Labour are not looking for coalition with Greens

The Brighton and Hove Labour group are not looking at entering into a coalition with the Green Party following the results of the local elections.

Labour believe the Green Party should form a minority administration and run the council after they gained ten seats in the city to become the largest party on the council with 23 seats.

Bill Randall‘s party are short of an overall majority, but rather than joining forces with Labour’s 13 councillors they should be given the opportunity to implement their manifesto, according to Labour group leader Gill Mitchell.

Labour Group Leader Councillor Gill Mitchell said: “With the Greens having 23 seats they are clearly able to form a minority administration to run the council. Labour successfully ran the council with the same number of seats between 2003 and 2007 and the Conservatives governed with 26 seats for the past four years so it is right that the Greens, as clear winners, are given the opportunity to implement their manifesto in the same way.

“We will support the Greens where they bring forward sensible proposals in the best interests of the city as well as being an effective and challenging opposition when we think they are getting things wrong.

“We will now take stock and work to build up the trust and support of local people in this city as well as continuing to campaign to make it a better and fairer place to live.”

'Greens should implement their manifesto', says Mitchell

Labour claimed a number of Conservative scalps in the elections, but their gains were wiped out by losses to the Green Party, but overall their share of the vote was only marginally below that of the Green Party.

A Labour statement read: “Having won 5 new seats, Labour is obviously disappointed not to have won more especially when the Party was so close in percentage terms to the number of votes that the Greens received. Labour received 32% of the city vote with the Greens on 33%.”

For lots of excellent post-election analysis check out Brighton’s Political Blogger, who came close to successfully calling the election results.

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Posted by Joseph Lewis on May 8, 2011. Filed under Council News,Featured,Green Party,Labour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry