A Green candidate has beaten a former Brighton MP in a two-way contest for a seat on East Sussex County Council.
Georgia Widdicombe Taylor won the Forest Row and Groombridge seat, with 2,325 votes.
She beat Simon Kirby, the 56-year-old former Conservative MP for Brighton Kemptown.
The 1,676 votes cast for Mr Kirby were not enough to return him to the county council where he served as a cabinet member before being elected to Parliament in 2010.
Mr Kirby, who now has a home near Wadhurst, was re-elected in Brighton Kemptown in 2015 before losing the seat in 2017 to Labour rival Lloyd Russell-Moyle.
During his stint as a Tory MP, Mr Kirby served for a year as a government ministry, at the Treasury.
He was first elected as a councillor in 1992 to a seat on the old Brighton Borough Council – now Brighton and Hove City Council, on which Mr Russell-Moyle, 34, also briefly served.
Georgia Taylor, 57, who lives in Forest Row, is an international development consultant and former civil servant.
She is one of two Greens to have won seats on the county council in another breakthrough for her party although, with a few results outstanding, the Conservatives appear to have retained control.
In Telscombe, Labour candidate Christine Robinson beat the sitting Conservative councillor Andy Smith by 72 votes.
The result echoed the Lewes District Council elections two years ago when Councillor Robinson and her Labour colleague Laurence O’Connor won two of the three seats in East Saltdean and Telscombe Cliffs.
The pair beat Andy and Cathy Smith while he was serving as the leader of Lewes District Council.
In the elections for Adur District Council, a former Hove Conservative councillor Mike Mendoza was unsuccessful in his attempt to win a Labour-held seat.
His party kept their majority on the council, but Mr Mendoza, a radio and television presenter, came second to Labour candidate Jeremy Gardner in St Mary’s ward in Shoreham.
“Pip” is the wrong verb in the headline. She got 649 more votes than Kirby.
This is not the only colourful word in this “article”. If the saying goes that dogs do not bite the hand that feeds then… That applies to many other animals and trades!
I should think Kirby “got the pip” when seeing the result.
I have to agree that nailing your colours to the mast by concentrating on the loser and using the the word pip when you mean trounce can only impinge your readership.
Kirby got beaten. It doesn’t matter by whom. Just rejoice at that news.