A Jewish councillor in Barnet has quit the Conservative party and joined the Liberal Democrats, becoming the only Liberal Democrat currently on the council.
Gabriel Rozenberg, who sits as a councillor for Hampstead Garden Suburb ward, announced his decision in a video posted to social media on Friday afternoon.
“I’ve been a local councillor in Barnet for the past five years, and in all that time there’s been a growing disconnect between what we’ve been doing at the local level and what I’ve been seeing happening to the Conservative party at a national level,” Mr Rozenberg, a vocal supporter of the Remain campaign, said.
He told viewers that he had been a member of the Tory party for 20 years, but that “put simply, the Conservative party is not the party I joined.
“I value hugely being a European citizen, and I’m not going to see my rights as a European citizen taken away from me without a fight, and I’m certainly not for a minute going to endorse the dangerous, destructive no-deal plans of Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings.”
Today I've quit the Conservatives – I'm now a Liberal Democrat. 👇 pic.twitter.com/d5P9VeZj4R
— Gabriel Rozenberg (@rozgab) September 20, 2019
Mr Rozenberg also criticised Labour as “a party led by Jeremy Corbyn, who has totally failed to tackle antisemitism.”
Approximately 15.5 per cent of Barnet residents are Jewish - the highest percentage of any local authority in the country.
By joining the Lib Dems, Mr Rozenberg has helped the party regain representation on the council. In last year’s council elections in the borough, the party, which has never had more than six councillors in Barnet, lost its last remaining councillor, Jack Cohen, in a vote which saw Labour win the seat by just two votes more than the Conservative candidate.
He urged people who live in Hampstead Garden Suburb, or in the wider borough of Barnet, to “let me know what you think. Get in touch with me, e-mail me. I want to start that conversation.”
Hampstead Garden Suburb has only ever had Conservative councillors. At the local election last year, each of the then-three Conservative candidates won more than 3,000 votes, with the nearest contenders, the three Labour party candidates, each receiving under 900 votes.
