Building Green success: Scanning Brighton's political horizon (Part 1)

Over the last few days, those of us living in Brighton and Hove have had our first inkling of what to expect politically over the coming council session. For all of the feverish excitement precipitated by our success at the local elections, the sharp realisation of what controlling our first local authority entails has been a sobering experience for the local party. In the next few days I'm going to write about the new political context in the city and take an educated guess at what challenges the Green Council will face over the next four years.

I'm going to start my analysis today with Labour. No sooner than the results came in at the count than Labour's local leadership moved fast to distance themselves from any talk of coalition with us. Their hasty press release sounded a constructive note and clearly acknowledged our mandate to form the next council, but their positioning neatly left us to shoulder the difficult decisions over the next few years alone. They are generously (!) giving us enough rope to hang ourselves with and leaving themselves space to robustly critique our every move. This is a role that served us well in the past and I don't begrudge their appropriation of it - I personally think it will be important to hold us to account and should assist in tightening our thinking, especially as we get used to our new responsibilities.

On Monday, the Green party membership met collectively to discuss our position and as a result of a sometime robust discussion, we decided to try and re-open negotiations on the budget signed off by the previous administration. In a statement, we asked Labour to work with us to try and reshape spending priorities on the budget in order to take the pressure away from cutting front-line services. Not only does this strategy succeed in drawing Labour closer to our stance of resisting the central government cuts agenda, but I think it sends a strong message that we will aspire to conduct politics more consensually in the city.

Unfortunately, that may be easier said than done. One of the major fault-lines of this particular election has been the souring of relations between Labour and the Greens. I'm sure my perspective differs from theirs, but it has felt to me at times that they seem to resent our appropriation of "their" voters. No party has a right to voter loyalty and our lack of expectation has kept our feet on the ground. This is one of the advantages of coming from nowhere and building up support street by street! Their anger at losing ground in the city is directed squarely at us. At this crucial juncture, it risks preventing us working in a united fashion to blunt the impact of cuts. Already, the tone from Labour activists on Twitter and the influential local politics blog (The Brighton Blogger), is barely keeping within the bounds of civility. Unless cooler heads prevail amongst Labour, this could cause damage to us both. I can foresee real difficulties passing our decisions through full council without some solidarity between our parties. The most vulnerable in the city need us to see beyond our self-interest.

What we must also remember is that in spite of Labour only retaining their current number of council seats, they did increase their share of the vote substantially upon the last set of elections, challenging the Conservatives successfully in some wards. For all of our gains, their share of the actual vote was only 1% behind us, although the spread of votes across wards meant that this didn't translate into actual seats. This signals to me that their poor organisation was more of a contributing factor to our success than we'd like to think, examples of which I observed on the day of the election itself. With a thorough analysis of the hard data and a post-mortem on individual ward performances, we can expect Labour to build substantially upon this support at a future election. Incumbents tend to lose their voters, rather than gain them, as they begin dealing with the compromising realities of wielding power.

Finally, Labour nationally have larger resources and profile than us and it is likely that over the next four years, public attitudes towards the coaltion government will harden, especially now as the public sector job losses are starting to come through and will impact upon our economic growth performance. This could benefit us, but we have to acknowledge that it will provide a compelling case for Labour too.

Local Elections 2011: The battle for Brighton commences!

Early this morning, I found myself walking in drizzle towards a polling station in a staunchly Conservative corner of Brighton. I have to admit it felt that my start to this year’s local elections was an inauspicious one. In spite of first appearances, it is turning out to be quite a special day.

What has really struck me is the solidarity I felt with the people I’ve been matched with outside polling stations. I’ve chatted to more Conservative activists today than I’ve ever done before and in spite of being diametrically opposed to many of each other’s policies, it has been enjoyable to get a different perspective on Brighton life. On top of that, it’s heartening to hear from people passionate about putting their energies into our local community. My faith in human nature has received a boost today from the most unlikely quarter.

But how is the election looking on the ground at 7pm? I’ve spent around six hours monitoring votes outside polling stations throughout the day and I’ve been surprised at the complete lack of Labour or Liberal Democrats activists working alongside us. In both wards I’ve been in (Withdene and Queen’s Park), Labour is the obvious challenger to the incumbents, yet I’ve not seen anybody gathering up data for tonight’s “knocking up” of voters. This will cost them valuable time tonight in mobilising their vote.

That lack of organisation, especially in Queen’s Park, where they have put a massive amount of money, activists and time in to try and dislodge our three Green councillors, has taken me aback a little. Others are reporting a similar lack of sightings of Labour activists in both this ward and others. Either there is a strategy to focus heavily elsewhere in the city or the rumours of their renewed strength have been exaggerated.

It is obvious that turn-out is going to be a little lower than expected too. Although I’ve worked some of the less prominent time-slots, I was surprised at how patchy the numbers were coming through the door. That said, those individuals coming in were younger than I’ve seen previously, so we may be getting the vote out well for the Greens and potentially the AV referendum.

I’m heading out again to try and encourage voters into the polling booths fairly soon, but will try and tweet updates from both the street and the count in the next few hours too. Watch this space and my twitter feed for more detail!

Next week, I’ll be analysing the impact they will have upon Brighton Council in some depth and how the Greens locally should react to the new political circumstances here. I’ll also be unravelling the aftermath of the AV campaign, which at this stage is looking exceptionally disappointing for those of us who support a change in the electoral system.

And a final word for all my colleagues within Brighton & Hove Green Party, who have been an inspiration for their commitment not just to working the campaign, but for taking the time to engage so regularly and energetically with the people we hope to represent. I really hope that their efforts translate into a chance to build and sustain new ambition for this city.