Former Labour councillor admits to telling MP she would ‘blow up’ parliament with them in it

Jane Nightingale, who served in Mayor Ros Jones’ cabinet until the May 2025 local elections, said she’d made the comment to Doncaster Central MP Sally Jameson and her predecessor, Baroness Rosie Winterton.

She also admitted to telling Doncaster North MP, Ed Miliband, that the chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves should be “stood to a wall and shot”, when he visited her home in June.

The admissions came in a tell-all interview with the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) arranged to understand why Nightingale ran as an independent against the Labour Party in the Bentley by-election on August 21, 2025.

Her comments prompted concern from Doncaster Labour sources who pointed to the fact two MPs, Jo Cox and David Amess, had been murdered in the last 10 years.

When asked about her fallout with the party, she claimed the last straw was when she was not selected as Labour’s candidate in the by-election, held in the ward she represented for Labour for many years.

She said she was convinced Jameson had a hand in the decision, saying it went back to a heated exchange on May 2, 2025 – when Labour lost roughly 30 seats on the City of Doncaster Council.

Nightingale told the LDRS: “There were multiple things that happened leading up to a big argument.

“Rosie [Winterton] and Sally [Jameson] started walking across towards me and I was quite distressed. A lot of my colleagues had lost their seats or were losing their seats. We were quite upset.

“As they walked towards me they said ‘Jane, Jane’ and I put my hand up.”

Nightingale told the LDRS she shared some choice words with the pair, before adding: “If all of you were in parliament right now, I would blow it up”

“It’s because of you lot that this had happened in Doncaster. I hold you accountable.”

In the months before voting in May, Jane said she had taken issue with the means-testing of the winter fuel payment for pensioners.

After her exchange with Winterton and Jameson, Nightingale said she went to the Labour room at Doncaster Racecourse, where the counting was taking place, and berated the Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband, whose constituency includes Bentley ward.

“I told him he was a coward,” Nightingale told the LDRS, “Over 19 years of my life I have given you. I will never forgive you for this, I will never vote for you and hopefully I will be part of the instrument that sees your demise.”

She said she went no contact with Labour Party members and colleagues for some days after the result and eventually, after sending him a four-page letter with her grievances, had a personal visit from Miliband to her home.

She said: “He came to see me. By that time it wasn’t just the winter fuel allowance that had revved me up, it was the Welfare Reform Bill.”

It was in this conversation she said she made her comment about Reeves “being shot”.

Asked if she regretted her comments to Winterton, Jameson and about Rachel Reeves, she said: “I don’t regret saying those things. What they did – the loss of the seats of damn good councillors in Doncaster, people I worked with for many years, they had given their all.

“The Labour Party still aren’t listening.”

However, Nightingale told the LDRS she only ever wanted to represent her community and the residents of Bentley, so when Reform UK’s Sam Booth resigned in July 2025 – she wanted to be the Labour candidate in the by-election.

But, she said she “smelt a rat early on” in the process.

She said the party decided she would need to undergo an interview for the nomination, even though party rules state she did not have to as she had had one in the past 12 months.

Despite being unhappy with this new requirement, she pressed on as a number of friends in the party had told her they would not apply as it was “her seat”.

“I wasn’t happy to be having to do it,” she said, “It was against the rules.”

She told the LDRS that after answering the interview questions, she was asked about a previous Facebook post as “due diligence” on the part of the interview panel.

They referred to a post in June 2025, in which Nightingale had said “Yes Jeremy [Corbyn], bring it on”.

She said to the LDRS the post could have been interpreted in two ways – ‘bring on’ a new party, or ‘bring on’ the battle Corbyn’s new party could create – and she refused to elaborate for the panel which way she had intended it.

She claims she was told the next day she was not selected.

“The panel found I didn’t hold the values of the Labour Party”, she said and said she believed she was pushed out of contention by Sally Jameson MP, after their exchange in May.

In response to the interview with Nightingale, Sally Jameson MP told the LDRS in a statement: “I have no recollection whatsoever of the conversation that has been described by Jane.

“Furthermore I had no involvement in the process to select a Labour Party candidate in Bentley nor would I ever try to”

Jane Nightingale was determined to run and after a few days pondering the possibility, she quit the Labour Party and went on the ballot as an independent.

In the end, Reform UK’s Isaiah-John Reasbeck beat Labour’s Matt Jones by 150 votes. Nightingale received 169 votes.

She said: “I stood to prove my point to the regional office and that’s that if I’m not the candidate, you aren’t going to get the seat.

“Had I been the candidate, they would have won the seat… It wasn’t my decision. It was taken out of my hands and I will never forgive them for that.”

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Party aims to select candidates who reflect well on the Party and who have the greatest chance of being elected as was done in Bentley.”