Photo by Justin Tallis/ AFP via Getty Images It was the most high-profile Labour-Green switch yet. In December 2025, Jamie Driscoll, the former mayor of North of Tyne went Green. Driscoll, 55, had been a Labour member since the early 1980s, joining with his brother in protest of the neoliberal policies of Margaret Thatcher. A career in local Labour politics followed.  By the late 2010s, Driscoll had risen up the ranks to become a high-profile Labour Party mayor, running the North of Tyne Combined Authority. But by 2023 Driscoll’s four decades in the Labour Party had come to an end. He was blocked from standing as a Labour candidate to be the mayor of the north-east after he appeared on a panel alongside the director, Ken Loach, who had previously been expelled from the party. So Driscoll left Labour. This didn’t stop him from entering the mayoral race. In 2024, he set up his own left-wing splinter movement, Majority, and ran as an independent candidate – but lost.…