Labour will have to fight to win back control of Hastings after defections more than halved the size of the ruling group on the borough council. With local elections in May and a potential parliamentary seat at stake, there is much to fight for.
The crisis for Labour follows the decision in mid-December by six of its leading councillors (later joined by two others) to quit the party. The new ruling group, calling itself Hastings Independents – and now aligned with the Greens, has pledged to devote itself to the good of the town without having to work with the party centrally or locally.
The breakaway, totally unexpected, sent Labour party members into a state of shock; none had been canvassed beforehand to join the group. Judy Rogers, a leading councillor and former mayor, was driving home on the M25 when she was told the news by then council leader Paul Barnett. “I nearly crashed!” she recalls.
Since the announcement, events moved fast. Rogers, who decided to stick with Labour – and so lose her cabinet post – joined fellow Labour colleagues in proposing a motion of no confidence in Barnett and deputy leader Maya Evans.
Then, on 17 January, at a specially convened council meeting, the cabinet resigned en masse and backed the election of Greens’ leader Julia Hilton as council leader. Labour councillors (along with the Conservatives) abstained rather than backing Hilton. At a further meeting Barnett returned to the cabinet with the key finance role. Two other members of Hastings Independents also joined the new cabinet.
Can the new coalition endure?
The new coalition’s tenure in power may be short-lived. In May, half of Hastings Borough Council’s 32 seats will be contested and so the political make-up could change again; (unlike many authorities, such as Brighton, Hastings has council elections every two years, with half the councillors facing re-election).
The breakaway group blamed their disenchantment on Labour’s position on Gaza and on policy differences generally. Deputy leader Maya Evans had further reasons to leave. A supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, she had been a popular choice among local members to be Hastings’ next MP, but her candidature was blocked by the national party. This time, she resigned the Labour whip after being de-selected by the party from standing again for her council seat. In a statement she claimed the party had drifted to the right and was being “micromanaged locally by Westminster-centric, unelected party officials”.
In a statement, the Hastings Independents said the Labour Party “no longer provides us with the policies, the support, or the focus on local government that we need, given the many local issues we are committed to tackling”.
Jockeying for power
While there is no doubting their sincerity, there is speculation in Labour circles that these councillors feared that they, too, would be de-selected when their time for re-selection comes round next year. Then again, their disillusionment with Labour may have its seeds in what happened last May when, following local elections, Labour lost three seats to the Greens, together with its overall majority.
In order to retain some control of the council, a coalition agreement was brokered by Barnett and Hilton and supported by most Labour and Green councillors. Both sides agreed a pragmatic council programme with, from the Greens’ perspective, a more thorough approach to tackling climate change. The coalition was later dissolved for breaching Labour rules on formal arrangements with other parties.
At the same time, the council was facing a struggle to balance the books, in part due to the burden of funding temporary accommodation for the town’s growing homeless. In November, amid fears of imminent bankruptcy, a budget was agreed involving a package of cuts, council redundancies and sharing services with other authorities. The ins and outs of this can sometimes be hard to grasp and the press, perhaps predictably, focused on the withdrawal of funding for the town’s Christmas trees.
Allegations have also been raised about funding for a housing company which hasn’t delivered any housing, and mismanaged contracts – with the blame, fairly or unfairly, being put on those who have now left the party.
Testing times ahead
The defection itself, so close to council and parliamentary elections, is considered reckless by Labour loyalists. Hastings & Rye is a key marginal for Labour, its candidate Helena Dollimore hoping to overturn Conservative Sally Ann Hart’s 2019 majority of 4,043. Both sides of the Labour split agree that the council is facing tough financial circumstances and both sides also believe they are the right people for the job of keeping the council afloat.
Both sides also want to see Helena Dollimore as the next Labour MP. Until recently the Independents were campaigning for her. Both will also be hoping that Keir Starmer, should he win power, will make good on Labour’s pledge to give England’s towns and cities new powers and funding to boost local economies.
Meanwhile, the campaigning for May’s local elections continues apace and Labour canvassers have reported no fallout from the split, so far, with the vast majority of voters unaware of the new group and what they stand for.
The Labour group’s new leader Heather Bishop, who leads a team of six, is confident Labour can win back the council. She said in January: “This coalition of chaos is not the fresh start that Hastings needs. Just four weeks ago, Cllr Hilton called the Hastings Independents ‘highly irresponsible’, but she has now done a deal to keep them in power. In May, residents in Hastings have the chance to clear out this unelected and unwanted coalition of failure, and vote for a changed Labour Party that will bring stability and prosperity back to our town.”
Labour is fielding a full slate of candidates in May, as are the Tories. The Greens will be contesting Labour-held seats. And the Hastings Independents are also expected to go up against their former party in a few wards.
