It is with a little regret that the English Democrats and our Elected Mayor of Doncaster, Peter Davies, are parting company.

It’s always been something of a roller coaster ride with Peter and his regular gaffes (including his notorious suggestion that the Taliban could teach English people a thing or two about family values), but as Peter has got older he has become ever more inclined to speak without thinking first, let alone doing any research as to whether his facts are correct.

In the time since he was elected, Peter has regularly threatened to resign, usually on petty internal Party matters. It therefore comes as little surprise that he has eventually found something to actually resign over, even if it is something he hasn’t properly researched or thought about or made any serious attempt to understand or to engage with what we as a Party are trying to do.

Peter’s election was a pleasant but not entirely unexpected pleasure for us, the English Democrats, as we are the sensible and moderate English nationalist Party and our tide is rising. Although Peter’s previous involvement with politics was very chequered, having belonged to many political parties and his forays into elections were always previously attended with failure, nevertheless, having started to campaign for the English Democrats, he had found that he was getting very much more support electorally than anything he had achieved before.

Peter often said to me that he liked the title of being “Maverick Mayor” and he has certainly lived up to that title, even if his commitment to English Nationalism has always been somewhat tepid. To take one example among many, he flatly refused to help promote St George’s Day in Doncaster because it would conflict with his attendance at the Scottish horseracing “Festival” in Perth.

At this stage I am not aware if Peter has given up on the possibility of being re-elected – given his previous electoral track record that would be understandable. As Peter has made very little effort to help us build the English Democrats his absence from our ranks is unlikely to be much missed. The English Democrats will be standing a sensible moderate English Nationalist candidate in the next Doncaster Mayoral elections and we will be announcing our candidate in the next fortnight.

Peter’s conduct, whilst disappointing for us, is also a betrayal of the 25,344 English Democrats’ voters in Doncaster that elected him in the first place, the 31,287 Yorkshire voters who voted for us in the EU elections, and the 32,386 votes from Doncaster that the English Democrats have received since.

Whilst it is true that a few former members of the British National Party have joined the English Democrats this is a fact that is also true of other parties, including the Labour Party, who now have a former BNP councillor and parliamentary candidate as a councillor in Lancashire.

Peter has never been willing to take his politics seriously, always putting his passion for horse racing first. It is one thing being maverick but quite another to both attack people he has never met nor troubled to find out anything about and to turn on the Party which gave him his only electoral success.

All parties have similar problems to our ones with Peter but I won’t hide that it is a disappointment that Peter has proved as disloyal to us as to so many of the other parties which he has previously belonged to.

Robin Tilbrook,
Chairman,
The English Democrats