation, Majority, helped the Greens to win a by-election in August 2025. Driscoll hopes that this dynamic can be replicated next year. “Majority is a social movement,” he said, “there’s lots of majority members who are already members of the Greens… Majority’s role is to develop people, to do political education, to help people with campaigning skills, and that will continue.”
Driscoll is the latest in a series of signings for the Green Party, which has grown exponentially since Polanski was elected. On Monday, five Brent councillors announced their defections from Labour to the Greens. Polanski said: “This is another example of the Green surge sweeping across the country. Jamie is a well known political figure with a proven track record of delivering real change to people’s lives.” He added, “Newcastle Greens are growing fast because they’re delivering for their communities.”
Driscoll’s work for Your Party earlier this year was alongside Andrew Feinstein, the Independent Candidate for Holborn and St Pancras and Beth Winter, a former Labour MP. The three were the directors of a company called M.O.U Ltd, which held the money and the data from Sultana’s unauthorised membership launch on 18 September.
The trio resigned their directorship on 29 October, when it was taken up by Sultana. When asked about his reason for choosing the Greens over Your Party, Driscoll told the New Statesman, “I mean, Your Party is where it is… There are some good people in Your Party, but exactly where we’ll be in a few years’ time, I don’t know.”
[Further reading: Greens take in another wave of defections from Labour]
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