Green Party leader Caroline Lucas was warmly received at two Labour conference events yesterday - and a growing number of commentators are recognising that the Greens' leader is likely to take the Brighton Pavilion constituency, the location of the current Labour conference, away from Labour in the coming general election.
Having opened the Convention of the Left conference in Brighton on Saturday, Caroline Lucas yesterday addressed meetings of both the Fabian Society and Compass, a progressive group within the Labour Party. Gavin Hayes of Compass told The Guardian: "If you look at our No Turning Back document, of the 10 policies we proposed, six were Lib Dem, nine were green and none were New Labour."
According to The Guardian's Allegra Stratton, "That's Compass saying that, more in sorrow than in anger, they may have more in common with Lucas than with the Labour lot." (1)
Brighton is "stronghold of Green politics" - BBC
Meanwhile the BBC's Andrew Marr described Brighton as a stronghold of Green politics (2) and Professor Michael Thrasher of the University of Plymouth told Sky News: "It is appropriate that Brighton should be the venue for Labour's final conference before the next General Election. Unless its poll ratings take off after this week then there is every chance that next year it will lose the Brighton Pavilion constituency, either to the Conservatives or even to the Green Party." (3)
Gaby Hinsliff, political editor of the Observer, wrote yesterday that "Labour is fighting not just the Tories but the Greens in Brighton and Norwich..."
She added, "To understand the threat [from the Greens], Labour delegates need merely to wander out of the conference centre. The Brighton Pavilion seat is the Green party's best shot at a parliamentary seat in 2010 and it has draped the seafront in cheeky slogans promoting its candidate." (4)
Ms Hinsliff was alluding to the Green Party leader's billboard campaign, set to run throughout the Labour conference, which features images of a tired-looking Gordon Brown symbolically fashioned from newspaper reports of Labour disasters, with the slogan "Labour is old news in Brighton" and a reminder that in this year's Euro-elections, the Greens polled twice Labour's vote and a third more than the Conservatives'. (5)
Caroline Lucas commented today: "Many people with what used to be Labour values of fairness and social justice feel betrayed by this government, under which inequality has actually risen, not fallen. On a wide range of issues, from protecting public services and opposing privatisation, to demanding a living wage and fairer employment rights, it is the Greens, not Labour, who are offering what millions of Labour voters want - a fairer, more equitable society, accountable to the voters not to the financiers."
The Greens pointed out that, next week, the Conservative Party will hold its conference in Manchester, a city where they too finished behind the Greens in this year's elections.
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Notes to Editors
1. "Compass gives platform to woman Greens hope will be their first MP," www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/sep/27/compass-caroline-lucas
2. See: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n13px/The_Andrew_Marr_Show_27_09_2009/
3. See "Labour Win Dependent On Brown Popularity", Sky News
4. Gaby Hinsliff, "Brown prepares his last desperate roll of the dice," Observer 27.9.09: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/27/labour-conference-gordon-brown
5. The vote was Green Party 31%, Conservatives 22%, Labour 15%. The artwork for all three posters, designed by the Green Party's retained ad agency glue London, can be seen here: