Fareham councillor leaves Tories - and launches broadside at Suella Braverman and the government

Fareham Borough councillor Nick Gregory, who represents Fareham South, has left the Conservatives following correspondence with Fareham MP and Home Secretary Suella Braverman.

Cllr Gregory said that remaining a Conservative would ‘contradict my pledge to support our local people and represent their best interests’.

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‘My conscience will not allow me to assist in Suella’s re-election as the MP for Fareham by remaining a Conservative ward councillor,’ he said.

‘I can no longer be an advocate for a party whose underfunding of all public sectors and utilities over the last 13 years (including education, The NHS, and local public services delivered through local authorities) has brought our country to its knees with strikes in nearly every employment sector and on the brink of financial collapse.’

In a letter to Suella Braverman, Cllr Gregory criticises the ways the government are affecting his business – a nursery and preschool in The Avenue, Fareham, called Little Munchkins.

These include a decrease in early years education funding, rising costs of living, lack of investment in promoting new staff and the minimum wage increase.

Cllr Gregory added: ‘As a nursery owner, I speak directly as a small business proprietor who is being forced, along with numerous other small/medium businesses, into financial ruin due to an increasingly unacceptable lack of government funding over the last 13 years accompanied by unmanageable increases in overheads.

‘Suella was completely unable to explain or justify why the current Conservative administration is forcing small/medium businesses to honour a 10.2 per cent pay increase through their living and minimum wages scheme, when they are only offering all public sectors four to five per cent increases.’

In a written response to Cllr Gregory, Mrs Braverman noted his concerns about the national living wage (NLW).

‘The government is investing an additional £20m into early years entitlements to help with the additional costs that childcare providers will face as a result of the NLW increases,’ she wrote.

‘These changes are creating a fairer system that better provides the affordable and high-quality childcare needed to give children all over the country the best opportunity to reach their full potential.’

Cllr Gregory was voted on to the council in a 2010 by-election as the Lib Dem candidate and after that switched to the Tories, getting re-elected in 2012.

He then became an independent, before switching to Ukip, and then went back to being independent in 2013.

In 2013, when Cllr Gregory became an independent for the second time, the then opposition leader Cllr Paul Whittle, a Lib Dem, said: ‘He’s changed colours more times than a set of traffic lights.’

Cllr Gregory stood down at the 2016 elections, and won election in 2021 as a Conservative in Fareham South.

Cllr Gregory’s resignation from the Tories has taken place with immediate effect, so the political balance of Fareham Borough Council is now: 25 Conservatives (80.65 per cent); four Liberal Democrats (12.90 per cent); two independents (6.45 per cent).