COMMUNIST PARTY election campaigners and supporters of Palestinians decorated the office of Blaenau Gwent Labour MP Nick Smith on Saturday with “under new management” posters.

They announced the new occupant as Robert Griffiths, who is contesting the reorganised constituency of Blaenau Gwent & Rhymney on July 4, for which Mr Smith is also a candidate.

Campaigners intended to challenge Mr Smith over his failure to vote for a ceasefire in Gaza and his refusal both to condemn Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territories and to oppose British arms exports to Israel’s armed forces.

Mr Griffiths told supporters: “The refusal of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party to condemn the Israeli government’s genocidal destruction of Gaza is one of the most shameful episodes in that party’s history.”

It was unthinkable that the local area’s past MPs such as Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot and Llew Smith would have remained silent “in the face of the mass killing of defenceless Palestinian civilians that we can see on our television screens every day and night,” he said.

Communist Party canvassers report that the massacres in Palestine are being raised on the doorstep by numbers of disillusioned Labour voters, alongside the cost of living and Labour’s lack of a clearer alternative to Tory policies.