Ex-Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad quits “unrecognisable” Labour party

The former Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad has announced that she has resigned her Labour membership “after much soul-searching”, saying party had become “unrecognisable”.

The former MP made the announcement in a video released on social media this morning, in which she said: “This has been a difficult decision, but I can no longer be complicit with the current trajectory of the party.”

In an article released on LabourHub discussing her resignation, Dent Coad said she did not want to be “looking over my shoulder and waiting for suspension” from the party.

Dent Coad has served on Kensington and Chelsea council as a Labour councillor, representing St Helen’s ward, since 2006. She stated that she will continue to sit on the council as an independent.

She became the first Labour MP for Kensington and Chelsea in 2017, when she won the seat by 20 votes. In 2019, she lost her bid to be re-elected, losing to the Conservative Felicity Buchan by 150 votes.

Kensington and Chelsea includes Grenfell Tower, and Dent Coad was the MP at the time of the deadly 2017 fire which killed 72 people.

She said in her LabourHub article she had been “shocked” to read that Labour leader Keir Starmer had received two tickets earlier this month to a football match courtesy of Mulalley & Co. Limited. Last year the firm lost a legal case over cladding it had installed in five Hampshire tower blocks, with the block owner claiming damages for the cost of remedying it post-Grenfell.

In her video announcing resignation from Labour, she said she would “continue to research and write on the multitude of issues exposed by the Grenfell Tower fire” and would “stand by those whose lives have been devastated across the country by the cladding scandal”.

She also asked in her video: “How can the party that set up the welfare state penalise benefit recipients? I am not leaving the party, the party has left me.”

It is not entirely clear what Dent Coad was referring to, but the party said earlier this year it would not stop sanctioning benefit claimants who breach rules.

She claimed too that some members had been expelled in connection with their campaigning for Palestinian rights.

In October 2022, Dent Coad was excluded from the longlist in the process to determine who would be the Labour candidate to contest her former seat at the next general election.

Speaking at the time, she described herself as “devastated” by the decision, saying: “I am angry that local members and our local community in Kensington have been denied the opportunity to vote in a free and fair contest, which has been sacrificed for the sake of factional intrigue from Labour officials.”

LabourList understands the reason cited for her exclusion was concern over her past social media activity. She accused “unaccountable Labour officials” of having “exploited this outspokenness to unjustly prevent me from standing for the seat”, despite her having the backing of Unite, which “should have seen me longlisted automatically”.

She has also raised eyebrows on more trivial matters, drawing criticism following her 2017 assertion that Prince Harry could not actually fly helicopters and instead “just sits there going vroom vroom”.

A Labour source told LabourList when she was excluded last year: “It’s right that the Labour party expects prospective MPs to uphold the highest standards. Under Keir’s leadership that’s not going to change.”

Kensington Against Dirty Money co-founder Joe Powell was ultimately selected to fight Kensington and Chelsea for Labour.

The Labour Party was approached for comment.