City needs some clear political leadership

Lord Bassam was Labour leader of Brighton from 1987-97 and of Brighton and Hove from 1997 99. He believes rumours of the death of the Left are greatly exaggerated. He also disagrees with Brian Oxley, new leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, who set out his vision for the city in The Argus yesterday.

Here, Lord Bassam tells of his concerns for the future of our city under a minority Conservative administration.

NOW the dust has settled it is worth reflecting on the outcome of the election, voting trends and the otherwise hidden messages from the electorate.

What we do know is that the Tories are to form a minority administration with less than half the seats, just as Labour did for the last four-year term of the council.

With 26 of the 54 seats they are entitled to do that - or at least to make the effort.

However, the prospect of a minority Tory administration should not be allowed to mask what actually happened on May 3.

The city did not, as the outcome suggests, take a sudden lurch to the right politically.

Looking at the votes cast for each party tells a different story.

Taking the top vote for each party in each ward the Tories (as the sole major party of the Right) secured 27,544 votes, while the parties of the Centre Left totalled almost 46,000 (Labour 20,228, Greens 17,046 and Liberal Democrats 8,686).

The Tory "victory" is purely and simply a product of the fragmentation of the Centre Left vote - and the outcome in terms of seats won reflects that fact.

Indeed if I were a Tory I would be more than a little depressed at the nature of my "victory".

It is true the Tories topped the polls in the Parliamentary constituencies of Kemptown and Hove, but the Greens topped the poll in Pavilion, a seat the Tories held until 1997.

If ever there were a set of local elections they should have won in mid-term these were the ones - and they didn't.

Of course it is also true that Labour had its worst performance in the last 25 years of local elections across the city. But in most wards, just as Labour's percentage share of the vote declined from 2003, so too did the Tories, whose share fell by 14.6 per cent in Pavilion and 11.2 per cent in Kemptown.

Of the four parties seriously contesting the city council elections, only the Greens increased their share of the vote. The Lib Dems were the biggest losers with most of their votes being hoovered up by the Greens.

The big story of course is the defection of Labour's middle-class voters, who have been an important part of the city's progressive coalition, to the Green Party.

This has cost Labour its clear leadership of the Left in Brighton and Hove and led to a Tory-led council.

Arguably that is not, on the basis of the votes cast, what city electors thought they were going to get when they went to the polls.

In many respects Labour and the Greens have similar policies - or so it appears.

This is especially so on the environment.

Labour's record locally on environment issues was good. The worrying thing is few voters understand what the Greens stand for on social and economic policy.

The adoption of Green economics would be a disaster for the continued regeneration of our city, dependent as it is on conferences, tourism and the health and education sectors.

Green businesses "locally sourced" generate some limited employment but hardly opportunities for all, nor much in the way of new and sustainable jobs. The Green record on big economic decisions in the city is not good.

With their anti-development approach combined with the Tories' reluctance to upset vested interests or grasp the nettle over transportation, Brighton and Hove's economy could be in for a rocky time.

I still haven't forgotten dealing with the fallout from the recessions of the Eighties and early Nineties. In many ways electors could be forgiven for being confused by what was on offer.

Tories were offering a blue future by going green, the Greens suggested in their last-minute leaflet that nothing would change in terms of control if Labour voters went Green, the Lib Dems said they were the greenest party and Labour said Brighton and Hove would end up looking like Tory Hammersmith and Fulham if the Tories got in.

My favourite leaflet was from one of the Tories in East Brighton, which promised to "create vibrant, eco-friendly flowerbeds" as part of their Greener City manifesto. This on the same page as a promise to get traffic moving faster - something of an environmental contradiction.

What will worry most electors is the Tory promise to fix council tax rises at inflation levels only.

That single commitment will mean year-on-year cuts totalling at least £13.2 million by the next elections and probably even bigger as the tax base diminishes and service pressures grow.

Coupled with the Tory commitment to reduce parking fees, this spells bad news for city-wide services.

Expect a programme of cuts and closures over the next four years, with the voluntary sector first in the firing line and environmental services not far behind as locally generated income declines as a percentage of council spending.

No doubt the Tories will say it can all be done through efficiencies but there is a limit, particularly when the authority has already taken out much waste after a series of tight national settlements.

Worrying too in terms of the city's development and progress in recent years is the Tory commitment to try to kill off big projects already agreed.

The Gehry towers, to replace the King Alfred leisure centre, a project most modern and forward-looking cities would cry out for, is a case in point. What will the Tories do about the football stadium, the Brighton Centre, the Brighton Festival, Black Rock and the host of transport initiatives designed to get the city moving more freely in a sustainable carbon neutral way?

Challenge What will the Tories do to Sure Start, child care services, the lead the city takes on gay issues and cultural tourism and safer community initiatives?

The challenge for the three opposition parties will be to coalesce around sufficiently coherent agenda to stop the worst excesses of the Tories.

Labour will need to show determined campaigning leadership, the Greens a better understanding of the importance to the city of the equalities, social and cultural agenda which Labour initiated more than 20 years ago, and the Lib Dems the need not to disappear when difficult political judgements have to be made on city-wide issues.

I love Brighton and Hove and feel humbled in the past to have played a part in helping to make it a dynamic and exciting place.

The city needs clear political leadership from whichever party governs, however temporarily.

In many ways we had the worst of all outcomes on May 3, with a Tory minority in control of a city where the majority of voters favour Centre Left solutions at a time when much social progress had been made.

Let's hope that over the next four years the Tories behave responsibly in that knowledge and the other parties act sensibly together to restrain the damage that could be done by a party whose political instincts are to do nothing, or to cut or close those things they dislike.

Is Lord Bassam right? Have you say below.