A brief note from a "hotbed of revolution"...

If I had had any doubts about the joint announcement yesterday by Labour Council Leader, Nancy Platts and Green Leader of the Opposition, Phelim McCafferty, about how the two parties will aim to cooperate for the benefit of the people of Brighton and Hove, such doubts would have been chased away by the risible commentary of former Tory Group Leader, Tony Janio in today’s Argus.

Mr Janio, recovering from having led the Tories to their worst ever result in Brighton and Hove (and from his subsequent resignation as Group Leader) is not at his most lucid or persuasive. He harbours an obsessive fear of “extremism” and is certain that Labour and Green Party members will be disappointed at failing to turn the City into a “hotbed of revolution”.

Any member of a Party led by the current Prime Minister is presumably already used to  disappointment, and Mr Janio should probably get used to the feeling. When I was growing up in Brighton it was a Tory town, but now the Tories are very much the third Party on the Council, with two members on each of the main policy Committees (compared to four each for Labour and the Greens).

It’s kind of the Argus to give space to a former political Leader who is coming to terms with what has happened to him – and good of them to juxtapose his piece with another story about people who deserve to be taken just as seriously.