A new political party has been set up to fight for seats on Brighton and Hove City Council at the local elections in May.
The Friends of Brighton and Hove Party has registered with the Electoral Commission so that it can field independent candidates at the elections on Thursday 4 May.
The organisation has no affiliation to any national party and was formed by members of the Friends of Brighton and Hove Citizens Action Group.
The action group started when two residents, Laura King and Ollie Wilson, started a petition to reopen Madeira Drive in 2020 and then set up a Facebook group to support their campaign.
Since then, their group has attracted more supporters – and members have regularly asked questions at council meetings about the council’s finances and councillors’ expenses.
The Friends of Brighton and Hove is the second new group to enter the fray after Independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh set up the Brighton and Hove Independents.
Councillor Fishleigh was the only member of the current council to have been elected as an independent.
She is now one of seven, with the others having left the established political parties, mostly Labour.
While independents can stand as individuals, electoral law and council rules are geared towards a system of political parties.
A letter to the new party’s supporters from Ms King calls on Brighton and Hove residents who love the city and wish to serve with “honour and integrity” to sign up.
Local election candidates do not have to pay a deposit but requires the signed support of two people who live in the ward.
Ms King wrote: “We are the protest vote. Even those with a party can still vote for Friends of Brighton and Hove at a local level and give their party a kick up the backside if their party has not done anything for them or our city lately.
“We have already been described as ‘A party to vote for at last’ by one individual who’s never voted before.”
She said that the party was setting up a website and starting a Crowdfunder to cover the cost of leaflets.
According to the letter to supporters, the party’s 10 priorities are
- The delivery of statutory and basic goods and services and city upkeep
- Reopening all council offices and services to reinstate fully comprehensive customer services, including face-to-face and providing full access to public meetings
- Removing barriers to trade, tourism, events and businesses in this city, including restoring visitor parking and public toilets
- Restoration of our precious heritage and civic maintenance to make Brighton and Hove a city to be proud of once more
- Valuing all community and green assets, including those left in perpetuity to this city
- Seeking to identify legitimate new revenue streams which do not continually exploit citizens via parking permits and council tax hikes
- Evidence-based environmentalism such as improving the recycling level and reinstating the street tree planting scheme and not building on nature reserves or cutting down trees and hedges in wildlife season
- Ensuring proper procedures are followed in all council matters and no council meeting time is wasted virtue-signalling or discussing issues the council has no jurisdiction over
- Rejuvenation of the night-time economy
- Putting “projects” last on the list once the basics are sorted out, projects which can only proceed once they are proven to be in the people’s/city’s interest and following legitimate public consultation with majority approval and all due processes followed thereafter
…
Prospective candidates can contact the Friends of Brighton and Hove Party by emailing friendsofbrightonandhove@outlook.com.
As well as the Friends of Brighton and Hove and the Brighton and Hove Independents, four parties are known to have been selecting candidates for the local elections – Conservative, Green, Labour and Liberal Democrat.
The Conservatives, Labour and Greens currently hold 47 of the 54 seats on the council. The 54 councillors represented 21 electoral wards at the last local elections but at this election there will 23 wards after boundary changes.
Good! I hope you’ve sensible selection policies such as only people born and bred in Brighton and Hove can stand. We might need nativism back in politics, and we have had enough of people with “qualifications or education”.
Right. So anyone with “qualifications or education” should not run for Council?
Susie, why is being born here important? I have lived in Brighton for over 23 years (virtually all of my adult life), I own property in the city limits, work here so contribute to the local economy, and pay council tax. What about my situation makes you think that I shouldn’t be able to stand to represent my neighbours, friends and colleagues?
The place of birth should give no one special privileges. Why do you think that being born somewhere automatically gives you more of an idea on local policies/issues than someone who has chosen to base their life here?
Simple if you were born here you will put local natives first. It isn’t about qualifications or education its about having the right views. Too many university people with degrees etc running our services. FACT!
Help Susie! I am Brighton born and bred, but I also have a pesky degree and several unwanted professional qualifications. Am I allowed to stand?
None of the points I raised were answered Susie.
Why would I not put the needs of my friends, colleagues and neighbours first as someone who has lived and worked in the City for over twenty years?
I never mentioned education or qualifications (unless you’re counting contributing to the local economy and using local services as qualifications…in which case I am amply qualified). A place of birth is nothing more than a happy accident – where you choose to live however is a deliberate decision being made, and I for one would like to see decision being made fairly with input from all, not just people who happened to be born within the City limits.
Too many people let in this country and these people come to Brighton this is a fact. I’m proud to be English no accident you should be too. People like you from London metropolitan elite don’t like listening to facts. Don’t embarrassed yourself be proud of your people.
Your incorrect usage of the word fact and adversion to education and mixed with bigotry makes me glad I am unlikely to ever agree with you on this point, I sincerely hope that your narrow-minded perspective is opened one of these days.
So you reckon that living in Brighton for 43 years, working here (in various jobs), and taking part over the years in a range of local environmental campaigns, doesn’t count? Because any 18 year-old who was born here is so much better qualified to stand for election as a City Councillor.
I like this local manifesto. Good Luck.
Disappointed theres no “Remove all cycle lanes, cycle hangars, cycle stands, cycle symbols, bicycles, cyclists from Brighton’s roads” pledge.
Why do you want to remove cyclists from Brighton’s roads?
Re-read in a sarcastic voice 🙂 Laura King is infamous for getting really really angry about cycle hangars so I’m poking fun at her.
Apologies! Not used to irony or subtlety on here!
Their priorities are ironically un-funded virtue signalling nonsense that don’t stand up any scrutiny. E.g. I particularly laughed at the magical “find legitimate sources of money that isn’t tax or parking related”.
Regardless, anything which further splits the Tory vote (there are now 2 independent groups aimed firmly at right wing Tory voters) can only be a good thing!
I have to agree, whilst the ideas themselves are reasonable goals, they come apart when one considers feasibility. The irony being this is the criticism offered by them.
Fantastic news. I hope good candidates stand as we need people that care for the city not people just interested in party politics. The city looks terrible and is in decline and more Green/Labour nonsense is just destroying in the city. Beggards all over the shopping centre. Graffiti everywhere. It feels like a tip.
The main problem facing any party that takes over from the Greens (fingers crossed), is having to spend a lot of money to fix the mess that has been created. To return brighton to the amazing place to live again will take years. Policies are all well and good, but you need to make an income to balance the books. In short make cuts or charge more.
I think Labour are aiming to take over, Mark, but a lot of them are not standing again (either because they don’t want to, are not well (in the case of Dan Yates, it seems) or have been exoelled and have become pseudo-independents. What is the use of Alcock and Appich leading them into the election and then not standing again? So who would be the Labour leader after the election? Amanda Evans?
Maybe a mint of money doesn’t have to be spent. The Greens and the employed administration have been so bad that anything might be better, and I suspect there is a huge amount of wasted money yet to be discovered.
The Greens seem to get a lot of Govt grants for their fancy projects (which they never mention, only talking about Tory cuts) and yet, the grants never seem to cover the costs entirely, so we are down to council borrowing or increasing tax and fees.
As an incomer (but of over 20 years now) I have seen the place I was excited to move to and really loved go totally down the toilet.
I think that, if we weren’t run by ideological idiots and had pragmatic and sensible people running it all, then we could possibly recover what we had. This lot don’t even look at possible income streams (apart from hammering the strapped taxpayers), because they have no imagination whatsoever. Very sadly.
Re these magical income streams mentioned, the council is not, and should not be, a revenue generating business. Please have a look at the various councils (both Tory and Labour) which have tried this via investments (Croydon, Thurrock, Woking, Nottingham). All have ended in disaster, literally billions of pounds in debt. They make the i360 issue look utterly immaterial. If people want better services, we either need a government which properly funds councils or we have to pay more tax (or probably both). Scrapping “projects” won’t make a material difference either, given most of these are funded via a different pot (begging bowl).
Dead right. If raising money was as easy and risk-free as these folks (and others) pretend, someone would have done it by now.
Like whom? The first thing is to eliminate wasted spending and then see where you are. I’m sure there’s plenty of wasted spending. And we still haven’t heard from the outgoing CEO how around £13m was overspent on staff costs when many people would ask ‘what staff and what did they do?’ As for the begging bowl, there often seems to be overspend on such projects, which ends up in borrowing, making cuts elsewhere, increasing council tax/fees and/or borrowing to fund the difference. That is no way to run even your own finances, let alone a council’s finances.
I rather hope the independents split the Labour and Green votes, as the Tories are the only ones who have the interests of the city at heart and judging from complaints on this platform most people must obviously agree with that statement. However with the transient and disinterested nature of the voters this is unlikely to happen. So, don’t expect any improvement any time soon. {incidently i am not a Tory party member}.
I think you mean uninterested. Disinterested means unbiased.
A disingenuous strawman argument. I’ve personally found the conservative members to have been a constant barrier, often quick to critic, but rarely offering solutions.
Isn’t that what oppositions do everywhere? Just look at the lack of solutions proposed by Keir Starmer at PMQ?
Wouldn’t trust the tories to run a bath
I’ll vote for that.
This is all slogans not policies.
One persons “project” is to another an essential, basic service.
They need to tell voters which services they will cut and which they will protect.
It’s not as easy as they think and if these or the Fishleigh independents stand in the ward where I live and knock on my door I’ll be asking them those very questions and they’d better have answers,
But I’ll also have tough questions for the main parties as well.