Labour has held both their seats in the by-elections in Queen’s Park ward and Kemptown ward.
Milla Gauge won the Queen’s Park seat with 1,241 votes and Théresa Ann Mackey won the Kemptown seat with 1,382 votes.
This means that Labour once again has 38 of the 54 seats on Brighton and Hove City Council.
The turnout for Queen’s Park ward was 38.94 per cent and for Kemptown ward was 34.8 per cent.
The votes cast in Queen’s Park ward were
Milla Gauge (Labour) 1,241 – elected
Luke Walker (Green) 766
Adrian Hart (Brighton and Hove Independent) 449
Sunny Choudhury (Conservative) 168
Dominique Hall (Liberal Democrat) 67
The votes cast in Kemptown ward were
Théresa Ann Mackey (Labour) 1,382 – elected
Ricky Perrin (Green) 590
Robert James Brown (Liberal Democrat) 406
Gary Farmer (Brighton and Hove Independent) 369
Josephine Victoria O’Carroll (Conservative) 222
Jamie Gillespie (Independent) 44
The by-elections were held after two councillors, Bharti Gajjar and Chandni Mistry, stepped down.
They were elected last May on the Labour slate but later expelled by the party. They sat as independents until they resigned in March.
After the results were declared, Theresa Mackay said: “It is the greatest honour to have been elected by the residents of Kemptown to be their Labour councillor.
“Thank you to everyone who voted. I can’t wait to help my community even more.”
Milla Gauge said: “I am thrilled to have been elected as Labour councillor for Queen’s Park and truly grateful for everyone who turned out to vote this week.
“I look forward to joining my new colleagues in the Labour administration and continue to deliver for the residents of Queen’s Park and the city.”
The Labour deputy leader of the council Gill Williams said: “We are incredibly grateful for the continued faith placed in our administration from the residents of Queen’s Park and Kemptown.
“I’d personally like to thank everyone that turned up to vote for Theresa and Milla. Your support means so much to our administration and our two new councillors.”
You would have thought after the complete debacle Labour made of the selection of the two candidates who resigned and caused these by elections that the Greens would have had a chance here, but no it looks like the electorate still haven’t forgotten the mess the previous administration made.
If people were purely voting on that one issue, I think it would have been more influential, it’s pretty on-brand for Labour to have a majority in these wards, and there are factors such as the wider council make up to consider. Having the support of the majority in the council can be a convincing argument to voters.
One thing I was looking at here was questioning the wisdom of having Jamie and Gary compete against each other as Independents (with obvious assumptions assumed). This split the vote a bit there, I felt Jamie should not have even considered standing so soon after the Portslade results, and that lack of reading the room regarding the locality of candidates. It was not enough to be a deciding factor, but one that those 40 votes could have been made much stronger if applied to a realistic cause.
Even added together they barely get ahead of the Lib Dems and still be third (by a long way)
And it’s not a good assumption that all 44 Jamie voters would have voted for Gary.
But if you welcome an independent standing you have to live with the fact that more than one may stand
Fishleigh tried to pursuade one not to stand in the Rottingdean byelection (that Labour won) but failed. And then blamed that candidate for costing her preferred candidate the election. Again there was the assumption that all the voters for the other independent would have voted for the Fishleigh endorsed candiate.
People vote for candidates for a reason and independents especially so.
All very true, you’re right. There’s perhaps a stronger message when a party gets closer to a victory though, and the vote percentage improves or the gap shrinks, so I can see the appeal in not wanting to split the vote too much.
But I very much agree that people should vote for the candidate, rather than the flag they wear. I believe though, when they aren’t sure, they will indeed default to their political party of choice.
Except Kemptown is a new ward and the Greens topped the poll in Queens Park in 2019. Brighton having experienced a Green Administration seems to be bucking the trend in the rest of the counctry. For once we are ahead of the curve.
Yes, people are stupid. That includes the nutty Greens!
And you
Green politics in principle make sense, to be fair. Good environment, healthy people – these are noble goals. It’s just the way they want to achieve these goals tend to be less thought out, in my experience.
Cycle lane next to a cycle lane is a symbol of Green mentality for me.
Kemptwon have a huge problem now, 2 disconnected and utterly useless councillors. Unfortunately without only a 35% turnout the Labour machine has done its job and herded Preston Park’s utterly lost and out of her depth Mackay into a role that is beyond her. During the campaign she said nothing, read scripted answers and was often befuddled and confused . People have voted without knowing what they have done, Kemptown will continue to face neglect and deprivation but Labour don’t care. 3 years now of utterly useless mumblings from both Wilkimson and Mackay (if you can find them)
Kemptown Labour won with a significant lead in a pattern similar to last time according to what I was reading in a few comment in some other forums. I thought we would see a lot more deviation caused by the outbound councillors, but, your personal distastes aside, this result clearly shows a steadfast confidence in Labour moving forward.
The Labour party need to reimburse us council tax payers for parachuting their 2 ladies from Leicester in, then expelling them and causing the by-election.
Interest and compensation too please.
So right – I look forward to the endless queue of disgraced Tory mps thrown out of parliament having costs reimbursed by Tory party, including a certain Johnson who jumped before he was pushed.
I don’t have any issues with Jamie, it’s an open playing field and everyone is welcome to stand. No doubt Jamie will pop up at the next by-ele tion wheteber that may be. My own personal thoughts were that the Greens, Conservatives, Independents and Lib Dems all were very gracious and we had a good time today chatting with one another as we watched the count. Unfortunately Labour did disconnect with the room and huddled together without engaging or giving any time to the other groups. It was reminiscent of the Greens a year ago, a sense of entitlement I am afraid to say. I hope the new Labour councillors engage and listen to the people and do not hide behind the party machine that put them here, the signs are not good so far for KT and QP but let’s wait and see.
Large reduction in the Break Up Britain “Green” party vote in areas where they did have 3 Local Councillors. The true cost of the publicly funded i360Ltd and some of the other damaging policies of the Greens still hasn’t been thoroughly revealed…..
Labour and Tory councillors gave the i360 planning permission and it was their leader championing the i360 long before there was any Green administration in the city years and years ago. From what I’ve seen Labour are just masters of deflection and finger pointing at council level given that Labour have been running the council for something like 7 of the last 10 years.
Planning permission is a totally separate issue from the decision to fund it.
The decision to fund it is 100% down to the Greens and Tories.
And no Labour hasn’t been running the council for that long. Before last years elections no party has had a majority on the council since the 2003 elections.
No. It was the Tories that backed the Greens in bringing the i360 to Brighton, knowing full well the debt that the people of Brighton and Hove would have to bear if the project failed to return on investment. Labour then inherited the mess in 2015 and were duty-bound by the agreement as signed by the (then) agreement signed off by the then Green administration. Basically contract law.
Such a shame. This area has really gone downhill. We needed change not more of the same.
Very disappointing.
Another new labour drone.
As long as we don’t gave anymore arrogant Green councillors then I am happy.
The arrogance of the current Labour lot is making any arrogance you think the Greens may have had pale into insignificance. Bella Sankey seems to me to be the most arrogant politician I’ve ever seen in this city.
Labour favour Glyphosate around the City, so people keep your Cats & Dogs indoors or they will get very very sick, they are not listening to the peole on that issue! Then there is the problem of the redundant Gas area at Boundary Road where they will give way to the Berkeley housing Company to build high rise blocks of Flats so disturbing the gas fumes & polluting the area, the sea breezes will blow the pollution inland.
Then schools closing but not the L3Harris arms component factory that is going to continue for another three years before they are kicked out by the lease holders. Labour Council not Climate friendly at all.
Yes Labour do favour a droplet method of Glyphosate and the Greens certainly made a big issue of this in the Queens Park ward – that turned out well for them. It’s not they are not listening but they know, (as evidenced by these by elections) that either generally people don’t think it is an issue or that generally the electorate wants the weed issue tackled and this method is acceptable.
The fact the Greens didn’t get back in despite the scandal of the resignation of Labour’s Ghajar and Mistry means people have bitter memories of the utter horlicks the Greens they made of running Brighton council.
Sian Berry should be warned she is not likely to be a shoo in for the parliamentary seat..
At the heart of this result is voter apathy, people just could not be bothered. Labour had a large army of party faithful out pushing their message home and dragging members to the polling stations. It was a military exercise supported by the general disdain for the government that helped them to a victory. It was nothing to do with any policies or the candidate herself, Labour need to accept this (which is unlikely). Next time around things will be more difficult for them and others will benefit from the inevitable decline in support for any government as things just do not get any better despite the promises.
Or the complete opposite will happen, and they’ll keep their promises. Time will tell either way.
Yes elections and by-elections are equivalent to military exercises with parties needing to organise volunteers to deliver leaflets, canvass and do “get out the vote” on election day. Having worked on campaigns it is a lot of work in a short space of time,
That’s ALL parties not just Labour.
Well said.