Alice Mahon, a Halifax MP for 18 years and a left-wing Labour Party member for more than half-a-century, has resigned her membership of the party saying she can no longer stomach how it operates.

In her letter to the Halifax Constituency Labour Party she criticises the Prime Minister: “This Labour Government should hang its head in shame for inflicting this on the British public just as we face the most severe recession any of us have experienced in a lifetime.”

The Smeargate revelations left her “sickened”. According to the Yorkshire Post:

“My stepdaughter Rachel said to me: ‘How could they do that to people like David Cameron and his wife Samantha when they had recently lost their son Ivan? What kind of people think it would be a good idea to smear them?’

“I was sickened by that – that is not the Labour Party that I joined all those years ago… Quite simply I have had it with New Labour.”

Decent Labour versus New Labour…