Six candidates are contesting the Queen’s Park by-election for a seat on Brighton and Hove City Council.
They are Simon Charleton (Labour), Sunny Choudhury (Conservative), Rudi Dikty-Daudiyan (Liberal Democrat), Adrian Hart (Independent), Marina Lademacher (Green) and John Shepherd (Reform UK).
The seat became vacant when Labour councillor Tristram Burden resigned, citing a conflict of interest in his new job as a local authority inspector at the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Polling day is on Thursday 18 September, with polling stations due to be open from 7am to 10pm.
The polling stations are at
- Craven Vale Resource Centre, Craven Road, Brighton
- St Luke’s Church, Queen’s Park Road, Brighton
- Barnard Community Centre, St John’s Mount, Mount Pleasant
- Millwood Community Centre, Nelson Row, Carlton Hill
Brighton and Hove City Council said: “If you live in Queen’s Park and would like to vote in the upcoming by-election, you must be registered to vote by midnight on Tuesday 2 September.
“If you’re not already registered or if you’ve recently moved to a new address, please visit gov.uk/registertovote.
“If you can’t get to a polling station on the day, you can apply for a postal vote. The deadline to apply is 5pm on Wednesday 3 September.
“You can also ask someone you trust to vote on your behalf – this is known as a proxy vote. You should apply for a proxy vote by 5pm on Wednesday 10 September or change existing proxy arrangements by 5pm on Wednesday 3 September.
“To vote at the polling station, you must bring photo identification (ID). For more information, and to see which forms of photo ID are accepted, please visit our voter ID webpage.
“If you don’t have a valid form of photo ID, you can apply for a free Voter Authority Certificate (VAC) online.
“The deadline for us to receive your VAC application for use at the Queen’s Park by-election is 5pm on Wednesday 10 September.”
Good to see all parties represented, but the councillor elected on 18 Sept will be either a progressive Green, or a Labour candidate who has described himself as a proud member of ‘Blue Labour’, the most right-wing group within the Labour party. So any socialist or progressive voter should vote Green.
It’s hard to imagine anyone voting for Labour again, given their track record. They’ve let down liberals, families, religious communities, patriots, environmentalists, the wealthy, the poor, the middle class, the sick, the elderly, children, workers, students, business owners, veterans, the lot.
The list could go on tbh… resident doctors who were forced to strike, small business owners and charities hit by national insurance contribution changes etc.
By far the biggest issue though for me has got to be the broken trust, it’s not just Labour nationally, we see it in the local lot too – like the u-turn on the manifesto pledges, eg on not closing schools and libraries and promising not to reintroduce glyphosate, then rolling back on them all at alarming speed. Then we have Peter Kyle not declaring his freebie Taylor Swift tickets in time, conveniently declaring them when the initial ‘free gear Keir’ furore had died down. Bella Sankey too – making random and ridiculous claims about Hove Beach Park being the first new park in 100 years. It’s just regenerated land. Great it’s happened, but the exaggeration and spin was unnecessary and odd.
I share the frustration when politicians over-egg things or spin successes, but it’s worth balancing that against what’s tangibly been achieved. Hove Beach Park may be regenerated land, but it is a new public park where there wasn’t one before.
U-turns are portrayed as a bad thing, but as always, I think nuance is important. Take glyphosate, for example. The manual and alternative methods were not working, as evidenced by the constant reporting on poor maintenance, but instead of just going back to the original method, a safer delivery method is being used. I think there is a quality in being able to change one’s mind in light of new information, rather than being stubborn and rigid because of something said previously.
Schools are, unfortunately, a symptom of a much larger issue. Especially when we have TFRs in the 0.7 region, and we need a 2.1 to maintain, they simply are not viable right now, and unlikely to be so for several generations, even if we magically fixed the issue tomorrow.
Libraries, I’m actually with you on this one. I think they shouldn’t be touched, but at the very least, there are alternative methods to closing them. One thing I’ve been pushing for is to give them to the community, because I think there are quite a few benefits in doing that, compared to a council-run resource.
Doctors, that’s a byproduct of Tory austerity, and an opportunistic time to ask, just after COVID, and when a new government was entering. And tax in this country is massively unequal at the moment, and really needs overhauling.
Re schools, the reduction in need for places is an issue that has been known about for many years and is now affecting secondary schools. It should not have been a surprise to any administration in recent years promising not to close any schools. If the current administration genuinely believed that they would not need to do something serious to address this issue, that indicates incompetency. If they did know, then they were dishonest.
The council has long buried its head in the sand over this.
Can’t argue with a lack of foresight. I don’t think that qualifies incompetency though, it’s an issue that needed addressing, and making what was clearly going to be an unpopular but necessary decision doesn’t feel like sticking one’s head in the sand.
TomPaine – I take your point (as advice for socialists), but is it ‘progressive’ to vote Green even when their actions in B&H are so damaging? Two examples: Greens support replacing the Palace Pier (aka Aquarium) roundabout with traffic lights despite the council’s own consultants warning of years of traffic congestion and air pollution – and Greens are even more extreme than Labour when it comes to ignoring the ongoing schools safeguarding scandal. Are these progressive positions? The Green councillors who, in January, denounced parents as bigots certainly imagine themselves as progressive but so did councillors in northern towns years ago when parents tried to sound the alert on grooming gangs. Blinkered ideological zeal might be what counts for ‘progressive’ these days but the damage it can do is horrifying.
I agree with Tom that it is good to see all parties represented, and an independent choice as well. The historical election data clearly point to a Labour vs. Green contest as well.
Where I’d differ is in how we judge progressive. The Greens have talked that language, but their record in running the council was mixed at best. I would gently suggest the idealism of the Greens vs. a more pragmatic Labour is another consideration for voters.
Adrian Hart gets my vote. He’s done great work before as a local councillor, and more recently holding our Labour council to account on key decisions that negatively affect the health and wellbeing of many families in this city. He knows this city inside out, has the personal skills and wider support to get the most important local focused topics moving. Look him up and see what you think.
I won’t vote Labour, Green, Lib Dem, Reform and Conservative as I don’t want our city to deteriorate further. International and national identity politics won’t fix Brighton, we know that and what it’s costing us. Time to call time in the silly political games.
This is a local bi-election, where there will probably be a low turnout on the day.
I would normally expect a Labour win, except that mid term elections often turn against the incumbent majority party.
So this will be interesting, and the result will be a function of turnout, the campaigns run by each party, and of perceived community anger at the way things are.
I’m particularly interested to see how many votes – or how few – the Reform party candidate gets (in a libertarian local area where I have lived for most of my life).
And will the Green voters have forgotten Elaine Hills’ Hanover LTN traffic scheme – which last time wiped out the local Green vote?
Sadly, I have no vote in the particular ward.
Greens were second in Queen’s Park in 2023, and then a much closer second last year when there was a by-election caused by the Leicester-based Cllr Mistry resigning in disgrace. I don’t live in the ward either, but if I did I’d be pretty p…ed off about both my Labour cllrs resigning
Reform get my vote.
So you repeat, but I’ve yet to hear a compelling reason, or any reason, from you why you think they are better than everyone else?
Liberal Democrat’s are the only party that are progressive and competent in running councils.
Libdems only control four councils in the entire country.
That’s factually incorrect… heard of Google? 😉
I have, I misread, my mistake. 25 councils where they have majority control in England, about 8%. My point is slightly weakened! To be honest, their numbers have also been improving generally across the board, trending-wise.
I still don’t think Callix has anything to back his opinion, though. Open to being challenged on this.