BATTLE lines have been drawn after two Labour councillors called for the resignation of council leader Warren Morgan, with the city’s two Labour MPs facing off on opposing sides.

Following a scathing letter from a Labour councillor Kevin Allen calling for Councillor Morgan to step down, Hove MP Peter Kyle offered warm words of support for the embattled leader.

But Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle said only that it was a matter for councillors to decide.

An email from Cllr Allen to Labour councillors and senior officials was leaked on Monday.

In it he criticised the leader’s threat not to allow the Labour Party to hold another conference in Brighton unless it could guarantee no repeat of bad headlines over alleged anti-Semitic comments and he called for Cllr Morgan’s resignation.

He wrote: “Warren, the problem isn’t just the poor judgment you have shown on this occasion.

“The trouble is there is an accumulation of things. 

“The role you played in getting the former district party AGM annulled has not been forgotten. Then there was your conspicuous lack of engagement in the General Election campaign in your own constituency. 

“Now the failure to say anything positive about conference.

“You simply don’t like what the party has become – and it shows.”

Cllr Morgan’s reply addressed the criticisms and warned that party 
disunity would lead to electoral failure.

Councillor Caroline Penn then replied to the thread, saying: “I am extremely uncomfortable with this being played out by (non confidential) email. 

“We are not the Greens and we should stop airing our dirty laundry in public.”

After the leak another Labour councillor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Argus: “This is game over for Warren.”

The councillor called for the leader either to resign or to announce immediately that he would not seek re-election at April’s AGM.

Mr Russell-Moyle continues to sit on Brighton and Hove City Council as a fellow representative of Cllr Morgan’s East Brighton ward.

Asked whether he supported Cllr Morgan as leader, he said: “That 
is down to the councillors at the AGM.”

When it was pointed out that he himself is a councillor, he said: “In April I’ll consider the candidates. 

“If I’m still a councillor at that point in time I’ll choose the best person for the job.

“At the moment Warren remains the leader and whilst he remains the leader I’ll continue to support him running the city.”

However Mr Kyle, whose politics are much closer to Cllr Morgan’s, said:

“With Warren and the team it’s residents who come first with recycling and youth unemployment up and more homes and social housing being built for a generation.

“If someone out there does have an eye on Warren’s job they must ask themselves first if they can stand on a record that matches his.”

ANALYSIS

ON the warm September day Jeremy Corbyn was greeted with songs and adoring applause in the hall of the Brighton Centre, addressing the most upbeat Labour conference in a decade, council leader Warren Morgan was not in the room.

He was busy with meetings, he said, but was also feeling the first gusts of a storm of his own making.

He was being criticised for a letter, sent the previous day to Labour HQ, in which he threatened to ban his own party from future conferences in Brighton unless it promised “no repeat of the behaviour and actions we have seen this week” – a reference to alleged anti-Semitic comments at a fringe meeting.

Now, with the leak of another letter, this time from a Labour council colleague demanding his resignation, Storm Warren has intensified.

The author of the more recent letter, Councillor Kevin Allen of Preston Park ward, told The Argus: “Warren’s action... caused real dismay and bewilderment among party members.

“Labour councillors need a leader capable of engaging, enthusing and inspiring the members, building on what was achieved in the General Election. 

“Warren is clearly not that person. He has to go – and fast.”
Another Labour councillor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said:

“The issue is he’s disaffected from the party in the city and we need the party united to convince voters we’re a stable political force.”

The source added that, privately, strategies for arranging a “graceful exit” for Warren Morgan had been under discussion for some time.

Because, of course, this is not just about a conference fringe meeting or a letter or the views of a single councillor, a councillor with a long history of opposing his group leader, whoever that has been.

The truth is that another front has now opened up in the long battle for the soul of the Labour Party, which has raged at least since Tony Blair’s change to Clause Four in 1995 and which became open warfare after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader in 2015.

The left wing of the party is now firmly in the ascendency once again, both at national level and among the huge and swelling numbers of grassroots members.

But almost all of Brighton’s sitting Labour councillors are closer to the more centrist, social-democratic wing of the party.

Cllr Morgan in particular has made no secret of his antipathy towards Mr Corbyn and his policies.

He has been less vociferous in his public criticism of Mr Corbyn over the last year but his failure to attend Corbyn’s speech to Conference - in the city he leads and which greeted Corbyn with open arms - is not the signal of a party marching in perfect unity.So a reckoning was due.

Most anticipated it in the spring, when the Labour party at ward level will start reselecting – or deselecting – the councillors who will go on to fight the next election.

In Warren Morgan’s ward of East Brighton, with big numbers of leftwing Momentum activists and a leftwing Labour MP in Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the leader’s political position looks increasingly incongruous, and perhaps untenable.

So he and many councillors like him may well face reselection battles, with more left wing candidates hoping to unseat them.

During or after such a battle, if the party at council level took on a hue of deeper red, a new party leader may have emerged to lead Labour up to and into 2019’s council elections.

And all that may still happen –but Cllr Allen’s letter has brought the matter to a head several months earlier than anticipated.

Cllr Morgan’s immediate survival in post is likely to be decided quickly.

On Thursday evening he faces a meeting with the party officials who run the city’s three constituency parties who will be quick to tell him if he has lost their confidence.

And on Monday evening the city’s Labour councillors will hold their weekly meeting, with some already calling for their leader to be absent from any discussion of this matter.

Ultimately what may save Cllr Morgan is not the content of this letter, or its author, but the timing. 

Without those reselection battles having taken place, the council group continues to share Cllr’s Morgan’s politics and there is no obvious successor or alternative waiting in the wings.

But the question of who should lead Labour – and Brighton – is now very much open to debate.

LEADER'S REPLY

WHEN The Argus asked council leader Warren Morgan to comment on the call for his resignation yesterday he replied: “I’ve discussed the issue with colleagues and provided Cllr Allen with a full response.”

In his lengthy email reply to Cllr Kevin Allen, sent confidentially to Labour council colleagues and seen by The Argus, he seems to make the case to stay in post on the grounds that in-fighting would hand control of the council to the Conservative opposition.

He wrote: “For the party officers and other internal groupings to force a change of leadership and publicly divide Labour 18 months before an election, over an issue that the vast majority will have no knowledge of and even less interest in, would be extremely damaging to our prospects of holding off the Tory challenge. 

“We all saw what happened to the Greens when they were in office. 

“We should not let these long-standing internal divisions rob us of the re-election and the majority which we as a group and a party deserve and which the people we represent so badly need.”

On anti-Semitism he said all he had requested was for a conference rule change to be enforced prior to Labour returning to Brighton.

He denied accusations he had helped dismiss the party’s previous Executive Committee.

He said of the General Election: “When it came to it I united with others behind a Labour victory.”