For the past 25 years the Brighton and Hove Green Party have been inviting voters to split their votes between Labour and Green in local elections in the hope that one day their party will get lucky and end up running the council.
This “spread-betting” offer has failed to deliver them a Green majority and frankly has failed our city with a succession of hung councils leaving essential long-term decisions put on hold.
For seven of those years, we have had Green-led councils. Those years have been characterised by waste, ideologically driven decisions, bin disputes, falling recycling rates, failing services and, shamefully, recently lost and now 60 missing asylum-seeking children.
For me, one decision by the Greens stands out as a monument to their failure of judgment – the investment of £36 million of council money into the I360 at a time when the city was crying out for new investment in its basic services.
So, in this set of local elections Labour’s message is very clear. The best way both to punish the Tories for the 13 years of economic and social mismanagement and to sort out the muddle and lack of leadership for the city by the Greens is to secure a strong local Labour council.
In the years before 1997 Labour worked to protect public services from Tory governments. More than that, we innovated and developed services that were admired nationally as a beacon for quality and efficiency.
Brighton – and later Brighton and Hove – became known as the “place to be”. Labour put money into job creation through arts-led regeneration, stimulating investment in the two universities, worked with fans to protect our football club and give it a home to be proud of and set the policy in place to create jobs in the emerging digital economy.
And while we did eye-catching things, we kept our eyes on the steady improvement of the basic day-to-day services that we all depend on.
We all need to be “green”. The environment and the commitment to net zero and sorting out the climate emergency is in Labour’s political DNA – hence the promise of the green new deal.
Split ticket voting won’t help that cause. All it might do is hold back the election of a progressive and radical Labour council fully committed with a mandate to sort out the city’s services and work with an incoming Labour government determined to put the environment front and centre in its mission.
On Thursday 4 May electors have a stark choice – dither and delay or elect a Labour council prepared both to lead and listen.
Steve Bassam is a Labour peer and former leader of Brighton and Hove City Council.
