A lawyer and ex-Labour councillor who has been part of the Labour Party for 20 years announced his resignation from the party on the Indian Independence Day.
On Saturday 15th August, Sundip Meghani resigned from the party blaming “increased anti-Indian, antisemitic, and anti-worker sentiment of recent years.” In his resignation letter Sundip Meghani - a lead investigator at the Independent Office For Police Conduct – he expressed deep regret over his decision to quit the party which had been like "a surrogate family" to him.
Accusing “self-proclaimed Socialist Labour MPs” of “playing racist power games and identity politics, whilst professing to care about the public good”, he wrote,
“I am choosing to mark the occasion by leaving an organisation I know to be institutionally racist and anti-Indian. Also, I can no longer support a party that acts against the interests of working people, and is consistently embarrassed by Britain’s values and traditions.
“As a British Indian, I am proud of both facets of my identity. My Indian heritage, rooted in Gujarati culture and Hindu values; and my sense of Britishness, growing up in white working class areas of Leicester, before representing outer estates in local government. Both these communities no longer matter to the modern Labour Party.
“It is a sad indictment I should have to outline my background to reference the party’s bigotry and intolerance. But having lost its principles and all sense of direction, identity politics is the only language Labour now understands.”
Meghani had been a Leicester city councillor for Beaumont Leys for four years up until 2015, a trade union branch leader, and a Leicester Police Authority member. But reports indicate that he was left infuriated when his application to stand as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Leicester East in last December’s General Election was not even answered by party officials. Weeks earlier Leicester East constituency Labour party (CLP) chairman John Thomas also announced he was quitting the party. In his resignation letter, Mr Meghani stated that Labour's "descent, from meritocracy to mediocrity, and its growing irrelevance to the lives of ordinary people, runs parallel with its increased anti-Indian, antisemitic and anti-worker sentiment of recent years. Despite the election of Sir Keir Starmer, a respectable man who is not a deluded Marxist, I have seen no evidence that sensible values will be restored; and that socialism, as an oppressive totalitarian ideology, will be ditched forever.”
Mr Meghani, a former President of Leicestershire Junior Lawyers, announced on Twitter that he intended to shortly publish more detail of his “experiences of anti-Indian bigotry and racial abuse in Labour over the last four years.”
