Whitby councillor Asa Jones has been selected as the Social Justice Party’s parliamentary candidate for Scarborough and Whitby.
Asa Jones, a 23-year-old Whitby town councillor and charity worker, has been selected as the Social Justice Party’s (SJP) candidate for the Scarborough and Whitby constituency ahead of this year’s general election.
The party, which was only registered with the Electoral Commission last month, held a selection meeting at Scarborough Library on Saturday, March 23.
Mr Jones, who stood unopposed for his party’s candidacy, hit out at both the Labour and Conservative parties for “their refusal to increase spending on our crippled public services” and accused them of sharing “an ideological commitment to cuts, austerity, and privatisation”.
Alison Hume has been selected as the Labour Party’s candidate and Roberto Weeden-Sanz as the Conservative candidate for the constituency after Sir Robert Goodwill said he would be retiring as local MP at the next election.
Speaking to around a dozen members on Saturday, Mr Jones said: “We need to bring the railways, buses, energy generation and distribution and water immediately into common ownership and under the control of those who know those industries best: the people who actually work in them.”
In a speech made at the selection meeting, Mr Jones said he wanted to focus on “bringing spending on health and social care back up to pre-austerity levels” and called for the “removal of the private sector entirely from our health services”.
The Social Justice Party currently has one elected member on North Yorkshire Council; Tony Randerson resigned from the authority and the Labour Party last year before going on to regain his seat in a subsequent by-election.
The SJP was officially formed in Whitby last summer by a group of “ex-Labour members who had resigned in protest at what it viewed as the party’s increasingly right-wing agenda”.
Coun Tony Randerson congratulated his colleague and said he would support Mr Jones “100 per cent”, adding that his “work ethic is the same as [mine] and I am confident if elected, he would make a very energetic, hardworking constituency MP”.
The Social Justice Party said Mr Jones was “just the first of many candidates we will be selecting to stand at the next general election” in order to “put forward a vision for Britain that is distinct from any of the major parties”.
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