Mayor of St Ives resigns from Conservative party as being Tory was 'becoming an issue'

The Mayor of St Ives has resigned from the Conservative Party, as he says, being a Tory was "becoming an issue".

Johnnie Wells, who has been a Tory councillor since 2020, says he was facing more barriers than he was putting down.

“I just feel that for me, in St Ives and for Cornwall, an independent role is better. Being a Conservative was becoming an issue", he said.

"It was putting up more barriers than it was taking down. People would kind of shut off to you pretty quickly, so it was becoming more of a hindrance than a help.”

When Mr Wells became a councillor in 2020 the Tories were the largest party in the town council they are now down to just one councillor.

Mr Wells, who is a web designer by trade and represents the Lelant ward as a councillor, said that he had always voted Conservative and has been a member of the party since becoming a councillor three years ago.

He said Cllr Taylor had tried to talk him out of resigning “a little bit”. The mayor was unsure if he’d vote for the party again.

He added: “I’ve been thinking about it for ages really. You look at both main parties and you don’t really have any good direction. The Conservatives seem to feel like ‘we’re out of here anyway whatever we do’ and Labour are like ‘we’re going to get in whatever we do’ so I’ve become really disillusioned by party politics.

“Then you look around Cornwall and I feel like Cornwall Council aren’t pulling their weight like perhaps they should do. The general spiral is getting worse and worse in many areas and I don’t see how we’re going to break it doing the same as we’ve always done.

“I’m looking for change really. There’s that saying ‘if a change doesn’t feel like a catastrophe it’s probably not a big enough change’. That’s where we’re at and certainly in St Ives we’re really making changes.”

Mr Wells, who has been mayor of the town since May, said: “I don’t know what I’ll vote at the next election – you’re in the position of voting for the least worst person. It’s a horrible place to be and that’s what I want to change. I want people to vote for people they feel are going to achieve things.

“I think we have a problem, especially in local politics, that people are very afraid of upsetting other people to the extent that they don’t do anything because no change is easier than upsetting some people. We’ve got to have change, we’ve got to be moving forward.”

He has said the short-term lets of Airbnbs is a particular problem in St Ives, which he feels the government should have addressed ten years ago and hasn’t. Wells believes the housing problem in Cornwall isn’t down to second homes but people buying a house and letting it as a business “35 weeks of the year”.

Mr Wells added: “The Digey in St Ives [one of the town’s most iconic historic streets] is a case in point – 80 per cent of the houses along the Digey don’t pay anything into either the council tax or the business rates pot; it’s a nightmare.

Mr Wells will remain as the town mayor and will continue to represent Lelant as an independent councillor.