Geoffrey Theobald has become the leader of the opposition Conservative group on Brighton and Hove City Council.
He replaced Mary Mears at the annual meeting of the city’s Conservative councillors last night (Monday 9 May).
Garry Peltzer Dunn and Denise Cobb are the two new deputy leaders, replacing Brian Oxley and Dee Simson.
The meeting came just three days after the local election results were announced with the Greens overtaking the Tories to become the biggest political group on the council.
The Greens picked up ten seats to finish with 23 leaving them five short of a majority.
The Conservatives lost seven seats, ending up with 18. They become the main opposition group.
Labour has 13 seats – the same number that it had before the election. It made some gains from the Conservatives but lost seats to the Greens.
As the Greens are firm supporters of proportional representation, and only received 33% of the city vote, I assume their ‘surplus’ seats/votes will be voting with the other parties in line with their proportion of the vote.
By my reckoning 4 of the greens should be voting with Labour to get close to the PR result…
@Paul – are you serious? I’m as firm a supporter of PR as they come, but you’re being totally unrealistic. Of course they won’t. Realpolitik101.
@Gareth if someone genuinely believes in PR how can they wield power beyond their actual vote and retain any pretence of integrity?
Supporting PR has two sides – increasing the say of the under-represented SET AGAINST *reducing* the say of the over represented.
I don’t support Labour, but they are significantly under-represented based on their city wide vote (as are the LibDems).
If the Greens are happy to wield power beyond the proportion of their vote, they aren’t really supporters of PR at all – or only in as far as it would work to their advantage.