Three people have been shortlisted to become the Green Party’s parliamentary candidate to stand in Brighton Pavilion after Caroline Lucas said that she would stand down at the next election.
Brighton and Hove Green Party members will choose who stands, with voting due to start tomorrow (Monday 3 July).
The three candidates are Siân Berry, Emily O’Brien and Daniel Rue.
Zoe John, deputy chair of Brighton and Hove Green Party, said: “This is a fantastic line up of quality candidates.
“It offers Green Party members a real choice as to who will build on the foundations laid by Caroline Lucas as the first Green MP for Brighton Pavilion.
“Brighton and Hove, like the rest of the country, is facing an unprecedented climate and ‘cost of living crisis’ driven by increasing inequalities and a broken political system.
“This is going to be an exciting contest where each of these candidates is going to put forward a positive case to Brighton and Hove Green Party members about the difference they would make as their next Member of Parliament.”
Voting is due to start tomorrow (Monday 3 July) and end on Wednesday 19 July.
Siân Berry is a former co-leader and principal speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales and has been their candidate for mayor of London three times, coming third in 2016 and 2021.
She has been a member of the London Assembly since 2016 and a councillor for the Highgate ward in Camden since 2014.
In her work she focuses on preserving and securing new council housing and renters’ rights, trying to make sure that young people can thrive and promoting equality.
She worked mainly in the policy area of transport before joining the assembly. She was a founder of the campaign group Alliance against Urban 4x4s in the early 2000s.
And she worked as a roads and sustainable transport campaigner for the charity Campaign for Better Transport for five years. She is also the author of a number of books on green issues.
Emily O’Brien and her partner moved to Brighton in 1999. They have three children.
She has worked at the heart of the city’s community and voluntary sector for 20 years. She led the city-wide approach to food poverty and the bid to become the first Gold Sustainable Food Place in the UK.
She is a senior councillor and cabinet member for climate, nature and food systems in Lewes, where she is also the parliamentary candidate.
She has a senior role as a deputy chair at the Local Government Association and is part of the Green Party “national spokespeople team”.
Dan Rue currently works and lives at the Seven Dials, having lived there for eight years. He graduated from Brighton University with a degree in business management.
He works full time as a sales executive in IT distribution. He previously stood as a candidate in the 2023 local elections and is now a young Green organiser on the local party executive.
Caroline Lucas announced last month that she would not be standing at the next general election. She was first elected in 2010 and has increased the Green Party majority at each subsequent election.
I wish they’d all bugger off to some hippy festival!
Come on labour, please put up a credible candidate this time around. Sick to death of these sanctimonious greens. Caroline did sweet FA for Brighton residents. Her voting record was appuling, she voted for prisoners to have the vote…. Mad socialist nonsense.
To be fair Lloyd Russell-Moyle has be much more useless if useless awards are to be distributed.
Oh he’s totally rubbish.
To be fair, his work in ensuring health accessibility to LGBT communities was a very important and needed piece of work, and something Brighton and Lloyd can be proud of.
Did you see him physically intimidate the female MP who held a different view to him on trans rights? I disagree with her views but his behaviour was incredibly damaging to LGBT rights. He’s an embarrassment and should be ashamed of himself.
You mean the one where he calls the Tory MP Miriam Cates’ speeches: “one of the worst transphobic dog-whistle speeches I have heard in an awfully long time.” as she links transgender people to “predators” giving them “greater access to children”?
I mean, I can see why he got heated at that speech, and he did indeed tone it down almost immediately afterwards following advice from the Deputy Speaker. Personally, I would want someone to be passionate about the issue, but I can see how it could be also interpreted as damaging.
Given the rout the Greens suffered in May I don’t think any of these candidates will be heading towards Parliament.
Green,2 of the local pubs/ restaurants, can’t keep bottle bins outside now over night, they have to use small bins, now we have a 20 t wagon collecting bottles 7 days a week, like what is green about that?,did you lot just pull that idea out of your backsides, this city needs someone to grab it by the horns,I could go on and on about the pure and utter nonsense you lot are about, just give it a miss please,go away.
Could you look through what you have written so that the rest of us might have an idea about what you are warblong?
What or who is ‘warblong’?
I speak pub landlord, I shall translate:
The individual in question harbours a profound sense of vexation stemming from the disallowed practice of storing a voluminous receptacle for bottles outdoors overnight at his multifaceted enterprises, comprising a duo of public houses and dining establishments. As a viable alternative, he has resorted to employing receptacles of lesser capacity, thus necessitating more frequent collections on a daily basis. Subsequently, he proceeds to assert that this alternative approach is deleterious to the environment, primarily due to the augmented pollution emanating from the colossal 20-tonne vehicle employed to collect his assemblage of bottle bins.
Moreover, he posits that the regulations concerning the storage and collection of bottle bins, which were purportedly instituted by members affiliated with the Green Party within the council, were instituted without the requisite consultation or contemplation of the particular needs of local businesses, including his own. Consequently, he implores the council to take charge of and address the aforementioned predicament, seeking the formulation of a solution that would be mutually agreeable to his enterprises.
Furthermore, he intimates that he could expatiate extensively upon the repercussions engendered by the aforementioned council members, but instead proffers a succinct resolution in the form of a simple alteration in the composition of the preceding council, insinuating that the replacement of its members would effectively resolve the matter at hand.
The 3 candidates, great smiles but you’ve nothing to smile about, you want to take on a very serious job,why? God knows, looks like they haven’t got the merits to do so, anyone that wants to get into politics is beyond most people but some people Fall into it,lived life,from Brighton , knows Brighton, all the stuff that gets stuff done,I hope when the vote comes that the good people of Brighton Will save the forest and not write any of the above on paper, fair enough green?
It’s about pubs not being aloud to leave large bottle bin outside their premises overnight,now if you don’t have room inside your premises or a yard available? that means you have to use smaller bottle bins and have them emptied more often than you use to have.So lorry’s pumping out fumes are on the go more often than they should,do you get it now Mr Hawtree, you stick to trying to get the prime minister some fashion sense.
I agree with the idea that someone going for the seat should know Brighton. The city is very unique in its demographics, merits, and challenges. It deserves someone who will give it their all and someone who represents the people of the city and cares about Brighton above and beyond any personal gain. Someone who has a history of getting stuff done, an extension of what they’d been doing anyway.
Brighton is a dump. We need some proper leadership here.
The whole City is filthy, and drowning in sheer overload of people. Some of the highest property prices, council tax and parking charges in the whole country yet still no one sweeps the streets, gets rid of the graffiti, and stops the general anti social behaviour, and addiction problems that blight the City.
Get a grip Greens, and all the other parties for that matter. Get some police on the street, jet washers on the pavements and do some weeding.
And PLEASE get rid of the ridiculous seafront cycle lane that’s taken a whole lane up and now the seafront gridlocked day to night.
Logically, you could also get rid of the grid lock (if there indeed is one), by getting rid of all the cars.
Just saying… 😀
Doesn’t matter who stands. Total waste of a vote for an incompetent candidate. The green party is completely useless. Unless their manifesto is to do absolutely nothing until the city runs out of money and we are all sent back to the stoneage (which I suspect it may be) then I can’t see them ever achieving anything of consequence ever.
Hawtree why are you not a candidate, did you not dream of the house of Commons?.
It never fails to amaze me that most of the commentators here don’t know the difference between an MP and a councillor. All these posters complaining about weeds, parking charges and bin collections on an article about MPs haven’t got a clue have they?!