THE shock resignation of Councillor Louise Griffiths from the Green Party yesterday means the city council has had a bit of a shake-up.

With Cllr Griffiths jumping ship to the city’s Conservatives, the party now holds a pretty strong position in Worcester City Council with a total of 18 councillors.

Labour follows next with 15 councillors and the council’s Green Party – which has been dealt a huge blow with the change of allegiance – now has two councillors.

The city’s Green Party worked extremely hard in Battenhall to take the seat at the last city council election in May and Cllr Griffiths beat her new colleague the then mayor Councillor Steve Mackay by just 99 votes.

The Green group’s leader Cllr Louis Stephen broke a Conservative stronghold in Battenhall in 2016 becoming the first non-Tory to be elected in the two-member ward for years.

Cllr Griffith’s resignation and switch of allegiance has returned a Tory to one of Battenhall’s positions of power – a seat gained by the Greens through the hard work of, well, Cllr Griffiths less than a year ago.

Cllr Griffiths announced her resignation from the Green Party on Friday (March 7) citing problems with the party’s leadership and antisemitism as reasons for her switching allegiances.

Cllr Griffiths said the “scourge of anti-Semitism” was not just a Labour issue and she had found examples of it within the national Green Party and has been subjected to online abuse for calling out racism within the party as a result.

Cllr Griffiths said she had joined the Conservatives because she found them to be decent and hard-working people.

She added: “I now feel that by joining them I will be able to achieve more for the people of Battenhall than would have been the case had I stayed with the Green Party.”

In a statement, Cllr Griffiths said: “Over recent months I have felt increasingly inhibited and restricted by the setup of the Green Party here in Worcester.

“I have found there is very little opportunity for members to make a significant contribution due to the leadership of the Worcester Green Party, and this reluctance to listen and to adopt a different way of thinking has become very frustrating.

“I got involved in local politics to make a difference and believe that this is no longer possible in the Greens, which locally do not operate as a democratic political party should.

“The scourge of anti-Semitism is also unfortunately not just an issue for the Labour Party.

"I have found anti-Semitism within the Green Party nationally and have been subjected to abuse myself online for calling out this racism within the party.”