Brighton’s Green administration – lessons from the rise and fall of mango politics?

To understand the enormity of what has been going on in Brighton Green politics, try explaining it to an intelligent, Leftish, non-Brighton colleague who can stand back from the issues.  An administration elected on a mandate of minimising the effect of Coalition cuts, proudly working towards a living wage in a city with some of the highest living costs in Britain – which then, apparently in the name of equality and fairness, delegates decisions on equalising allowances that  could lead to substantial cuts in the living standards of some of the city’s lowest paid workers to officers, with apparently no political control over the final decisions. At the same time, local Green MP Caroline Lucas remains – along with Plaid Cymru and a few dissident Labour MPs – just about the only Parliamentarian making a sustained and cogent attack on austerity economics, and has said that she will join the picket if there is industrial action over the pay cuts. Not for the first time, the only Green MP in Britain finds herself shovelling up the ordure left by apparently inexplicable decisions by the only Green-led council in Britain and has shown that she can judge the public mood in Brighton rather better than the Green administration.  And the local Green Party, at a well-attended Emergency General Meeting, has voted decisively for a motion committing itself to campaign against pay cuts - a motion in whose support Caroline Lucas spoke forcefully and passionately.

Moreover, it runs the risk of revitalisng the Labour Party.  For two years, Labour, still smarting from its displacement as the natural home of progressive Brighton, has failed to land a single substantial punch on the Green Party.  Indeed, its 2012 Budget vote to back a council tax freeze at the expense of services remains one of Brighton politics’ more spectacular own goals; and its national policy to retain coalition cuts and possibly make more of its own has damaged its credibility further.  Faced with its inability to provide a credible policy alternative it has tried to portray the Green administration as a gang of amiable incompetents not cut out for big boys’ politics – a dubious proposition, not just in the face of memories of Labour in office (the botched attempt to create an executive mayor; or the farcical attempt to rebrand North Street as Ocean Boulevard, and Labour’s petulant response when people laughed) but in the face of some impressive Green achievements like the living wage and the ability of the council to lure new money to the city for big transport and public realm improvements (or perhaps in the face of the suspicion that “big boys’ politics” means the sort of municipal Stalinism for which Brighton Labour was once notorious).  But in the last year the Green administration’s record has begun to render Labour’s threadbare narrative credible – with the current split in the Green Party, the public admission that quite a lot of the Green council group has been out of the loop on key decisions, and the epic farce of the Seven Dials Elm Tree (a Green-led council threatening to fell an ancient and rare elm, the Green MP standing underneath it denouncing the decision and two Green activists camped in the branches of the tree).

Now of course it isn’t quite as simple as that – there is of course a lot of history and nuance behind the pay modernisation story, not least the political negligence by previous administrations (especially the previous Tory one, which appears to have failed to take forward the work that Labour in office started before 2007).  But there’s that extraordinary decision to surrender political control over the process; as my colleague pointed out, put it like that and you have what looks like the only political leadership left anywhere that has Nick Clegg as its role model.  It’s an intriguing thought: lefty Greens like to portray themselves as watermelons, green on the outside and red on the inside.  Could this be mango politics, green on the outside but orange in the middle?

It’s very simple.  Talking about fairness on the one hand while abdicating responsibility for threatening some of Brighton’s lowest-paid workers with a pay cut of £97 per week makes you look like a Liberal Democrat.  Greens shouldn’t be in that game.

You could argue that this is an unfair caricature – although it’s one that is fairly current in Brighton and Hove right now – but the point is that there have to be important lessons to be learned from the Brighton pay debacle.

The first is quite simple – never, ever, abandon political responsibility for important decisions.  Arguments that issues like this should have the politics taken out of them are simply wrong. Issues of pay and rewards are political to their core – and it is astonishing that a Council group apparently of the left could make this error.  Yes, the background is that  the current allowance structures are discriminatory, in that they distinguish between “male” and “female” gradings.  Of course that’s unacceptable.  But the moment you try to argue that these are not political decisions, and should be left to technocrats, you are playing the neoliberal game – whether you intend to or not.  It’s what’s happening in Greece or Italy – and Greens should have no part in it. Whether you like it or not, officers’ decisions are not ideologically-neutral – especially when you are dealing with HR specialists who are trained to deal with issues of pay and conditions in a way that reflects the values of the corporate sector.  Moreover, there is a clear conflict in this case with the Party’s Brighton election manifesto – which undertook to defend the City as far as it could from Coalition cuts.  Now obviously this dispute was – is – not about reducing the City’s overall pay bill – but it is about some of the lowest paid people in the city, people who have been hit hardest by austerity economics.  If the point of handing over control to officers was to avoid political opprobrium, it’s a strategy that has conspicuously failed. A sophist could argue that the letter of the Green manifesto had not been breached; a political realist would argue that the implications of a cut in take-home pay is all of a piece with the austerity agenda, especially when a failure by Government to provide local authorities with the resources for equal pay is a de facto cut.

Second, get your relationship with your officers sorted out. For me, as an ex-Civil Servant who has worked for both Labour and Tory Ministers of a wide range of abilities, the signs have been unmistakeable – key members of the Green Group have been going far too native.  Their public pronouncements all too often sound like officers, not politicians speaking (like Jason Kitcat’s ill-judged tweet about the loss of allowances not really being a pay cut). I don’t imagine local government officers are so very different from Civil Servants and, like the Civil Service, I have every reason to think they are most effective when they have strong, decisive political leadership from elected politicians.  I am not close to Green councillors’ interactions with officers but I have seen all too many of the symptoms – in particular the language in which some prominent Greens conduct their politics. I do not underestimate the difficulties of what they are doing – there were times in my Civil Service career when I wondered whether being a new Minister must be the worst bloody job on the planet – but quite a few of them manage to get the hang of it.  Lawyers represent a particular problem; one of the most difficult things certainly that Ministers have to learn is that lawyers are there to facilitate the delivery of your policies within the law, not to tell you what you can’t do. In my Whitehall experience, it’s amazing how many ministers (and officials) don’t get that.  Again, I have little reason to believe that local government is any different.

Third, this is not just a local Brighton and Hove issue.  For the Green Party, anything that could jeopardise Caroline Lucas’ prospects of re-election is a national issue.  It is with no disrespect to Natalie Bennett, doing a terrific job as Green Party leader, that I’d argue that Caroline Lucas remains the most prominent and most eloquent Green advocate we have – and the fact that she is doing that in Parliament, when our media are fixated on Westminster, only increases that importance.  Greens outside Brighton are puzzled and angry about what has been happening in Brighton – not least because the Green Party is steadily building up its presence in local government, winning its first seats on a number of local authorities, with that unequivocal opposition to austerity at its heart.  Recent policy decisions – and indeed the most recent election broadcast – are unequivocally confirming the Green Party as a party of the Left. Mango politics in the only Green local administration are damaging for the Party as a whole.

Fourth, never forget your party roots. I am not a very active member of the Green Party ( for various reasons it’s difficult for me to get to meetings) – but I keep abreast of debates and it’s clear that there is a chasm between the Party and the administration’s leadership.  (There is also serious doubt – following some comments by Councillors on Twitter – that all of the Green Group were consulted or even aware of the ramifications of the decision to devolve to officers, or that the decision would not be remitted to Councillors for approval).  Greens are supposed to be different; Greens are supposed to value consultation and democracy (and have taken quite a bit of flak from some Labour people for consulting too much).  Green values are about how you conduct politics as well as outcomes, and one of the reasons for the rise of Brighton’s Greens is Brighton Labour’s history of vicious infighting.  I have occasionally – on this blog and on Twitter – had occasion to ask Liberal Democrats whether the Coalition is what they really went into politics for; some Brighton Greens must have been asking themselves the same question.  I have heard on so many occasions the argument that Greens in Brighton offered something new and different and now appear to be just another bunch of politicians.  We cannot afford this perception to take root.  If Brighton progressive people wanted just another bunch of politicians they’d have voted Labour.  Green leaders need to reconnect with the activists who are struggling to defend the administration outside the Town Hall bubble.

All of this means that the Green Party in Brighton is at a crossroads.  It can stand back now, take stock and try and get back to the idealism that led to its election – above all to take back the political initiative.  There are good signs – a unanimous vote at the Housing Committee in favour of a Green amendment to the officers’ report that enshrines the Green policy of no bedroom-tax evictions; a vote remarkable for the fact that even Brighton and Hove’s Tories supported it.  That’s a big Green win, and shows that the Green Party in Brighton has not lost its ability to be a game-changer on the Left.

What is needed now is hard strategic thinking.  It is almost two years to the day before the Green councillors, and more importantly Caroline Lucas, will face elections.  There have been some brilliant successes; by 2015 the city will look and feel different, with the 20mph limit and big transport schemes that have firmly shifted the balance towards cyclists and pedestrians.  In a time of austerity, to deliver these and to bring new money into the city is a huge achiemement.  But the Party’s electoral success will be largely down to whether it can learn some serious lessons from the pay modernisation debacle, an if it can recapture the idealism that made 2011 seem like a fresh start for the City.

The most inane comment ever by a Brighton and Hove Councillor?

In this household our local freesheet, the Brighton and Hove Leader, normally makes a rapid and uninterrupted progress from doormat to recycling bin, featuring as it does a small collection of the previous week’s news stories wrapped around pages of adverts for car dealers. But this week a front-page story in the 14 March edition caught my eye, containing as it did a comment from a Brighton and Hove Tory Councillor that made my jaw drop.  It’s reproduced below:

It was Tory Cllr Dawn Barnett’s comment that astonished me.  To repeat, with my emphasis:  ” … with all the 20mph and cycle lane spending they should find some money for the safety of the children.”

So just exactly does Cllr Barnett think the 20mph speed limit being rolled out across the city is for?  A way of keeping council officers harmlessly occupied? A cunning plan to really annoy motorists?  Cllr Barnett has a history of making comments that with hindsight might have been better considered – witness her advice that those living near a traveller encampment should refrain from paying their council tax in clear breach of the law.  But surely even if it is not intuitively obvious that reducing traffic speeds improves conditions for vulnerable road users like children, there is peer-reviewed evidence showing the hugely beneficial effects of 20mph zones.  It’s just possible that Cllr Barnett has read the tabloid misreporting that accidents are increasing in 20mph zones – which is caused by the increased number of zones, not by increasing accident rates.  But even so, it’s a pretty breathtaking statement and some would say a fairly typical example of how Brighton Tories’ pronouncements on traffic and transport appear to be motivated by passion rather than intellect.

I have no quarrel with the people of Hangleton who are calling for a better crossing of the notoriously busy Hangleton Link Road for their children – their campaign is a powerful example of how traffic speeds are a safety issue as well as one of community severance – that unquantifiable but hugely important effect of busy roads.  But it’s worth remembering that Brighton and Hove’s Green administration has, in times of unprecedented cuts, made huge steps in shifting the balance away from cars towards vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists; and that Brighton and Hove’s Tories campaigned at the last council elections on a hugely expensive policy of removing Hove’s extensive and well-used cycle lanes.  If the children of Hangleton get their footbridge, it will be all of a piece with the wide range of traffic policies being enacted throughout our city.

Seven Dials Elm reprieved – for now

I blogged yesterday about the extraordinary row concerning the removal of a healthy elm tree to facilitate the Seven Dials Roundabout improvement works in central Brighton.  The good news came this afternoon that the Vernon Terrace elm had received a temporary reprieve while further discussions take place about its future. Other parts of the improvement works will be taken forward.

I was up at the tree at lunchtime today and there appeared to be an slightly edgy stand-off in the drizzle between the protesters and a digger that had been brought in to pull the railings out of the roots – which would have caused considerable damage.  It was a calm, good-natured protest and the intervention of Caroline Lucas was obviously hugely appreciated.  And my admiration for the two protesters in the tree was boundless – you really needed to be there to see just how high up they were.

Some pictures:

It’s obvious what local people and Green Party members across the city want. Let’s hope that officers are being given clear directions to find a way to save the tree.

One elm tree and a big Green dilemma

As I write, an extraordinary and symbolic protest is taking place under – and apparently in – the branches of an elm tree in central Brighton.  Brighton and Hove’s Green administration has embarked upon a major and hugely welcome redesign of one of the city’s least loved junctions – the Seven Dials roundabout, a traffic hub in which traffic crosses from sundry directions.  It’s unsightly and dangerous – especially for pedestrians and cyclists – and the fact that the Green administration has got to grips with a problem that previous administrations have chosen to ignore can only be welcomed.  Whatever the fate of Brighton and Hove’s Green administration, there is little doubt that one of its big legacies will be a range of transport schemes that have firmly shifted the balance in favour of pedestrians and cyclists, and rightly so.

Unfortunately, in Seven Dials, there is collateral damage.  The scheme as agreed involved the cutting of a magnificent healthy elm tree at the top of Vernon Terrace.  It is that tree that has become the focus of protests.  Local people collecting signatures have been joined by Green MP Caroline Lucas and some of Brighton’s seasoned Green activists have been actively involved in defending the tree.  Some have climbed it – including veterans of the recent Coombe Valley protests against the A27 Bexhill by-pass.

The concept of Green activists protesting against a Green council’s proposal to cut down a tree to facilitate a traffic scheme – even one as welcome and fundamentally green as that in Seven Dials – would be in any event farcical.  But there are other issues in play that compound the problem.  First, this is an elm tree – and elms are of particular importance in Brighton and Hove.  When Dutch Elm Disease set in across England in the 1960s, it was visionary and decisive action by the town’s arboriculturalists that ensured that Brighton was shielded from the disease; doing so involved a drastic programme of cutting trees pre-emptively but the result was that Brighton has one of the largest collections of mature elms in the country.  For many of us, a mature elm tree is one of the most powerful symbols of Brighton, and part of our collective heritage.  The simple fact is that these trees matter to people in the city.  Diseased elms are cut down occasionally, and although people are saddened by the necessity everyone understands why it has to be done.  But this is a healthy elm.

Morevoer, the tree is – just – inside Regency ward, represented by the Council leader, and close to the boundaries of two other  key Green-held wards (Goldsmid and St Peter’s).  A decision that has managed to alienate key supporters across three wards looks like bad politics at a purely party level as well.  The point is that implementing the Seven Dials scheme would have been a huge win for the Green administration; a sign that it can deliver against a horrific fiscal background.  It looks awfully as if it has blown it.

The arguments for cutting the tree are that it will obscure sight-lines on the approach to a pedestrian crossing; that the roots are breaking up the road and pavement surface, the latter causing problems for passing pedestrians and in particular buggies and mobility scooters.  The Council argues that the issue was covered in the consultation, but campaigners claim to have been unaware of the loss of the tree.  None of these points is of itself invalid – but these look like the arguments of officers, not politicians. And moreover, consultations – valuable and important though they are – are no substitute for political judgement and sensitivity.  It does seem astonishing that the implications of taking this tree have slipped under politicians’ radar, to the point where the most prominent Green politician in Britain, Caroline Lucas, finds herself being interviewed in front of a tree that she’s defending from her own Green-led local council.

It’s already a situation in which the Green administration has been damaged.  The spectacle of a Green-led council forcibly removing its own activists from a tree before cutting it would destroy the administration, and probably Caroline Lucas’ prospects of re-election.  Finding an alternative is a condition for the administration’s political survival. It’s also horribly damaging for the Green Party as a whole.  But there are more fundamental questions about what happens when Greens – or any other group trying to challenge the hegemonic values of our political culture – obtain office (especially in where that administration is in a minority).  It shows the desperate importance of  (excuse the pun) remaining in touch with your roots, and not allowing your natural political instincts to be thrown off by the demands of office.  There are fundamental strategic issues here that Greens in Brighton and more widely must consider very carefully.

If the Green administration in Brighton and Hove can reconnect with its roots, it could emerge stronger from this.  But in many ways this is the most important test it has faced, and the fate of one much-loved elm tree could seal the fate of Brighton’s Green administration and hugely damage the Party as a whole.

Brighton and Hove Budget day thoughts – What have the Greens ever done for us?

So, what has the Green Administration ever done for us?

Well, the Green minority administration was elected on a manifesto pledge to minimise the impact of coalition cuts on the vulnerable people of Brighton and Hove.  It’s not been easy – our city has been hit harder by coalition cuts than almost any other local authority in the South of England.  But it has worked tirelessly to make the best of a tough situation – by protecting, for example, subsidised bus services and libraries; and, against that background, has actually managed to make big strides forward – like the living wage for council staff or big projects like Lewes Road and Seven Dials which make our city safer (especially for vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists – and in the case of Lewes Road, councillors and officers have done a brilliant job of bringing new funding to the city).  And, as local authorities are forced to pick up the pieces from Coalition “reforms” to the benefits and council tax system, Brighton and Hove’s Green administration has really gone the extra mile to shield the vulnerable people hit by those changes as far as they can.

But the Green Administration is making cuts!

True. Brighton and Hove has been slaughtered by central government cuts – a 17% cut in income.  But the Budget – on which there has been widespread consultation – proposes finding extra money to help those hit by benefit changes; ensures that all libraries remain open; finds extra cash for bodies like the Citizens’ Advice Bureau that support vulnerable people; creates incentives to bring empty properties back into use and protects staff  from compulsory redundancy.  Look at what most other local authorities are doing in response to the fall in funding and I think you’ll find that’s pretty impressive.

And what about the pay modernisation? Cutting council workers’ pay by thousands of pounds per year and threatening them with the sack if they don’t agree? So much for the living wage!

Ah, I see you’ve been reading the Brighton Labour twitter feed.  Yes, negotiations are under way over allowances.  No decisions have been taken. Yes, the Unions are negotiating hard to protect their members – after all that’s their job. But the view of the Brighton and Hove Green Party is clear.

But what about people in the Green Party who are accusing Brighton of selling-out?

Well, anybody can hand out leaflets at Party Conferences and it’s very easy when you have never run anything in the real world to generate cheap moral outrage at the compromises of real life.  The fact is that the Brighton Green Party’s manifesto said clearly, and right at the front in case anybody could miss it, that the Party in office would minimise the impact of those cuts as far as it could.  Now if you were arguing that the Green administration – a minority administration, remember – had failed to to that, or was in a position where it could no longer do so, and was clinging on to power as a result, you might have a point.  But, as the positive budget going forward to full Council tonight demonstrates very clearly, that’s far from being the case.

And what about the parking charges? Draining the life-blood out of the city!

Evidence is a funny thing.  Against every photo in the local rag of an empty sea-front on a wet Wednesday in April, one can counter the fact that Brighton has one of the lowest rates of empty shops in the country.  And I know we didn’t get many last Summer, but have you ever seen the London Road leading into the town centre on a warm Saturday? Traffic queues going out two or three miles beyond the Patcham Roundabout!  Yes, businesses in Brighton are suffering. We’re in the middle of the most sustained recession for a century. Moreover, the Council has listened and made some changes, especially to short-term parking charges.

Ah! A U-Turn!

U-turns are so 1980s.  Let’s put away the shoulder-pads and the brick-sized mobile phones. Listening and making changes is what grown-ups do – on councils as well as in life. Funnily enough, one of the things that Labour gets worked up about is how much this council consults – remember they’re the party that tried (and failed) to create an executive mayor for the city.  And there is a fundamental question that neither opposition party in Brighton has ever really addressed – about whether a local economy based on car-borne visitors is really sustainable.  Do you really think Brighton and Hove need more traffic?

And all those Green pet projects we’re hearing about, while buses and mobile libraries are cut?

We’ve heard a lot about these from Labour.  It’s been a while since they’ve been in office, but even so the apparent difficulty in distinguishing between current and capital expenditure is dispiriting.  And many of these projects bring in external funding and create jobs.  It’s a funny thing – Labour talks a lot about infrastructure expenditure nationally but snipes when the Council does it here.  And yes, the administration has protected local subsidised bus services and has come up with a plan to replace the mobile library with a home delivery service that would give users access to a much larger stock of books than even a shiny new mobile library could ever expect to carry.

But Labour are campaigning against the cuts – like the mobile library – aren’t they?

Well, they’re making a lot of noise. But the facts are rather different.  Labour nationally are committed to keeping the coalition cuts and possibly making more of their own.  The idea of Labour as a party that will defend local authority budgets is deeply, desperately laughable.  Moreover, last year at budget-time, given the clear choice between voting for a council tax freeze and protecting services, they unhesitatingly chose the former.  Not only does this benefit middle-class council-tax payers at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable who use services the most, but, because local authority funding is cumulative, it leaves less for future years.  The fact is that by their budget vote last year, Labour did long-term damage to the city’s finances.  They are, to put it at its mildest, the very last people to complain about cuts; austerity economics is hard-wired into One Nation Labour’s DNA.

And what’s all this about removing Mr and Mrs from council forms?

Oh please.

But – apart from the living wage, transport improvements, improving the public realm, protecting services and supporting the vulnerable, keeping libraries open, protecting subsidised bus services and promoting projects that bring new money into the city, what has the Green  Administration ever done for us?

Oh.

Twenty’s already plenty in Brighton and Hove

Earlier this week Brighton’s local rag, the Argus, was working itself into one of its usual small lathers of indignation over the fact that many of the road signs related to the forthcoming introduction of the 20mph speed limit across much of the city were already in place – despite the fact that the new limit does not come into effect until April.

Leaving aside the fact that doing things in good time for deadlines is what efficient councils do – imagine the furore from the same imagination-challenged journalists if the signs were not in place come the big day – the reaction is interesting and typical.  In fact, I was out in Hove yesterday afternoon and saw the effect at first hand.

Yes, motorists were seeing the signs and actually slowing down.  Pedestrians and cyclists were getting the benefit of the changes weeks before they were due to become mandatory.  And there was no mass panic, no chaos, no distress.  People were getting on with their lives, traffic continued to move, and the benefit was already noticeable.  In a small way, the balance was already shifting from motorist to vulnerable road users, and the quality of life for all in our city just improved that little bit.  Is there any real evidence that those motorists who are now driving at 20mph rather than 30mph on our city’s streets are suffering any real disadvantage in doing so? Given the levels of congestion and the number of junctions in our city, are their journeys really getting disastrously longer? And after all there is no resident driving in Brighton and Hove who is not also a pedestrian too.  And even the motoring lobby – consumed as ever with paranoia in the face of what are often desultory efforts to get them to obey the law – have to admit that nobody’s going to be the subject of premature enforcement action.

The Argus has a long tradition of backing the car lobby – some cynics have pointed to the vast quantity of advertising it carries for local car dealers – and, to their shame, some local politicians who ought to know better have jumped on the bandwagon.  Moreover, the Argus’ hyperbole, its ability to find crisis, shock and fury in mundane events, is legendary. But for this pedestrian and cyclist, the arrival of those signs mean that all of us – including motorists – are getting the benefits of the new 20mph limit early.  And how can that be a bad thing?

Community politics revisited: Greens and Liberal Democrat tactics

The results of the Green Party’s leadership election are due to be announced tomorrow.  In anticipation, the Independent has today run a piece which suggests that Greens should follow the Liberal Democrats’ tactics for capturing local election seats, leading to Parliamentary gains.  It argues that disillusioned Liberal Democrats are likely to turn to the Green Party in greater numbers than Labour voters.

It’s a plausible and attractive argument.  Its proponents could point to the fact that the Green Party’s biggest successes have been in Brighton, which returns the party’s sole MP and has a minority Green administration.  In many ways, Brighton looks like a Liberal Democrat town; affluent, educated, with its two universities, its temper of diversity and its modern economy – the sort of place where Liberal Democrats tend to do well, and where it is mainly the fissiparous nature of the local Lib Dems and their tendency to fight each other into oblivion at the merest sniff of electoral success that has prevented them from making electoral advance.  It’s a narrative that Brighton and Hove Labour iteslf often uses, claiming that the Greens have mainly prospered in middle-class wards (a narrative that conveniently ignores big Green gains in traditional Labour wards in last year’s local elections).

It’s also a reminder that for many years the Liberal Democrats – and most notably the Liberal Party before that – were proponents of community politics, which brought together vigorous local campaigning with a set of beliefs about community and political representation which, in theory at least, went far beyond simple electoralism.  The essential text of this movement was a pamphlet by Gordon Lishman and Bernard Greaves, The Theory and Practice of Community Politics, published by the then Association of Liberal Councillors in 1980, which brought together ideas that Liberal campaigners had developed over the preceding decade.

As the Green Party thinks about strategy, and in the context of a call to use Liberal Democrat tactics, it’s a fascinating and important read.  There is much in it that goes to the heart of Green beliefs – about empowering individuals in communities, about democratic accountability, and about participation.  And there are ominous omissions and issues – revisiting the pamphlet thirty years after first reading it, its hostility to Government and advocacy of voluntarism sits surprisingly comfortably with the Con Dems’ Big Society agenda.  It is powerfully hostile to Trade Unions. Above all, like so much pre-Orange Book Liberal and Liberal Democrat thinking, it has almost nothing to say about economics – a crucial weakness in a text that claims to offer a systematic ideology.

The authors write emphatically that community politics was not a strategy for winning elections, but something far wider than that.  But this is what was lost, and this is what allowed the Liberal Democrats to be captured for neoliberalism.  It seems to me to be precisely the lack  of any theory, combined with the way in which Orange Bookers could appeal to the radical individualism of Greaves and Lishman and turn it into a consumerist economic narrative – that allowed the neoliberals in the door.  And it was the use of the term “community politics” to justify unthinking electoral opportunism that inhibited the development of a coherent and confident body of theory that would have given the old Liberal Democrat left a hope of resisting the neoliberal Orange Book tide.  It also of course compounded the problem that Liberal Democrats were often (with good reason) regarded as cynical opportunists for whom the end justified the often very dodgy electoral means.

All this is powerfully instructive for a contemporary Green Party that is facing many of the issues confronting Liberals at the time that Greaves and Lishman published their pamphlet.  In some respects the stakes are far higher than they were for Liberals in 1980; not just the urgency of climate change but, in the UK context, a Westminster political system dominated by three national parties (plus the SNP) who fundamentally believe in variations on the same ideology which is wreaking havoc on our society.

But it is instructive at a time when Greens in Brighton are facing their first taste of minority office. It’s a daunting prospect being Green trailblazers; a minority administration of the only national party opposed to cuts and austerity, trying to deliver progress against a background of savage cuts in local government funding.  Despite the cuts, despite the minority status, there are real gains being made: particularly in transport and public realm issues, in preserving subsidised bus routes and in attracting funding for innovative traffic schemes aimed at making the city more liveable.  In fact in Brighton it’s Labour that is following traditional Liberal Democrat oppositionist tactics; backing Tory budget cuts and supporting Eric Pickles’ council tax freeze con, opposing for the sake of opposition to the point where they casually ignore the legal and financial constraints under which the council operates to score easy points.  If you ever wanted a demonstration of electoral opportunism devoid of integrity, responsibility or intellectual engagement, you need only look as far as Brighton and Hove Labour.  As a Green, I’m fairly sure that the party that I want to be part of looks nothing remotely like that.

For me, the key task for Greens is not to chase the Liberal Democrat lost votes, but to understand why political participation has fallen, and in particular why Labour lost five million votes between 1997 and 2010.  I think the answer is fairly  straightforward – that Labour has embraced neoliberalism, remains a pro-cuts and pro-austerity party, and those – often the poorest and most vulnerable in society, who look to a strong state for support and empowerment – for whom this agenda offers nothing have walked away from Labour, and from electoral politics generally. These are the people whose daily life experiences are wholly outside the mainstream of political debate in the UK.  And as I wrote in an earlier blog post on the Green Party leadership election, these are the people to whom Greens, as the only significant party with an alternative to neoliberalism, must look; it is their voice that we must become.  It’s why in the leadership election that has just finished (and whose result at the time of writing I do not know) I voted for Peter Cranie as the candidate best able to break out of our middle-class comfort zone and reach out to those who have been left behind by the British political system.

So grass-roots activism is essential.  I think there is an argument for something that matches the finer aspirations of Greaves and Lishman, although I think we need to recognise that the spirit of community politics is something that died out long ago in the Liberal Democrats.  But I think we need to be more ambitious than reaching out to ex-Liberal Democrats.  Greens should aspire to be the voice of all of those who have been disenfranchised by the neoliberal consensus

Why I’m backing Brighton and Hove’s Green administration

Last Thursday evening, Labour and Tories in Brighton collaborated to pass amendments to the Green administration’s proposed Budget that froze Council Tax – in contrast to the Green proposal for a 3.5% increase – and to make corresponding cuts.  Following the vote in favour of the amendments, the Green group on the council – with one exception – voted to accept the amended budget.

It has been a matter of real controversy within the Green Party, both in Brighton and nationally – fortuitously the vote took place the day before the Green Party conference opened in Liverpool, and a motion critical of the Brighton and Hove Group was not debated in a move that has apparently deepened the controversy and led to resignations from the Party.

My immediate gut instinct was to side with those who argued that the Green group in Brighton could not continue in office having lost the Budget vote.  It’s worth considering the background – the administration had embarked on one of the most comprehensive consultation exercises ever seen on a local authority budget, against the background of swingeing, ideologically-motivated cuts in central Government funding for local authorities.  Moreover, the Green decision to support a modest Council Tax increase was taken against the background of what was effectively a bribe from central Government – get extra cash this year if you freeze council tax, but commit to funding cuts in the longer term.

Labour and Tories proposed near-identical amendments to the Budget (while denying collaboration, although if they didn’t the draft speaks eloquent volumes about the closeness of thinking between Labour and Tories in Brighton) and the Labour amendments were passed.  Most of the Green group then voted for the amended Budget.

As I said, my gut feeling was that the Green administration could not carry on.  But I now realise, on reflection, that their actions were right for the Party and right for the people of Brighton and Hove.

Had the Green group tried to vote against the amended Budget, their moral authority as an administration would have been finished.  Every measure they proposed, every aspiration, would have been torn apart by Labour and the Tories and their friends in Brighton’s local media on the grounds that the administration had voted against giving itself the means to do so.  It would have become a lame duck administration, its authority shot to pieces.

So why continue in administraion?  If the Green administration resigned, the Tories would come to office.  Brighton and Hove Tories:

• want every school in Brighton to become an academy;
• would overturn the city’s commitment to a living wage;
• support the privatisation of all Brighton’s care homes;
• would eviscerate the innovative Green proposals to improve Brighton’s public realm and make the city a liveable place;

and during the course of the debate

• supported  nursery closures while attacking the decision of the Green administration to sell the Mayor’s personalised number plate;
• repeated the racist lie that the city is “awash with travellers” – an inflammatory fiction that Tory MPs and Councillors continue to push, in contrast to the adminstration’s aim to produce a long-term solution to the traveller issue;
• complained that the Green group contained too many incomers to the city (see previous bullet point);
• backed an illegal proposal to remove facility time from the Council’s unions (a measure which of course provides a consultative route that makes the council more efficient and saves money)

I am wondering quite why some critics in the wider Green Party – including those proposing motions at the Green Party conference – see the installation of an administration believing these things as the best way in which Green councillors could discharge their obligations to their electors.  Of course, one can understand that none of them have had the experience of administration and the wider responsibilities that that brings; but they need to get beyond the belief that this is a theoretical debate. Like it or not, Brighton Greens took on the administration of the city in the full knowledge that they would be a minority administration facing years of cuts.  The idea that you could walk away now on a point of principle and that the electorate would continue to have faith in you seems to me to be utterly misguided.

Could a minority Tory administration do all those things?  Possibly not, but the chaos of trying to do so is not something that should be lightly dismissed.  Moreover, how could we be sure that Labour would not back them?  As I’ve written elsewhere (scroll down to comments) the really interesting thing about Labour in Brighton is the way that its rhetoric and politics  has developed in a way that aligns them so closely with the Tory position on how local government is financed – indeed on what local government is for.

Those on low incomes are hit hard by cuts in services – while a coucil tax freeze favours the better-off.  It’s a simple economic fact.  In other words, Labour still claims to speak for the poor and vulnerable but in general is advocating policies that have precisely the opposite effect. And it appears to have bought into precisely the sort of low-tax rhetoric that Pickles uses to justify his assault on local authority power. One would like to think that Labour would know better – but recent history suggests otherwise (students of urban development will realise that Labour’s urban legacy in Government will be the erosion of local democracy, the privatisation of public space, the gated estate, the private mall and the CCTV camera – in the essentials of urban policy, as in so much else, Labour and Tory are increasingly indistinguishable).

So why the inconsistencies? It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Labour in Brighton is still fighting the 2010 General Election, and still smarting at the fact that, having taken for granted that it would get the progressive vote in this city, it lost to a candidate who outflanked it on the left and continues to provide real opposition to the coalition in a way that the national Labour leadership just doesn’t appear to have the stomach for. It’s now indulding in toddler politics – still smarting over its defeat and throwing a toddler hissy fit that must be giving Brighton’s Tories quite a lot of quiet satisfaction. It looks very much like a group that has lost the will to argue for change and is content with throwing its toys around instead; and one that will do almost anything in its power to discredit the Greens.  Labour may once have been a party that knew the difference between statesmanship and an emotional spasm but pronouncements from its leaders suggest that it’s really quite comfortable with a neoliberal tax and spending agenda and that attacking the Greens counts for far more than defending the vulnerable.

It seems to me that not the least of Labour’s offences – especially through its denial of collusion with the Tories – is to treat the electors of Brighton as if they were stupid.  It contrasts very powerfully with the Green administration’s commitment to real consultation.

In this situation, it seems to me that however painful the decision to vote for the amended Budget – and it would not have been easy – and to carry on in administration, it was the right one and the one that does most to protect the interests and aspirations of the people who put their faith in the Party at last year’s Elections.  To have walked away would have condemned the Party as a home of people who have nice fluffy ideas but run a mile when the going gets tough – and would seriously have undermined Caroline Lucas’ position as the only MP and Party Leader who is standing out against the three-party neoliberal consensus.  I have every respect for the people within the Green Party who argue that the Group should have resigned, but I am very proud indeed of our Green Councillors in Brighton and Hove for continuing the fight for the values that I and thousands of others across our city voted for last May.

Tories, allotments and the war on public space

Wandering around my home town of Brighton, as I pass allotments I have often reflected that many of them are on what would pass for prime development land. Rather in the spirit of John Betjeman in the 1960s, who, when spotting a pretty country church would adopt the persona of a Northern town planner and mutter “We’re ‘avin that down”, I find myself in the age of Government by estate agent imagining how that land could contribute to the city’s stock of luxury apartments with sea views.

Even though the one of the biggest bloody noses the ruling Tory party got in Brighton in recent years was over its proposal to build a 600-space park and ride facility on the allotments in my home suburb of Patcham, I felt the time would not be long in coming before the estate agent’s dream and my nightmare would come true.

And so it has proved.

The Independent reports today that allotment holders are mounting a campaign against a Coalition proposal to remove the statutory obligation for councils to provide allotments – a law that dates back more than a hundred years. The proposal is justified by Eric Pickles’ department as a measure to remove red tape.

Such comments are of course highly ideological. For Pickles, “red tape” is anything that stands in the way of unchecked commercial development and which allows local people a voice in how their environment is managed. Looking at councils like Brighton and Hove – whose basic tenet of planning policy appears to be to turn the city into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sainsbury and Tesco – the outcome is all too clear. If the provision of allotments becomes a policy decision, councils being shafted by Con Dem cuts will see the sale of allotment land as a nice little earner.

But there’s something bigger at work here. This proposal seems to me to be part of a much wider ideological war to secure the privatisation of public space; whether it is rhetoric about bossy bollards and a determination to keep the streets for the private car, or restriction on the right to demonstrate or protest, or the proposal to sell off our forests, or Westminster Council’s criminalisation of homelessness, the Tories (and of course by extension their Liberal Democrat useful idiots). What we are seeing, it seems to me, is a modern reincarnation of land enclosures or the Highland Clearances; a belief that there is no such thing as space that the public enjoys by right, and that whatever we do in the open is by leave of our economic and social superiors.

I expect that the Tories will back down over allotments. The backlash will be huge, and much of it will be from the Middle England that the Tories and Lib Dems like to claim as their own. But there’s a bigger war here, one in which a lot of ground has already been ceded, quite a lot of it by Labour.