Hopes of a left alliance unlikely but not yet dead

Earlier this week at the Brighthelm Centre some of the ‘citizens’ of the People’s Republic – under the banner of the left-wing pressure group Compass – met together to talk about life after the election.

Perhaps nothing unusual in this except two of the big beasts of local politics (if they’ll excuse the expression) were there – Green MP Caroline Lucas and Nancy Platts, who was Labour’s unsuccessful candidate in Brighton Kemptown who now chairs the Brighton and Hove Labour Party.

The aim of the meeting was to explore whether Labour and Green party members, plus as well as those of no party, in the city could work together in what was termed a progressive alliance.

But the omens were not good.

Brighton’s Green administration was had been bitterly opposed by Labour as much, if not more, than by the Tories Conservatives and now the Greens on the council are reciprocating just as bitterly.

The general election saw some unpleasant confrontations between supporters of the two parties; some Labour supporters blame the Greens for denying them a win in Kemptown whilst some Greens felt that Labour was putting rather too much effort into trying to oust Caroline Lucas from Pavilion.

But you wouldn’t have known any of this at the meeting. It was all sweetness and light.

On a personal level, Lucas and Platts were complimentary about each other – but there was a fundamental difference in how they approached the tricky problem of the two parties working together.

Talking about the Kemptown constituency at the last election, Platts asked: “Should we [Labour and the Greens] have done a deal?”

And then answered her own question: “It wouldn’t have been realistic. Labour – as a potential party of government – will always stand in every seat, its members and voters expect it to. Private deals between political parties were not the way forward,” she said.

But the Labour chairwoman did suggest that the two parties, and others, could work together on particular campaigns – homelessness and the NHS for example.

In the long term, a proportional voting system would make deals possible because voters could then express a preference for more than one party.

Caroline Lucas clearly did want a deal – not that she said so in so many words but her intentions were clear.

She said that progressives “need to be thinking carefully about ways to work around the first-past-the-post electoral system ahead of the next general election”.

In other words, in cities like Brighton an agreement might be reached that Labour wouldn’t put up a candidate in, say, Pavilion and the Greens wouldn’t fight Kemptown.

She said: “Our deeply undemocratic voting system forced progressive politicians – like Nancy Platts and Davy Jones [the Green candidate] in Kemptown to fight against one another in this year’s election, fragmenting the vote, and being a major factor in letting the Tories win.”

But leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Warren Morgan, was having none of it.

In response to news about the meeting, he made it clear that such an arrangement would not just be impossible to deliver but wrong in principle.

Writing wrote on his blog, he said: “Voters expect a choice, not a pre-determined pact between parties... For Labour to now enter into some kind of electoral pact or alliance with the Greens would be an utter betrayal of those voters who wanted the Greens out, and those Labour campaigners who suffered so much abuse and hostility from Greens.”

So, despite the warm words heard at the Compass meeting, not much by way of encouragement there, although Morgan was undoubtedly voicing an opinion that many in his party would share and would probably be reciprocated by some Greens members for their part.

Does this mean that the dreams of a progressive alliance in Brighton and Hove are dead? In the short term probably, but there’s that tiny Jeremy Corbyn-shaped speck on the horizon that could make a difference.

For If Corbyn were elected Labour leader here at Brighton at Labour’s conference in September (and that’s a big if) would a red/green alliance become more likely?

Possibly, or possibly not. For the left wing of the Labour Party is in favour of many things that former Labour leaders opposed but that has not, at least not so far, included any talk of alliances with the Greens.

But who knows, politics is moving rapidly these days – as events north of the border have shown - and that red/green dot on the map of South East England could at some stage merge, making Brighton once again a real political trend-setter once again.

• Ivor Gaber is Professor of Journalism at the University of Sussex