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James Giles | |
|---|---|
| Leader of the Opposition on Kingston upon Thames Council | |
| Assumed office 20 November 2023 | |
| Leader of the Kingston Independent Residents Group | |
| Assumed office 16 February 2017 | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Councillor for Green Lane and St James Ward | |
| Assumed office 5 May 2022 | |
| Preceded by | Seat created |
| Personal details | |
| Born | April 2000 (age 25) |
| Political party | Kingston Independent Residents Group Workers Party of Britain (2024) |
| Website | jamesgiles |
James Giles (born April 2000) [1] is a British political advisor,activist and local councillor. He is the leader of the Kingston Independent Residents Group (KIRG) political party in England and has been involved in the establishment of Your Party.
Giles was born and grew up with his mother on a council estate in the London suburb of New Malden. [2] [3] In 2008,when attending Burlington Junior School,he founded the student newsletter Burlington Weekly,subsequently expanded to cover extramural news as Weekly Express. [4]
On enrolling at Coombe Boys' School he launched the Coombe Monthly ,which grew into a newspaper with its own website. Its Twitter audience included the Kingston and Surbiton MP Ed Davey and a number of the borough councillors. In 2014,he edited an issue on fracking,and interviewed the Kingston Council leader Kevin Davis (Conservative) for another issue. [4] In the same year,he helped his grandmother,the local ex-deputy postmistress Yvonne Tracey,lead a successful campaign against plans to cut staff at the New Malden post office. [5] [4] The Coombe Monthly was later renamed as the Kingston Enquirer. In 2018,Giles challenged Davis in a public council meeting about a conflict of interests relating to his family,sparking a minor media scandal. [6] He criticised the 2019 attempt by Kingston council's Liberal Democrat administration to limit the influence of residents on council decision-making,which originated in the Local Government Association's report that "a small group of campaigners is greatly overrepresented at meetings". [7]
He studied politics at Royal Holloway,University of London as of 2019. [8]
Giles was a guest and a host of George Galloway's programme The Mother of All Talk Shows on Radio Sputnik in 2020. For 6 weeks in 2021,he co-hosted Galloway's Sputnik:Orbiting the World show on RT UK. [9]
Giles chaired the campaign group Malden Independent Community Organisation (MICO) between 2016 and 2021. [10] [11] [12] He co-founded the Kingston Independent Residents Group (KIRG) English political party in February 2017 with the Conservative Cllr Mary Jean Clark, [2] [13] New Malden's former deputy mayor. [14] After serving as the KIRG's deputy leader in 2022, [2] he became the party leader by 2024. [15] He has been a councillor for Green Lane &St James' since 5 May 2022 and leads The Opposition Group / Kingston Independent Residents Group (KIRG) in the Borough Council. [9]
While managing the successful campaign of his grandmother,Yvonne Tracey,on a KIRG ticket in the Kingston Borough Council by-election in November 2022,he produced a controversial leaflet accusing the Muslim Ahmadiyya community,to which Tracey's rival Mahmood Rafiq belonged,of propagating homophobia. [16] He was investigated by the police over alleged hate crime against the Ahmadiyya,which is denounced as non-Muslim by some fellow Muslims,but no charges were brought. [17]
In November 2023,he was suspended from his position as a Community Wellbeing Local Government Association (LGA) Board Member after circulating a petition for a ceasefire in the Gaza war,which stated that the names of councillors who did not sign would be published "in the interest of accountability". [18] This was criticized by some as threatening or intimidating. [19] [20] Giles was cleared of 'threatening behaviour','bullying' or 'harassment' in an independent investigation report commissioned by Kingston Council,and has taken up new roles with the LGA since.[ citation needed ]
Giles worked as a public relations consultant for a number of private companies. [1] He has been a director of New Malden Markets Ltd since 2024. [21]
In 2019,Giles stood as a candidate in the general election in a bid to become the youngest British MP since 1667. [22] He was reported to be London's youngest candidate and the youngest independent candidate in the country's history. [23] [24]
In June 2021,he was the campaign manager for the Workers Party candidate George Galloway during an unsuccessful run in the Batley and Spen by-election. [2] [25] [26] He threatened a legal challenge against the election result. [27]
In February 2024,he managed Galloway's successful campaign in the Rochdale by-election,which had been vacated following the death of Labour's Tony Lloyd. [9] [28] [29] [30] At that time,he claimed that his political consultancy work was separate from his personal politics, [9] and was not a member of the Workers Party. [31] However,by March 2024,he was reported to be helping Galloway launch a national movement based on the Workers Party. [17]
In the 2024 general election that July,Giles ran as the Workers Party candidate for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North on a pro-Palestinian platform,coming in second with 27% of the vote and losing by 1,500 votes to Liam Byrne of the Labour Party. [32] [33] [34] He also oversaw his grandmother and fellow independent Kingston councillor Yvonne Tracey's single-issue campaign in the Kingston and Surbiton seat,revolving around the incumbent Ed Davey's involvement in the British Post Office scandal,during the same general election, [16] [5] [35] despite the competition from a Workers Party candidate. [36]
Following the election,in July 2024,Giles became chief of staff to Ayoub Khan,the independent MP for Birmingham Perry Barr and was hired as adviser by the other elected independent MPs supporting the Palestinian cause:Shockat Adam,Adnan Hussain and Iqbal Mohamed, [28] [37] all of whom subsequently formed the Independent Alliance with Jeremy Corbyn. He deputised for Khan at the Local Government Association's Independent Group Annual Conference in January 2025. [38] He was a voting member of the secret organising committee that launched Your Party in July 2025 and worked on the committee's volunteer "ops team" as an electoral law adviser. [39]
Giles described his political beliefs as "localist" in early 2024. [9] His 2019 election campaign for the British parliament was characterised as "hyper-local" and criticised previous MPs for their loyalty to their party over their constituency. [3]
He opposed the reduction of the voting age to 16 in the United Kingdom as of 2019,citing concerns over the influence of fake news and social media,and advocated the teaching of government and politics in secondary schools instead. [3]