Who from Brighton’s past should we be remembering? The film ‘Vindication Swim’ recalls the achievements of the amazing Mercedes Gleitze

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 13th March 2024)

Brighton has a poor record of preserving the memory of those who have gone before. How many Brightonians, not least those who are recent arrivals, know who Herbert Carden, Dorothy Stringer or Lewis Cohen were? And why should they? The City Council does little to commemorate these and other individuals who helped make the city what it is. The Argus remembers them, and Brighton and Hove Buses names significant people from Brighton’s past on its buses and on a special website. It should be commended for this.

From time to time I write about people I have known who have died, people like Selma Montford, Dennis Hobden, Ruth Larkin, Bernie Jordan and Bob Cristofili. Mary Clarke is the ‘forgotten suffragette’ in spite of being Emmeline Pankhurst’s sister. Mary ran the Brighton office of the Women’s Social and Political Union. She died on Christmas Day 1910 from a brain haemorrhage probably caused by rough treatment at the hands of the police and prison authorities immediately before her passing. There is no memorial for Mary other than her name appearing on the front of a Brighton bus. There is now a campaign to have a statue of Mary Clarke erected in the gardens of the Royal Pavilion estate. 

Another long-forgotten Brightonian is Mercedes Gleitze. She was born in Brighton who, in 1927, became the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Her swimming achievements were not ‘limited’ to that. She is believed to be the first person to swim the Straights of Gibraltar and was the first person to swim to Robben Island and back to Cape Town, a sea I know well as I was brought up there and can testify to the currents and coldness of those waters.

After nearly 100 years during which time she had become largely forgotten, her legacy is now secure through a film that went on general release last Friday, deliberately coinciding with International Women’s Day. The film, Vindication Swim, features the amazing Kirsten Callaghan and the equally impressive John Locke. Remarkably, it was written and directed by a 23-year-old Brightonian, Elliott Hasler. If you warch just one film this year, make sure it’s Vindication Swim.

With Kirsten Callaghan and John Locke (I’m the one who didn’t dress up for the occasion!)

After a special screening of the film on International Women’s Day at Brighton’s Duke of York cinema, a cinema that Mercedes herself had visited, Kirsten Callaghan, John Locke and Elliott Hasler answered questions from the audience. Kirsten described some of the discomforts and challenges faced by Mercedes which she, too, had experienced. For example, she wore a heavy 100-year-old one-piece bathing suit. The leather in the goggles she used bled, resulting in a disgusting taste seeping into her mouth. On one occasion she was in the water for four hours, with the salt affecting her mouth and sense of taste. Elliott, too, spent lengthy periods filming in the water, but he had the protection of a wetsuit! John, on the other hand, stayed in a small support boat as had his character, Harold Best, who had coached Mercedes.

All the scenes in the sea were filmed off the south coast. No use was made of stage tanks nor ‘green screen’ technology where subjects can be superimposed onto virtual backgrounds. 

Back to Mercedes herself. Her first endurance swimming record was for 26 hours. Over several years she extended this record to 45 and, subsequently, 46 hours. She had become a popular and famous personality, and when she undertook these endurance swims in public swimming baths, crowds would attend and encourage her by singing together.

Most of Mercedes epic swims, including her world records for endurance swimming, were sponsored.  She used her sponsorship and winnings to open accommodation for homeless people, particularly homeless women, with the first Mercedes Gleitze Home opening in Leicester in 1933. The charity bearing her name continues to operate providing accommodation for homeless people but, sadly, not in Brighton. She helped unemployed people to move from the north to Leicester where there were jobs. She is also said to have supported the extension of the franchise to women below the age of 30 in 1928.

Towards the end of her life, Mercedes became increasingly reclusive. She denied her past achievements and would not discuss them with her family.  She died in1981 in London aged 80. There is now a blue plaque commemorating this daughter of Brighton at the house in Freshfield Road where she was born in 1900.

I hope that in future more Brighton women, perhaps not as exceptional as Mercedes Gleitze, can be remembered for their own extraordinary achievements.

MPs and councillors have lost the plot about their true roles

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 14th February 2024)

When Winston Churchill was the Member of Parliament for Dundee between 1908 and 1922, it is said that he never visited the town. This was not uncommon at that time and many MPs would never visit their constituency between elections. The link with one’s constituency was merely a vehicle of convenience for gaining political office. How different it is today. MPs maintain constituency offices with a number of paid staff. When the House in sitting, the majority of MPs return to their constituencies on a Thursday evening, undertake constituency business on Friday and over the weekend, before returning to Westminster in time for Monday’s sitting.

It wasn’t until 1969 that MPs first received an allowance to employ a solitary secretary, and it wasn’t until the early 1970s that MPs began to make case work a major part of their role. This development was pioneered by Liberal candidates and MPs who set up Liberal Focus Teams. This led to some notable successes in by-elections and was soon replicated by other parties. In Brighton Kemptown, the Conservative Andrew Bowden, who in 1970 won the seat from Labour’s Dennis Hobden, became a very familiar figure around the constituency and made this a safe Conservative seat for the next two decades. 

By contrast, his fellow Conservative in Brighton Pavilion, Julian Amery, was rarely, if ever, seen in Brighton between elections. This prompted a letter to the Evening Argus asking whether Mr Amery was in fact dead since he had not been seen in the constituency since the previous election. Mr Amery responded that he was elected to represent his electorate in parliament, not in Brighton.

Today all MPs aim to be familiar figures in their towns, villages or cities. All advertise regular ‘surgeries’ where they meet with constituents and take up issues on their behalf, including planning matters and neighbour disputes. They will advocate on behalf of their constituents about housing need and disrepair, traffic and parking problems, school admissions and registration with doctor surgeries. In Brighton and Hove potholes, refuse collection and weeds on the pavements have demanded time and attention from MPs who are supported by a team of constituency caseworkers. If the truth be told, it is these staff who do most of the casework on behalf of the MP.

Back in Westminster, the role of MPs is to scrutinise legislation and to hold the government to account but this has been watered down as MPs have increasingly become mere voting fodder for their party leaders. 

This arrangement where MPs have become glorified and well-paid social workers is, of course, a ridiculous nonsense. MPs have no direct authority and little expertise on most casework matters. They have no responsibility for schools, housing, street cleaning, traffic, parking, and planning matters. 

Council leader, Bella Sankey, doing the job of a council worker – this is not what councillors are elected to do (Photo: The Argus)

On the other hand, local councillors are responsible for all these. But local councillors, too, have lost their way. They debate and pass resolutions on national and international matters, none of which is the responsibility of local councils. Meanwhile, they have highly publicised action days where they make a big show on social media of them removing graffiti and cutting back weeds. This is not the role of a local councillor. Councils employ staff to do these tasks, and whenever I see a councillor having one of these action days, especially when they are part of the administration, it is a signal that they as councillors have spectacularly failed in their role and they are trying to look good while merely papering over the cracks of failing services.

The role of councillors should be the setting of strategies, priorities and standards for council officers to implement, and ensuring that these strategies are carried out. In Brighton and Hove we see the complete reversal of roles, where officers take a lead on strategic matters and all-too-often police their councillors’ actions and statements. Whereas councillors should be the representatives of their voters, there is a breed of council staff called ‘community engagement officers’. I have witnessed these officers moderating what a councillor can say at community meetings and councillors deferring to them. 

Brighton and Hove City Council is having to find cuts . I would suggest that councillors get rid of community engagement officers and that they resume that role. While they are about it, they should clear out the overwhelming majority of strategy officers, policy co-ordinators, and community safety, diversity and inclusion officers. They make the council look busy and might make some people with vested interests feel good but they rarely benefit the people of the city.  

The top ten most read items on my blog in 2023

I have reviewed my most-read items during 2023. Two of them were written in previous years including the most read item which has now been the most-read item for three years running. Here are Iinks to the top 10 most read.

#1: Tony Benn’s analogy of management bureaucracy in the NHS is still relevant to us today https://wp.me/pDTWu-1Jn

#2: The Greens lost in Brighton and Hove because they were poor communicators, poor administrators, and exceptionally poor politicians https://wp.me/pDTWu-21p 

#3: Time for an end to Brighton Pride: it has become toxic https://wp.me/pDTWu-23T 

#4: Why choosing Eddie Izzard as its candidate in Brighton Pavilion would be a disaster for the Labour Party https://wp.me/pDTWu-23J 

#5: Labour’s Selection in Brighton Pavilion: Having Eddie Izzard on the shortlist is an absolute joke https://wp.me/pDTWu-271 

#6: Eddie Izzard’s Political Obituary https://wp.me/pDTWu-27u 

#7: A little known condition, Poland Syndrome, that effects the rich and famous (and others) https://wp.me/pDTWu-1WB 

#8: The decline of Pride and a question about its future https://wp.me/pDTWu-23P 

#9: Labour and the Greens should have known better than to allow Ed Miliband and Caroline Lucas anywhere near Russell Brand https://wp.me/pDTWu-24T 

#10: Why the Green Party’s Sian Berry is almost certainly not going to hold Brighton Pavilion at the next general election https://wp.me/pDTWu-23m 

Rishi Sunak: an empty shell in an expensive suit. My review of the year.

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 27th December 2023)

As we approach the new year, many will reflect on the last twelve months.  Who would have thought that we would have witnessed the near terminal implosion of the Conservative Party? Even in the last three weeks, the party has further torn itself apart over one of its flagship policies – immigration and the ill-conceived Rwanda initiative. Rishi Sunak looks increasingly forlorn and tetchy,  . He can’t please the left or right in his own party. What hope has he of convincing the country that they can trust the Conservatives?

The May local elections in Brighton and Hove saw the humiliation of the Green Party, seeing the number of its councillors slump from 21 to just seven, a result even worse than the eleven I had forecast, a forecast that had attracted scorn from several Greens. The Conservatives fared slightly worse, ending up with an historic low of just six seats. In the case of the Conservatives, the blame for their performance was down entirely to their national leadership, while the Greens locally were the architects of their own misfortune. They were poor communicators, poor administrators, and exceptionally poor politicians.

The Brighton and Hove Labour Party had its most successful election ever, winning 38 seats. But the wheels have begun to come off. Within six months, two of their councillors had been expelled from the Party following allegations that they might actually live in Leicester; another has been removed from committees and representing the Council because of a rather innocuous, dated tweet that has been interpreted as transphobic and for which she, regrettably, apologised; and a fourth has resigned just six months after being elected.  One must wonder about the competence of the Party that failed to do basic due diligence before imposing three of these candidates on its members and on the electorate.

Internationally, the war in Ukraine rumbles on without any sign of a solution. That conflict has been overshadowed by the appalling terrorist attack in southern Israel on 7th October that sickened all reasonable, decent people. The physical and sexual violence on that day should have been condemned without reservation and should continue to be condemned.  What followed has seen an unacceptable loss of life amongst thousands of the civilian population of Gaza.  The humanitarian disaster we are witnessing in Gaza should also be condemned by all reasonable, decent people. One horrific war crime does not justify another, nor should any of it justify the increase in anti-semitism in the U.K.

On a personal level, after 41 years working in the housing and social care sector, 37 of these with the wonderful charity BHT Sussex and 20 years as its chief executive, I retired. I was given a wonderful send off and humbled to be awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Sussex. In retirement I have been freed from the daily stress of leading a large organisation with over 300 employees that works with 10,000 people annually. Gone, too, are the out-of-hours crisis phone calls. Gone is the accountability to a Board, a regular source of stress for many chief executives. Gone, too, sadly, is the monthly salary!

All that has been replaced by a different pace of life, one that has allowed time for reading, thinking, writing and walking Molly the Dog. My wife cannot believe that there is so much cricket, rugby and football that demands to be watched, the highlight for this South African being the Springboks winning the Rugby World Cup for a record fourth time.

So what comes next?  The English men are unlikely to match the success of the Lionesses in the Euros. Will there be much for Brits to celebrate at the Paris Olympics, and will Britain once again score nul point in Eurovision? There is likely to be a general election in 2024 and only a fool would bet against a thumping Labour majority. But how long will it take before the gloss comes off the Labour government as it adheres to Conservative spending plans while not growing the economy at a rate necessary to meet the hopes and aspirations of the electorate?

Will the Conservative Party exist this time next year, or will it have become the two parties that seem determined to emerge? Will the Greens retain Brighton Pavilion? It’s all to play for, in my opinion, as the Londoner Siân Berry is up against the local Tom Gray. For those of us who love elections, this is likely to be a bumper year, and I for one cannot wait for hostilities to commence!

Will Labour get its house in order and end the Council’s hypocrisy over tagging and graffiti?

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 22nd November 2023)

For many a long year Brighton and Hove City Council has had a hypocritical attitude towards tagging and graffiti. There have been claims that tagging was the responsibility of just a few individuals when that was patently untrue.  Then sanctions were threatened against business owners who didn’t clean up tagging on their property while the council exempted itself from such penalties on its properties.

Skateboard Park on The Level

Earlier this year I highlighted the shocking state of graffiti and tagging on The Level, specifically the children’s playground and skateboard park.  Within a week of me raising questions with the City Council, much of the tagging in the children’s area had been painted out.  Before I could become self-satisfied that this column had achieved one small victory, it was reported that the council had cleaned the area because of a planned visit by the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman!  Since then no further action has been taken, not least in cleaning up the graffiti and tagging in the skateboard park.

The Argus reported that Ms Braverman met Sussex Police Chief Constable Jo Shiner and Inspector James Ward to discuss success in tackling antisocial behaviour and violence in Brighton, and that the Home Secretary was seen at The Level where Sussex Police have used targeted, evidence-led policing to reduce crime in so-called “hotspot areas”. She was also told about how a partnership approach at The Level had reduced antisocial behaviour in the park by 55 per cent.

Those of us who live in the area and who do our shopping on nearby London Road might beg to disagree.  In the thirty years that I have lived and worked in this area I can honestly say that crime and anti-social behaviour is now at an all-time high.  I can accept that reported crime might have reduced but what is the point of reporting crime when the police do not respond.  There is open shoplifting and drug dealing, including on The Level, notwithstanding periodic initiatives by the police.

Last week the council agreed new tougher measures against taggers and fly tippers. Vandals caught tagging will by fined up to £500, an increase from £150, while fines for fly tipping will go from £400 to £1,000, littering from £150 to £300 and fly posting from £150 to £500.  Councillor Tim Rowkins, who chairs the the Environment, South Downs and Sea Committee, said: “Graffiti is a blight on the city and we need to get on top of the problem.”  He said that increasing fines was only as good as enforcement and that, in the past six months, three times as many graffiti perpetrators had been caught as in the same period last year.

There is some suggestion that taggers will be required to clean up their vandalism.  I won’t hold my breath.  Yes, there will be some high-profile examples of this happening, but I am unconvinced by this style of ‘muscular politics’. We’ve seen it before with Trump, that he would build the wall and “the best part is that Mexico will pay for it.”  A lot of people believed him.  Similarly Sunak pledged to “stop the boats” yet they still come. Braverman’s dream of seeing flights of illegal immigrants taking off for Rwanda remains just that, a dream and a very costly one at that.

I’ve written before that I hate graffiti, especially mindless, destructive tagging. I wrote: “Some shallow individual with obviously no artistic talent, in a pathetic attempt to be noticed, creeps around town at night spraying tags that are neither artful nor edifying. Some of the aerosol paints used are bad for the environment, and damage the brickwork. It puts private individuals, the council, charities and businesses to unnecessary expense.  While middle class Brighton might decry tagging, it has a contradictory and permissive attitude to so-called street art. I see very little difference between this and nighttime tagging. Both deface buildings and public places. While the artistic merit of street art might be one notch up from tagging, it does nothing for me.”

I wish the new Labour administration well with its initiative.  It already has had some success with clearing the weeds from our pavements, and for that they should be applauded.  I will continue to watch the state of graffiti and tagging in the city, starting with the appalling state of the skateboard park on The Level. The City Council previously clarified that the “only piece of graffiti that is acceptable would be commissioned murals” and “any other graffiti is classed as ‘problem graffiti’.”  Hopefully the Labour administration will demonstrate that, unlike its predecessor, it is not hypocritical and will get its own house in order on The Level.

Has Labour sabotaged its own campaigns in Brighton Pavilion and in East Worthing & Shoreham?

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 15th November 2023)

Following the King’s Speech, there is speculation now as to when the general election will be called. Three dates have been suggested: May, the early autumn, or December 2024. The election must be held by January 2025.

My guess is that Rishi Sunak will go for late September or early October. An April poll would be too early for any Budget giveaway to have any effect. December would mean very dark evenings, although a low turnout might benefit the Conservatives. The reason I believe it will be September or October is because any tax cut or give-away bonanza in the spring Budget will have had time to settle in.  However, any such election gimmick will probably be too little and too late for this walking-dead Conservative government.

In Brighton and Hove, the early autumn date would mean that students will not have returned in time to register to vote, something that would seriously disadvantage the Greens in Brighton Pavilion who rely on a large student turnout.

Previously, I have forecast that Labour would win seven seats in Sussex (including taking Brighton Pavilion from the Greens). I have predicted the same number of seats for the Conservatives with the Liberal Democrats winning two. This forecast is now being compromised by the inexplicable actions of the Labour Party which appears to be doing its utmost not to win in East Worthing and Shoreham, and in Brighton Pavilion.

In the Worthing seat, not a single local candidate has been shortlisted. The party has denied party members the options of selecting as their candidate either of two respected Labour councillors, Cat Arnold and Carl Walker, such a shortsighted decision. Labour has performed phenomenally well to gain control of the Borough Council, yet the party seems not to want to build on its success in this constituency. Meanwhile, in Worthing West, the Labour leader of the council, Dr Becky Cooper, has been shortlisted. The party would be foolish not to select her as its candidate as she stands far-and-away the best chance of being elected.

Labour has never won either Worthing seat but the migration of families from Brighton has changed the demographics, just as happened previously in Hove and Portslade, once the safest-of-safe Conservative seats, now solidly Labour.

The Green Party’s Siân Berry who has hit the ground running in Brighton Pavilion

Meanwhile, in Brighton Pavilion, the Greens selected Siân Berry several months ago. She has hit the ground running and her name recognition is increasing. Labour, on the other hand, is dragging its feet. Originally the selection was due to take place in September. Two contenders, Eddie Izzard and Tom Gray, have already announced that they are seeking the nomination. Even if the selection was to take place now, the problem for Labour is it would run into the Christmas period and its candidate, whoever that might be, will have lost three months of invaluable campaigning time. Instead, they will have to wait until the new year, in the depths of winter, before launching their campaign. This would be less of a problem if the election is in September or October but might prove to be a fatal error if Sunak goes for May 2nd or 9th.

There is still no word from the leader of the Council, Bella Sankey: will she be seeking the nomination? The timing of the decision by Caroline Lucas to stand down has not helped Bella. As a relatively new councillor, and having been leader for just over six months, it might appear that Bella is being opportunist by becoming the candidate and subsequently MP, jumping from one opportunity to the next to get into Parliament. 

But if she doesn’t put herself forward now, which would be a shame, the opportunity to become an MP in the City she loves will have passed. By 2029, whoever is elected in 2024, be it Siân Berry or one of the other less-than-convincing Labour contenders, will have established themselves as the sitting MP and they will be hard, if not impossible, to shift. By 2029, Bella won’t be the exciting new kid on the block but she will be burdened by the failings of her administration, a fate that inevitably befalls every leader of the Council.

And by 2029, Labour will not be enjoying the bumper lead it currently has in the polls, thanks to the ever-increasing shambles of a government being led by Rishi Sunak. Rather, a sense of sheer disappointment and bewildered incomprehension will have set in as the Starmer government fails to provide the improvements and the housing that the country needs, unlike the Blair government which on the domestic front in 1997 things really did get better. 

Welcoming the Greens to Brighton for their annual conference

Green Party activists are descending on Brighton this weekend for the party’s annual conference. Sessions at the conference include: ‘How we won big in May’ and ‘Brighton: how we can win, what we learnt from the past 13 years and the plan to elect Siân’.

Graphic: Election Maps (@electionmapsuk)

Clearly the party is in good spirits and feeling upbeat. In May, the party did ‘win big’ and exceeded all previous achievements in local elections … except in Brighton.

To assist the Greens in their deliberations, I am providing links to some items I wrote after the local elections and following the selection of Siân Berry as its candidate to defend Caroline Lucas’s seat in Brighton Pavilion:

The Greens lost in Brighton and Hove because they were poor communicators, poor administrators, and exceptionally poor politicians

Why the Green Party’s Sian Berry is almost certainly not going to hold Brighton Pavilion at the next general election

And before anyone suggests I am pro-Labour and anti-Green, I have voted for Green Party candidates more often since 2010 that all other parties combined. I left the Labour Party in 1994 (having been a councillor for seven years) and haven’t been a member of any party since then. I don’t spare the Labour Party criticism. Recently, relating to a working class former Tory councillor, I wrote: “The fact that she was not a Labour councillor is an indictment of the failures of that party to offer a political home to her and others alongside the academics and middle class white colour workers in the local Labour Party.” I’ve written: “The Stepford Frontbenchers of the Labour Party with their hollowed-out, lifeless eyes and robotic answers…”.  On Russell Brand, I wrote: “Labour and the Greens should have known better than to allow Ed Miliband and Caroline Lucas anywhere near Brand.”

Yes, I have been critical of the Greens. The crop of councillors up to the local elections formed the most incompetent administration I have witnessed in over 40 years as an activist and subsequently observer of local Brighton politics. They had a few exceptional councillors but as a group they were an embarrassment to their party and deserved the mauling that they received.”

I hope the Green delegates enjoy their time in the City. But if you want to learn lessons about why the Greens were so utterly rejected locally, do read these links.

The Conservatives haven’t done anything meaningful on housing because, simply, they just don’t care.

(This item was first published in the Brighton Argus on 31st May 2023)

The housing crisis has not been caused by a natural disaster. It is the direct result of decisions taken by government ministers who had every warning that their approach would damage health, cause insecurity and poverty, and endanger life.

Rachel Maclean, Minister for Housing and Planning

Since 2010 the housing crisis has worsened – 13 years of abject failure of government housing policy by fifteen transient housing ministers.   Can you even name the current housing minister?  She is Rachel Maclean who isn’t a household name, not even (as the old joke goes) in her own household.

The government has no real interest in resolving the housing crisis. If they had cared they would have acted, as Harold Macmillan did in the 1950s, building more than 300,000 homes a year. The current Conservative government and all Conservative Members of Parliament, including Rishi Sunak, were elected in 2019 on a manifesto that they would build 300,000 homes a year.  Yet they have now abandoned this pledge. The “inevitable outcome” of this, according to the MP, Clive Betts, who chairs parliament’s Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, will be a reduction in housebuilding.

Can we ever trust in the future anything the Conservatives say about housing? Given their record, the answer is a resounding no.

In 2013 the Coalition legislated to stop tenants getting legal aid for disrepair of their homes unless they are able to prove a severe risk to life or health. And as a consequence the tenants of Grenfell Tower were denied legal aid before that fateful fire.

The Right to Buy remains in place in England but is long gone in Scotland and Wales where the financial stupidity of this policy has been recognised.  40% of homes sold through the Right to Buy are now in the private rented sector charging rents four or five times greater than the amount charged when these homes were council houses. The government now wants to extend the Right to Buy to housing associations!  Worse still, even Labour is suggesting it wishes to do likewise.

The effectiveness of independent advice agencies to deal with tenancy disputes has been blunted by years of funding cuts, starting with cuts under Labour until George Osborne inflicted a near-fatal killer blow.

 With cost of living, health and climate crises, you would think it would make sense to invest to ensure that homes are energy efficient, costing less to heat and reducing the climate impact. The health of residents would improve, and demands on the NHS would reduce. Three issues tackled for the price of one.

I appreciate that health is a huge department but if poor housing is costing the NHS £1.4b a year then surely it would make sense to have health and housing under one government department. They did that in 1948; why not see sense again?

Housing insecurity, like insecurity in employment, allows for the existence of a compliant, insecure and desperate population, be they renters or people with mortgages. This weekend I spoke to a couple of tenants who are ever-so anxious about asking for needed repairs in case their landlord terminates their tenancy at its next review.

Housing policy was once designed to provide homes where people live. It now facilitates investment opportunities where small and large fortunes can be made, including by government ministers and backbench MPs who oppose the introduction of rent caps, or the requirement that homes in the private rented sector are in a decent state of repair.

So-called ‘affordable’ rents are 80% of market rents. In places like Brighton and Hove this can be well beyond the means of many people.  The conduct of volume house builders, both private and some housing associations, has been complicit in this conspiracy.

Conspiracy? Yes – they all know what they are doing, and they all know the consequences.  Government housing policy borders on being a criminal conspiracy to inflate housing costs to maximise profits for themselves, their backers and the rich.

Government initiatives, like Help to Buy, increase demand and does nothing to increase supply. Those in housing need, especially in high-cost housing areas like Brighton and Hove, will not benefit from these schemes.

Where will people live in the future? We won’t begin to tackle the housing crisis in Brighton and in the country at large until we have a massive programme of house building but not of any tenure because land is scarce in places like Brighton. We won’t begin to tackle the housing crisis until we a massive programme of building council houses, that are well designed, well maintained, carbon neutral, and with rents that people can actually afford to pay.

If the government wished to do something about housing, they have had every opportunity to do so over the last 13 years, but they haven’t done anything meaningful because, simply, they just don’t care.

Is there a way back for the Greens and Conservatives in Brighton and Hove?

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 24th May 2023)

Politics is cyclical. Those who are on the up should remember that this never lasts, and those who are currently suffering at the hands of the electorate will, in most cases, bounce back.

While the Greens enjoyed success in Lewes, Wealden, Mid Suffolk and elsewhere, in Brighton and Hove the party has just experienced its worse-ever setback, but activists should not give up. They have the potential to recover and to become, once again, a force in local politics. But they must change.

One criticism of the Green administration was that it was too focused on national and international issues while failing to get things right locally. The competent delivery of local services  should have been its first priority, but in Brighton and Hove public toilets were closed, weeds grew tall on the pavements, tagging and graffiti blighted the city, and bins were not always emptied. These were just a few of its failures.

So having heavily lost the local elections, I anticipated a change in tone from the seven-member official opposition. However, the new Leader of the Greens on the City Council, Steve Davis, someone I have praised previously in this column, used his first column in The Argus to talk about everything other than local issues. He wrote about the cost of the Coronation and the new repressive powers given to police to clamp down on demonstrators, but nothing about what the Greens would do in opposition on the City Council. Only his last paragraph made reference to the council, saying that “first and foremost in my mind is that even on a local council we need to ensure that protest is permitted.”

The issues he has focused on are for Parliament where the Greens are represented exceptionally well by Caroline Lucas, their sole MP who represents Brighton Pavilion. Caroline has noticeably not rushed to defend the record of her Green colleagues on the City Council, concentrating rightly on national issues, including the funding of local authorities. Perhaps she hasn’t wanted to be associated, understandably, with failure.

Caroline remains the party’s greatest asset. She continues to enjoy popular support, notwithstanding the failings of her Green colleagues on the City Council.  She had a majority of 19,940 at the 2019, and has seen it increase in every election since she was first elected in 2010 with a majority of just 1,252.

When I spoke to friends and neighbours before the recent local elections, many said that there was no way that they would ever vote Green again. But when I asked them about Caroline Lucas, the response was quite different, although her lack of support for women in the face of attacks by ‘trans rights activists’ is costing her support, mainly amongst women but also men.

It is not just the new Green leader whose Argus article focused on national politics. The new Leader of the Council, Labour’s Bella Sankey, used her first column to say she has got straight down to work, but then talked about meeting Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, to discus the cost-of-living crisis and what a Labour government might do (unless Sir Keir does another of his now regular U-turns). 

Over the next four years Bella Sankey (inset) must focus 100% of sorting out the City’s problems (Photo credit: The Argus)

Bella Sankey has enormous talent and could be just what Brighton needs.  She needs to focus 100% on sorting out the current mess. I can understand that being a new rising star might be intoxicating, but she needs to keep her feet firmly on the ground in Brighton and Hove. I am sure there will be attractive offers for her to stand in newly-winnable parliamentary seats elsewhere in the south east, but she should publicly rule this out as she has been elected to do a job in this city for the next four years. Leading the City Council will be an all-consuming commitment and should never be seen as a mere stepping stone to Parliament.

One of the six-member Conservative Group, Samer Bagaeen, in his first column in The Argus, focused on local issues, laying the blame for many of the City’s ills at the door of Labour, writing that a whole raft of decisions were actually made by previous Labour administrations, such as stopping the use of pesticides to control the growth of pavement weeds, and to bring in-house various outsourced services including the maintenance of public toilets and the Council housing repair service where there is now a backlog of around 10,000 jobs.

Of course Cllr Bagaeen focuses on local issues, anything to draw attention away from the tragic comedy of errors of the Conservative government, their crashing of the economy, and the cost-of-living crisis.

For the Conservatives, the way back lies in a period of effective national opposition while the party decides whether it wishes to become, once again, a party of government or to remain a national joke.

The Greens lost in Brighton and Hove because they were poor communicators, poor administrators, and exceptionally poor politicians

(This item fist appeared in the Brighton Argus on 10th May 2023)

My forecast for last week’s local elections in Brighton was met with derision, not least by Green Party councillors. Even Labour activists felt I had been over-optimistic on their behalf.  Few others predicted Labour topping 30 seats. I had said that Labour would win 31 seats, the Greens 12, the Conservatives 8, and that there would be three independents.

Graphic: Election Maps (@electionmapsuk)

In the event, Labour secured 38 seats, the Greens seven, Conservatives six, and three independents. Few anticipated the rejection of the Greens by the voters on such a massive and humiliating scale. 

It was particularly bizarre, that even in the days before polling, some Greens thought that they would remain the largest party, and one or two felt that they might even gain their first overall majority. How could the party have been so out-of-touch, arrogant and tone-deaf to the mood in the city? 

So why did it go so terribly wrong for the Greens? Running the Council, they were poor communicators, poor administrators, and exceptionally poor politicians. A narrative had been created around them, mostly justifiable, pointing in one direction electorally: to the door.

That narrative included one of indifference to the problems of the city, the closure of public toilets, weeds on the pavements, graffiti, the dirty state of the city, the treatment of mayoral-hopeful Dawn Barnett, traffic, an unnecessary flight to a climate summit, and the administration’s perceived focus on national and international issues when they weren’t getting things done at home. 

I have no doubt that most Greens were hard-working and much of what they did was well-intentioned. Their time in office was marred by the global pandemic, the financial crisis and crippling cuts from central government. What they needed to do was to demonstrate that they were first-rate politicians rather than self-righteous when justifiably criticised.

When, over the last year, I have written about these things in my Argus column, I have been told that the Green councillors don’t bother reading what I write. That was their prerogative but they should not have ignored the many other voices saying that they were getting things so very badly wrong and on so many issues.

Two final observations. I am always sorry when hard-working and long-standing councillors, such as Dee Simson, Steve Bell and Dawn Barnett, get defeated. I was sorry that Leo Litman and Siriol Hugh-Jones lost their seats. Leo is someone who brought humour to his role and to the Council chamber, and Siriol took her role as Co-chair of Housing particularly seriously, showing an ability to work across political divides.

The second observation was the extraordinary vote secured by the independent Peter Atkinson and topping the poll in North Portslade, possible the only cloud on Labour’s horizon (and a result I did forecast along with the election of two Independents, Bridget Fishleigh and Mark Earthey, in Rottingdean and West Saltdean).

As for Labour, having secured the largest-ever majority in Brighton and Hove, they now have the ability to impose, without hindrance, their will on the Council. However, they will face huge challenges and, given their mandate, have very high expectations placed on them.

The Labour Group should avoid making some elementary mistakes. It should not rush into making changes in how the Council is run, at least until the very large number of new councillors and its new leadership have a better understanding as to how things work. It should resist the temptation to reintroduce a cabinet-style of administration. That would marginalise the majority of its own councillors and the few remaining opposition members. 

With such a majority, another temptation will be to ignore talent in the opposition. To do so would disadvantage the Council and shortchange the people of Brighton and Hove. Labour can and should be magnanimous in victory. 

The three independent councillors, for example, have a great deal to offer and it would be naive and foolish not to harness what they have to offer. For example, Bridget Fishleigh, given her expertise in procurement, should be encouraged to serve on the Asset Management Board. Mark Earthey is an expert in green, renewable energy and general sustainability, and he should serve on the Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee. Peter Atkinson has a passion for and extensive knowledge of housing. Should Labour overlook these assets, it would immediately be replicating the behaviour of its Green predecessor.

I am encouraged by a tweet from the new Leader of the Council, Bella Sankey, who said: “We’ve united our City. Rejecting the nastiness of the out of touch Tory Government. Issuing a damning verdict of the uselessness & hypocrisy of the Green record. Offering hope, vision & unity. We’re ready to lead. I would urge magnanimity in victory.”

Actions will validate these fine words. I wish the new administration well so please don’t set off on the wrong foot.