Jamie Driscoll

Jamie Driscoll (born April 1970 ) is a British politician who served as the metro mayor of the North of Tyne Combined Authority from 2019 to 2024. He represented Labour until June 2023 and then became an independent. He was previously a Labour councillor on Newcastle City Council for the Monument ward from 2018 to 2019 and has been a Green Party councillor for the same ward since 2026.

Driscoll founded Majority in 2024. He was one of the directors of Your Party's operating company, but resigned in October 2025 following a financial dispute amongst the party's founders. He joined the Green Party of England and Wales in December 2025.

Early life Driscoll was born in Middlesbrough, North Riding of Yorkshire in 1970. His father was a tank driver in the British army before becoming a shift worker at Imperial Chemical Industries, while his mother was a youth worker and a union shop steward who served as a women's officer for Cleveland County Council and founded the first women's refuge from domestic violence in Middlesbrough. Driscoll stated that his politics was influenced by his mother. At the age of 22, he secured a grant to study engineering part-time at Northumbria University, which he combined with work as a nightclub bouncer. He was a jiu-jitsu instructor for twenty years before retiring in 2018,

Political career Driscoll joined the Labour Party in 1985, and the Transport and General Workers' Union in 1986.

In 2015, he campaigned for Ed Miliband in Doncaster North during the 2015 general election and for Jeremy Corbyn in his Labour Party leadership bid. He also served as branch secretary of the Labour Party in the East Gosforth ward. He ran being supported by figures on the left, including shadow chancellor John McDonnell, Noam Chomsky, Paul Mason, Clive Lewis and Laura Pidcock. He also had organisational support from Unite the Union, Momentum, RMT, Fire Brigades Union, TSSA and Aslef. The Green Party did not stand a candidate against him. He appointed Hugo Fearnley as his political advisor.

As mayor, Driscoll led the North East devolution deal from 2019 onwards, striking an "unlikely political alliance" with Michael Gove, The deal was signed in December 2022 and resulted in the creation of the North East Combined Authority in May 2024. Driscoll was described in The Guardian at the time as "the most influential modern Labour figure you have never heard of". He resigned from Labour and later announced that he would stand in the inaugural 2024 North East mayoral election as an independent. He was backed by the former chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, Lynne Jones, and received support from Green New Deal Rising (a youth organisation with 5 Labour, 4 Green and 3 independent MPs as patrons, linked to the Green New Deal Group led by Colin Hines ). Driscoll finished second, 58,399 votes behind Labour candidate Kim McGuinness.

Driscoll joined the Common Sense Policy Group – an interdisciplinary research team organised ahead of the 2024 general election by the Northumbria University political scientist Matthew Thomas Johnson – as a contributor to Act Now: A Vision for a Better Future and a New Social Contract (2024), a book-length policy proposal centred on universal basic income and modeled on the 1942 Beveridge Report.

Post-mayorality On 16 December 2024, Driscoll registered the new organisation Majority with the Electoral Commission to field candidates across Great Britain. He called on Labour members with "a social conscience" to leave their party.

Driscoll and Majority have been involved in discussions around the setting up of a new left-wing party, known by the interim name of Your Party. In April 2025, alongside Andrew Feinstein and Beth Winter, Driscoll became a director of the company MoU Operations Ltd that was set up to manage supporter data for the new party project. which were speculated to have exceeded £1m.

In August 2025, Jamie Driscoll announced he was standing 2026 Newcastle City Council election in Monument ward, and said that a progressive alliance of Majority, the Green Party and independents could win control of Newcastle City Council. Driscoll also announced that Majority had almost 1,000 due-paying members. He announced in November that he was not a member of Your Party and did not intend to join.

In December 2025, Driscoll announced he had joined the Green Party, planning to stand for election to Newcastle City Council as a Green candidate. In January 2026, he was selected by Newcastle Green Party to contest the Monument ward in the 2026 local election in which he was successfully elected.

Personal life Driscoll lives with his wife Caroline, who is an NHS doctor in Gateshead, and their two children.

He is a member of Greenpeace and Amnesty International, an ambassador for the White Ribbon Campaign, and a former member of Mensa International.