Cllr Margi O’Callaghan was elected mayor but the Greens’ proposal of Cllr Claire Carr as deputy mayor was opposed by Labour (photo: Hastings & Rye Constituency Labour Party).

Greens accuse Labour of “power grab” at Full Council

The local Green Party has accused Labour of a “power grab” after Labour councillors were elected to all committee chairs and vice chairs with the help of a Reform UK councillor, Lucian Fernando.  They also criticise Labour’s handling of various council issues. Labour has denied doing a deal with Fernando. Nick Terdre reports.

Labour performed what the local Green Party described as a “power grab” at last week’s meeting of the HBC Annual Council when, with the help of a vote from Cllr Lucian Fernando of Reform UK, plus the mayor’s casting vote, it secured a majority for its proposed new committee chairs and vice chairs, all members of the Labour group apart from two (Conservative) exceptions.

Previously some of these positions had been shared with the Greens, in the period of the Red-Green Alliance between the two parties, when a combination of Labour’s 15 seats and the Greens’ five gave them control of the 32-seat council. That ended abruptly in October on orders from national Labour.

Labour has now “turned its back on collaborative working,” according to the Greens. “In your last leader’s column in the Observer you talked about how all 32 councillors are here because we care about our town, its people and economy,” Green leader Julia Hilton told Labour council leader Paul Barnett at the meeting. “But your actions this evening show that you don’t really care about the opinions and skills of the non-Labour members of this council and have returned to the old ways of working within your Labour cabal.”

She added that, “It seems a short-sighted move to abandon all commitments to shared working and rely on the support of a councillor who belongs to a party with views diametrically opposed to your own,” a reference to Cllr Fernando who, though elected as a Conservative, has now joined Reform UK, a rightwing populist party founded as the Brexit Party in 2018 with the support of Nigel Farage.

Local Labour has denied coming to any arrangement with Fernando. In a statement it said, “Hastings Labour councillors have absolutely not done any sort of deal with Reform councillors. This is a barefaced lie.” There is no reference to a deal in the Green Party press release.

Labour said it had “put forward a number of well-qualified candidates for positions at the council AGM on Wednesday, and we are pleased that every single one of our brilliant candidates received support from a majority of councillors.”

In its statement it did not address its change of mind over cooperation with the Greens, nor a number of other criticisms made by Hilton. Among these was that Labour had “voted against the idea of sharing the mayoralty among the political groups, as happens in many other councils,” by turning down the Greens’ proposal of Cllr Claire Carr as deputy mayor in favour of Labour’s Cllr Heather Bishop, who was elected. Cllr Margi O’Callaghan received the council’s unanimous vote as the new mayor.

Hilton, whose motion calling for improved decision-making in December was passed unanimously, questioned whether there was any real commitment on Labour’s part to improving governance when meetings to reform the constitution had been repeatedly cancelled at short notice.

“At the moment the only way to get information on key decisions like the future of St Mary in the Castle or what might happen to football in this town seems to be to force a motion to come to full council,” she said. “This is no way to conduct decision-making.”

She added that there was “no sight of an action plan to urgently turn round the council’s finances after a peer review by the Local Government Association eight  weeks ago,” nor was there any progress on a new tourism plan or proper scrutiny of the council’s climate action targets.

Hilton also referred to “ongoing uncertainty” about the cost of the hotel the council plans to build on behalf of Whitbread, saying, “I fail to understand how this idea was ever supported by a council that professes to support the idea of community wealth building and strengthening the local economy where money stays in the town rather than being leached out to a multinational company who must have seen Hastings coming.”

Differing views on Cllr Fernando’s departure from the Conservative group have been received from both sides. He himself told HOT that he resigned, and appended a copy of an email dated 17 March informing group leader Cllr Andy Patmore of his resignation. A group spokesperson told HOT that Fernando’s expulsion from the group was ratified on 1 April – no date was provided for the decision to expel him – and that no resignation letter had been received.

According to the spokesperson, after being elected in May 2021 Fernando had acquired convictions for drink driving and driving while disqualified. Fernando, however, told HOT that the charge he faced “was not related to drink-driving. It was a motoring offence, specifically an in-charge of a motor vehicle above the legal limit.”

Greens in two other local authorities appear to have grounds for complaint according to a report on the leftwing news site Skwawkbox, which accuses Labour councillors of colluding with Tories in Wirral and Banbury to the Greens’ disadvantage.

This article was amended by Nick Terdre, with reference to Cllr Fernando’s departure from the Conservative group, on 2 June.

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