Labour call for a by-election
Labour Group Leader on Sedgemoor District Council Cllr Brian Smedley is calling for a by-election. Former Labour councillor Diogo Rogriquez defected yesterday to the Conservative Group less than a year since being elected as a Labour councillor. Cllr Smedley told The Leveller “It’s now time for Diogo to tell the voters who elected him as a Labour councillor what exactly his real politics are and defend them. The voters of Dunwear and Fairfax East did NOT vote Labour to get a Tory elected and he should now resign and stand under his true colours – whatever they are.”
Cllr Rodriguez was elected as a Labour councillor last May. Two months later he declared himself an “independent” without really explaining what exactly his problem was with the Labour Group. That mystery remains to this day.
Now he has joined the Conservatives. This time he has justified his decision praising the Sedgemoor Conservatives as running “one of the most efficient councils in the country.”
At the May 2019 election when campaigning for the Dunwear and Fairfax East ward Cllr Rodriguez told a different story ““The campaign should be about local issues and the work of [Labour-run] Bridgwater Town Council shows that we [Labour] have delivered what we said we would … We have to prove that our politics is different and that people can trust us to deliver what we say we will.”