Green Party members have been “cagey” about the party’s chances of success in Brighton and Hove’s local elections, a party activist has claimed.

In a blog post, Chris Jarvis - editor of Green-supporting website Bright Green, said that party members in the city were “a lot more jittery” than those in other parts of the country.

He put this sentiment down to being “almost unique in having experienced both the highs of electoral success and the lows of electoral collapse”.

The Greens won 23 seats in 2011, only to lose more than half of their councillors at the subsequent election.

Mr Jarvis, who also leads the Green Party’s group of councillors in Oxford, said: “While the party has had an effective recovery and are back in administration now, these ebbs and flows create a nervousness among the local party, it’s activists and councillors.”

He also said that local activists anticipate a close election between the Greens and Labour, with both parties expecting to make gains from a collapse in Conservative support.

However, Mr Jarvis said that local party activists had told him it is “unlikely” Labour will gain any seats from the Green Party.

“They say that Labour’s claims of gaining majority control of the council is hubristic, arguing that a key dynamic in the city is not surging enthusiasm for Labour but a complete collapse in the Conservative vote combined with increasing hostility to politics in general,” he said.

“Anecdotally, having spent a small amount of time on the campaign trail in Brighton, I found little evidence to support the idea that support for the Greens is dissipating or evaporating.”

The Argus:

Votes will be counted later today from yesterday’s local elections, with residents electing 54 councillors from across the city for the next four years.

Heading into the election, the Greens were the largest party with 20 seats on Brighton and Hove City Council, with Labour holding 16 and the Conservatives with 11.

Parties require a total of 28 councillors to secure a majority on the city council.

The first results from Brighton and Hove are expected to be announced in the early afternoon.