Brighton and Hove’s Green party has announced it is willing to work with Labour – and has placed climate crisis, housing and homelessness and austerity at the top of its agenda.
The party’s councillors announced today it had elected two new deputies to serve under leader Phélim Mac Cafferty, who has also been re-elected to his post of convenor.
He is joined by Councillor Sue Shanks who will take on internal relations and Councillor Hannah Clare who will oversee external relations.
Cllr Shanks was elected in St Peter’s and North Laine, having previously served in Withdean. Councillor Clare, who at 26 is one of the city’s youngest councillors, was elected to Brunswick and Adelaide alongside Councillor Mac Cafferty.
This month’s elections saw the Greens take 19 seats, while Labour took 20. Outgoing council leader Dan Yates quickly reached out to the Greens to propose a “progressive alliance”.
Today, the group unveiled a pledge to the city, its first official response to Labour and outlining its priorities in working with Labour.
The pledge says: “We thank the city for electing so many new Green voices and we welcome the invitation from Labour to discuss how we can work together to make a difference for our residents.
“Yet political parties are not the only voices. To achieve truly transformative politics, we also need to take the conversation about how to tackle these issues back to our communities.
“Greens pledge to residents in our city that we will work with all partners – from the Labour Party, to our community groups, voluntary sector and local businesses – to deliver urgent action on critical issues; especially our climate crisis, housing and homelessness and austerity.
“We would welcome the opportunity to work with Labour councillors to set up our shared vision of a citizen’s assembly on the climate crisis. We are also keen to explore a City Climate and Biodiversity Crises Summit.
“We believe now is the time for cross-party action on housing and homelessness. In the face of national uncertainty from a disastrous Brexit, all parties must jointly uphold our status as a city of sanctuary and welcome.
“Over the next four years we will work with the Labour council to achieve what is best for our city.
“We will never fail to challenge on behalf of our residents, and we will also present new ideas and hold Labour to account when scrutiny is needed.
“We pledge to stand up for what is best for our city; and to continue to hold our council to the high standards our city expects and deserves.”
Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty added: “I am thrilled to unveil our promise to the city today that shows our commitment to doing politics differently and working collaboratively on the issues that residents have regularly told us are their highest concerns.
“Having discussed this with our party membership, we will bring our pledge into discussions with the Labour Group of Councillors over the coming weeks offering a new kind of politics for the residents of Brighton and Hove”.
Positive news, as far as this goes, but the city needs to see the issue of transport, traffic congestion and the ongoing problems left by the partial implementation of the Brighton Gateway project. Lets get the station congestion and taxi access addressed as a priority please?
I’d like to see a similar citizen’s assembly to address other priorities. For example, the recent harassment by our police of Brighton entrepreneurs over CBD whilst they choose not to investigate assaults and robberies, and ignore big chains like Holland and Barrett’s selling CBD & hemp products.
The decent citizens of Brighton and Hove wish more of the same from our Police to get all that drug filth out of the city. Meanwhile, you can carry on with your illegal activity and hopefully, you will be lead away to a nice solitary cell somewhere.
Well this should be fun. Irrelevance and incompetence in perfect harmony. I might have a little more time for the Greens if the whole charade was not … well a charade. My ward, Brunswick is apparently solidly ‘green’. And those voters really mean it. You can tell by the disproportionate numbers of Porsches, Chelsea tractors, two-seater sports cars etc parked outside our flats. As for Labour – led by a Marxist let’s not forget – I’m sure that will play very well with B&H’s Champagne communists. As long as any of the policies don’t actually have any effect on them, of course.
In a little greater depth we apparently have a focus on ‘climate crisis’ hardly an issue that can be tackled by a tiny part of a relatively small nation. ‘Housing’, well that might be amenable to some improvement via local policies but businesses build and renovate houses and business (at least profitable business – subsidised failures costing the taxpayer are fine) is an anathema to both the parties concerned and B&H council leads the way in restrictive planning. And ‘austerity’, presumably that’s a Labour policy designed to make sure we are all equal by every one of us being poorer than church mice and more miserable than Gordon Brown.
Greens. Lefties with parents from Surrey who do loads of coke at weekends.
Labour. Expect handouts for doing nothing. #benefits