Labour has won the Westbourne and Poets’ Corner by-election, holding on to a seat that became vacant two months ago while Reform polled more votes than the Conservatives.
Samantha Parrott, known as Sam, won the seat by 209 votes over the second-place Green candidate Geoff Shanks. The Liberal Democrats were close behind in third.
Sam Parrott, a professional counsellor, was overjoyed at becoming a councillor when the result was declared at Hove Town Hall just after midday today (Friday 2 May).
She takes over a seat vacated by former Labour councillor Leslie Pumm who resigned from Brighton and Hove City Council in March, citing his health.
The votes cast for each candidate were
Sam Parrott – Labour – 894
Geoff Shanks – Green – 685
Michael Wang – Liberal Democrats – 598
Gary Farmer – Reform UK – 258
Tony Meadows – Conservative – 129
Georgia McKinley Fitch – Independents for Direct Democracy – 93
David Maples – Independent Trade Union and Socialist Candidate – 91
Keith Jago – Independent – 7
A total of 2,760 votes were cast out of 7,466 electors. Five ballot papers were rejected.
The turnout was 36.95 per cent.
The newly elected Councillor Parrott thanked everyone who voted for her and said: “I can’t wait to get stuck in.”
She said that her priority would be getting to know the ward and the people who live there and speaking up for people with disabilities and ways to tackle violence against women and girls.
The results for the two seats in the ward at the local elections in May 2023 were
Julie Cattell – Labour – 1,911 votes (elected)
Leslie Pumm – Labour – 1,741 votes (elected)
Renato Marques – Green – 743 votes
Geoff Shanks – Green – 691 votes
Michael Bates – Conservative – 448 votes
Mark Clayton – Conservative – 421 votes
James Verguson – Independent – 211 votes
Geoff Date – Liberal Democrats – 208 votes
Dave Hill – Trade Unionists and Socialist Coalition – 111 votes
Patricia Mountain – UK Independence Party (UKIP) – 65 votes
On that occasion, a total of 6,550 votes were cast by at least 3,275 voters, with a further 11 ballot papers rejected. The turnout was 45.86 per cent.
Labour now has 36 of the 54 seats on Brighton and Hove City Council. The Greens have eight, the Conservatives five and the Brighton and Hove Independents two. There are three other Independents.
Congratulations to Michael Wang as the Liberal Democrats were close behind in third with 21.7% – our highest showing in BHCC for a while.
Michael presented very well. Lib Dems in general did really well across the board.
Worth reflecting that 15 years or so ago this was a safe Tory ward that no-one else bothered with much. Now they are fifth.
Also worth noting that Labour’s share of vote was 32%. Most people aren’t happy with them either, either locally or nationally.
32% isn’t bad when you think it was contested hard by the other centre left/left parties. The good news is the small number of votes for Tory/Reform ie closet racist or openly racist.
Tories got demolished in these locals, they lost as many as Reform gained. Feels like Conservatives are paying the price for their objective mismanagement of the country, and those who remain on the right are being absorbed by Reform.
Congratulations to Sam Parrot who will surely be an excellent and dedicated councillor
Reform UK are making huge gains across the country and in Westbourne & Poets Corner have overtaken the Conservatives. Goodbye to Starmer and his mercenaries. Great job Reform UK in their first outing in the city – well done all round. Dirty tricks and smear campaigns by Labour / Socialist Workers Party / SUTR were all they could do to attack Reform in Brighton and Hove. Keep on pressing down on the left and truly challenging the inept council and there dire leadership here in the city.
It was a poor result for Reform, and you know it. Fourth, after all the chat about winning the election.
Punching downwards and Oswald Mosley tribute acts just aren’t very popular round these parts. Get used to it.
Have you thought about moving? Clacton-on-Sea might be more up your street than Kemp Town. Lots of your type there. Brighton & Hove will never be a Reform city.
A terrible result for Reform Yuk is a victory for the good people of B&H.
“Great job Reform UK in their first outing in the city ”
It wasn’t their first outing in the city.
They had a candidate in the 2023 council elections and got 127 votes and came last in Hangleton & Knoll
The also had candiates in Hove & Portslade and in Brighton Pavilion in the general election. They would have had one in Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven but did a deal with the SDP not to stand.
Facts easily checked.
For reference the so-called ‘dirty tricks’ campaign deployed against far right Reform UK by Brighton and Hove Stand Up to Racism in this seat seemed to involve, er, a) finding the candidates personal twitter feed and then b) reporting its openly racist and bigotted content to a wider audience and highlighting the support for fascists like Tommy Robinson on it, which forced the candidate to delete it mid-election… Maybe Reform UK could try and avoid such ‘dirty tricks’ going forward by not standing racist bigots who openly support the far right as candidates?
I was surprised that as a experienced candidate he didn’t do a sweep of his social media.
Make no mistake, this very alarming for Labour. They lost nearly 1000 votes. The Green pretty much unchanged. Lib dems and Reform clearly on the map. Tory worse than Labour, a dead horse. Any clever Tory should join Reform now. The fight next full local elections could very much be between Reform, Greens and Lib dems.
It would be interesting to see how well Reform do in the councils they have taken over by cutting council costs. We are paying some of the highest council tax in the country and the highest prices for parking permits. They raise interesting questions. How many Brighton council workers are working from home and are they allowed to claim for heating and broadband costs. Why are we paying for council offices where this is provided. How many diversity and inclusion or other non-jobs are there at the council. Now Reform have power certainly in many councils it will be good to see what they deliver and if they do deliver I am sure many of us would be happy to pay less council tax and vote for them.
There’s a lot in this comment that sounds like genuine concern about council tax and public spending. But look a little closer and it is full of familiar dog whistles; phrases designed to stir anger, not spark solutions, the tools of UKIP, repurposed by Reform.
Phrases like “non-jobs” and the targeting of diversity and inclusion staff are not neutral criticisms. They are part of a wider attempt to undermine the legitimacy of public sector work.
This kind of language often travels with vague but loaded questions like “how many people are working from home and claiming heating costs?” There is no evidence for this, but it plays into a narrative that public servants are lazy or exploiting the system. In reality, most council workers are doing more with less, stretched thin by years of Tory central government cuts.
It is no coincidence that the same arguments are being used by parties like Reform UK, who want to dismantle public services under the guise of “efficiency.” We should absolutely have debates about council priorities, but we need to challenge the use of scapegoating language that targets workers and minorities while letting the real causes of austerity off the hook.
Let’s talk about value for money. Let’s talk about service outcomes. But let’s not pretend that stoking resentment against equality staff or hybrid workers is anything other than the politics of division.
It doesnt take a genius to understand that less council tax leads to less or even poorer services than we receive now – a race to the bottom is in no-ones interest, especially the old, the infirm and our children!
I always think it’s funny that people who normally accuse unions of “living in the 1970s” are so Luddite about working from home, taking advantage of the available technology to increase productivity and cut office accommodation and travel time/costs.
WFH has been a thing for years, was totally uncontroversial, and was seen as the future of work.
Then came the pandemic and suddenly it was a new front in the culture wars.
In any case Reform have rather shot themselves in the foot now that it has emerged that many of them work from home and are advertising jobs that are “100% working from home”. The old failing of politicians saying “do as I say but not as I do” has hit Reform very early on!
As for “claiming for heating and broadband”…..the most that can be claimed is a tiny tax rebate on a portion of energy costs related to working in the home. You can relax….no-one is being paid anything by the Council for working at home.
As a footnote…..you are now paying for less office space than ever because of WFH. Half of Bartholomews House is now rented out to businesses, generating income.
There is no longer enough room in Council offices for everyone to come in!
Ironic that the candidate offering a complete nothingburger won, if only at 32% of the vote. It seems ancestral voting habits die hard, no matter that the party bears no resemblance to the Labour Kier Hardie started.
You make a great example of how bad the conservative party is now perceived to have lost over 650 councillors, if ancestral voting habits die hard.
Not sure where I said anything about the Conservatives. Looks like you are jumping to conclusions again.
Red Herring, Chris. You didn’t mention the Conservatives directly, but you criticised Labour’s win by implying voters are blindly loyal. I was highlighting that the same logic would also explain the Conservatives’ huge losses; so either people are voting more critically than you think, or the narrative of ‘ancestral habits’ doesn’t hold up. Let’s not dismiss voters’ choices so easily.
Fortunately the Greens didn’t win ..
Co-leader of the Greens, Adrian Ramsay, was on the telly this morning, telling everyone about the rise of the Greens in local government.
You just have to look at the colossal debacle they caused in Brighton to understand why they are unfit to run anything.
The reality in Brighton is though that it’s been a Labour run council for most of the last 30 years, in fact in the last 10 years greens only ran the council between the second half of 2020 when Labour gave it up, and up until May 2023. Am always intrigued by the perception it’s a green council, when it only ever was for a short space of time. It’s been a useful narrative for Labour to use so they can deflect from their time running things I guess.
It’s a smaller gap than that! About 13 years of Labour compared to 7 years of Green, and 10 years of a hung council. Of course, Green wasted no time in ruining the finances of the council in a short space of time, such is their efficiency in inefficiency.
It is not long until the local Election campaigns begin. It is of course rash to infer those results from this one but there is likely to be a shift away from an overall majority. Will there be a return to the committee system?
Meanwhile, Mr. Wang perhaps owes some of his very good showing to his advocacy of something better than a shrunken King Alfred sports centre with which Labour again tries to palm off residents. The loss of the huge Fitlab gym, among other things, is too horrible to contemplate.
Talk this evening about the next local election. What form will this take if yhe area is in the meanwhile merged with Worthing and Newhaven as part of a mayoral county? Will Hove disappear from the title? There should be an article about these uncertainties.