I surely wasn’t the only citizen of Brighton and Hove who breathed a sigh of relief when the Green council was turfed out by Labour last May after years of misrule. To be fair, it had been a bit of a semi-farcical pass-the-parcel situation for quite some time. Labour caved to the Greens in the summer of 2020 after the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Nancy Platts, wrote to her team to tell them they were handing over power ‘in the interests of democracy and the city’. Regrettably, there was also the taint of allegations of anti-Semitism that had come to surround the Labour council, though she obviously wasn’t about to dob her lot in for that one.

Sadly such noble sword-falling came with a side order of showing off. Councillor Platts boasted that her administration ‘should be proud of our achievements since 2015′. She wrote, ‘We have helped steer the city through an unprecedented public health crisis and focused our efforts on economic recovery; backing our local businesses and supporting our most vulnerable residents…and set up a climate assembly to achieve our goal of becoming a carbon neutral city by 2030.’

The Brighton experience is a lesson for the country

When Labour took over eight months ago, many Green-loathers like myself were pleasantly surprised by the new leader, Bella Sankey. An attractive, well-dressed young woman of dual heritage, she seemed a world away from the standard knit-your-own-yurt B&H councillor.

In her acceptance speech, Sankey paid tribute to her Nigerian-Irish father, who worked as a builder – hooray! – on the maternity wing of the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, where Bella was born in the 1980s during the rule of – boo! – Mrs Thatcher:

‘My mixed heritage family found a safe and welcoming home here in this city where you can dare to be different.’ Then it got a bit word-soupy: ‘As a mixed heritage woman, I know that diversity is strength. So I’m proud to be elected as part of the most diverse set of councillors that our city has ever known.’

She continued with a bit of grandiose grandstanding: does Brighton really have a ‘global reputation for creativity, excellence, compassion, fairness and fun’? I thought that was New York and Narnia! When she paid tribute to the former Labour councillor Brian Fitch, an ex-mayor, who recently died, it got decidedly gloopy:

‘I’m aware that I stand here on the shoulders of many giants, who over centuries, both inside and outside of this chamber, have known this city, loved this city and transformed this city and who will continue to inspire us all as we take this city forward.’

I’m sure Brian Fitch was a lovely fellow, but a giant? Still, Sankey displayed an admirable anger at the outgoing Greens, hitting back at the party’s Brighton MP Caroline Lucas, ‘Thanks for the congratulations. But your party has been an unmitigated disaster for our city. And they needed to be kindly shown the door.’

Brighton’s Labour bigwig took a pop at local Green MP Caroline Lucas, but the Labour party have hardly improved things in the city since they took power last May (Getty Images)

The next thing we knew, Labour were making pleasingly cross noises about the ‘re-wilding’ which made our fair city such an eyesore under the Greens, with cascades of weeds bothering pets, the elderly and the disabled. The issue apparently gave our leader sleepless nights, until this week when she announced that the weeds are to go under the chemical cosh.

But however much sense Sankey has shown when attempting to keep the streets free of pests, that seems to be just about the only beneficial thing her council has planned for B&H. The pleas of many local parents to rid our schools of pesty wokeness have fallen on deaf ears. Classrooms have become petri dishes for social experiments in defiance of parental wishes. Is it really possible that, a few years ago, one school in Brighton, labelled as ‘the coolest state secondary in town’, once had as many as 40 children who did not identify with their sex at birth with another 36 saying they were ‘gender fluid’? Or is this social contagion, as eating disorders are now often understood to be, among sad teenagers desperate to identify as something or anything, rather than feel lonely? Whatever it is, the council are hindering rather than helping these confused adolescents. Sometimes it seems as though there is an almost sadistic element to the way right-on teachers torment distraught parents.

Isn’t it odd to send people who think diversely off for re-education, or re-‘training’?

And another thing, after boasting that ‘diversity is strength’, isn’t it odd to send people who think diversely off for re-education, or re-‘training’? This is what the Sainted Bella did after Councillor Alison Thomson retweeted posts supporting JK Rowling and the feminist Germaine Greer. Even though the culprit apologised unreservedly, Chairman Sankey frowned, ‘I have also taken the decision to remove Councillor Thomson from her lead role on city centre renewal while further investigation is carried out and subject to her completing training.’ Because nothing says not being qualified to work on renewing city centres like believing in women’s rights.

But not even the re-training of the hapless Thomson was enough for one Green councillor, Chloe Goldsmith. She asked how Labour would ‘meaningfully demonstrate’ to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning/queer, asexual plus (LGBTIQA+) people that the party would stand up for them. This brought another avalanche of woo-woo affirmation from Labour, with the situation continuing ad infinitum.

Purity spirals are never pretty, even in times of plenty. With local councils going bust all over the country, they seem positively surreal. Though less visceral than the battle for the bodies of children between parents and teachers, Labour also seems to have inherited the Green suspicion that the original sin might well have been the invention of the wheel. The extortionate cost of parking here has driven businesses to distraction for a long time. The number of empty shopfronts in once-bustling Brighton city centre is shocking to see, though their deserted doorways do provide welcome shelter for our armies of homeless people: the third largest number in England after London and Manchester, despite our far smaller population.

You’d have thought that we’d learned about the perils of throwing public money away at a time when services are being slashed with the vigour of Edward Scissorhands attempting to escape from a burning sheet factory. The council is still owed a whopping £47 million by the clowns who own the pathetic and pointless Brighton i360 tower. Opened in 2016, it looms over the seafront like a monument to municipal stupidity.

For some reason, though, the council seem keen to blow yet more public money in order to facilitate the ‘Valley Gardens’ folly which will cause mayhem on the seafront for years to come. A revamp of the area has been in the works for years, with roads redesigned and bus shelters converted into cafes and art spaces. As the formidable independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh put it:

‘This is exactly the same scenario as the i360 – residents pointed out the multiple flaws but the council pushed on regardless. We have been told repeatedly by this council that the coffers are empty and a huge budget shortfall is expected this year – so why is Labour getting the city into even deeper debt with an ill-conceived traffic scheme that will create even more congestion and pollution, rather than focusing on their stated remit of supporting the most vulnerable in our society?’

Gary Farmer of the Old Steine Community Association representing a district which will be blighted by this flight of fancy said, ‘It is as if the Greens have not left office…[the scheme] will further damage the city’s economy and reputation.’

It’s been something of a case of out-of-the-Aga-and-into-the-hot-air-fryer

Bella Sankey says ‘I love Brighton and Hove. And this city runs through me like a stick of rock’. But a stick of rock would show more sensitivity than she has through her pandering to the city’s relatively small cross-dressing community compared to the 50 per cent of the population who are women.

Next week, Sankey will host another of her patronising ‘Reimagine Brighton’ events, where the public show up believing that they can have their say. This time the idea is to ‘brainstorm’ on the theme of ‘safety in the city – how can we ensure women and girls feel safe?’ Well, ensuring only women – rather than men who think they are women – can access Brighton’s rape crisis centre might be a good start.

And so, since the brave new dawn when we saw the Greens off last spring, it’s been something of a case of out-of-the-Aga-and-into-the-hot-air-fryer. Sankey appears to be taking the two dumbest Green hobby-horses – the twin terrors of gender-woo tyranny and a phobia of cars – and running with them. It’s like there’s an ongoing competition between the Greens and Labour to see who can finish off B&H in the shortest time. Labour stand a good chance of winning the award if their majority collapses this year – or if they simply go bankrupt, as some fear they might.

This isn’t just a bit of local bother. With Labour on course to win a national landslide this year, the Brighton experience is a lesson for the country as to what happens when the carrot of apparent common sense is dominated by the big stick of woke silliness. The Conservatives are useless and need to pull themselves together (preferably under the stewardship of the splendid Kemi Badenoch). But when I think of the coming election, a twist on the old Belloc rhyme comes to my mind: ‘Always keep a-hold of nurse/For fear of finding something non-binary, net-zero worse…’

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