Local elections 2022: ‘Exhilarated’ Greens celebrate winning two seats in Hackney as Labour maintains firm hold
Dalston’s newly elected Green councillor Zoë Garbett. Photograph: julia Gregory
The Greens are celebrating gaining two seats from Labour in hotly contested wards.
As predicted, Labour held control of Hackney with 50 seats, but a delighted Green Party is revelling in the elections of Zoë Garbett in Dalston and Alastair Binnie-Lubbock in Hackney Downs.
The pair vowed to push the council to act faster on the climate emergency.
Labour has always controlled Hackney since it became a borough council in 1965.
However, the Greens were determined to build on their 2018 showing, when they narrowly failed to gain a seat in Dalston by 21 votes and lost out in Hackney Downs by 90 votes.
Garbett, who also finished second in this this year’s mayoral race, said she was determined to hold the council to account on the climate emergency.
The elated new councillor said: “I’m really excited by some of the ideas I’ve heard from residents and organisations during this campaign.
“I want to hold the Labour administration to account to take more urgent action over the climate emergency, providing social affordable housing that people need, and fundamentally changing the relationship between residents and the council so they are really heard.”
Hackney Downs’ new Green representative Alastair Binnie-Lubbock. Photograph: Julia Gregory
Her fellow Green councillor Binnie-Lubbock, who contested the mayoral election in 2018, said: “I’m exhilarated but I’m very excited to carry on the work representing residents and bringing the voices of people from Hackney Downs to the council.”
He wants to see the council’s net-zero target brought forward 10 years to 2030 to tackle the climate emergency.
This year the controversial low traffic neighbourhoods attracted a group of 11 residents to stand under the Independent Network name.
They said LTNs simply diverted traffic and pollution to boundary roads and affected people in poorer areas.
Conservative leader Michael Levy said: “Voters are receptive. We seem to have bucked the trend. Voters are savvy about separating local politics from national politics. Closing streets as LTNs was the top issue.”
He added: “It’s counter intuitive to close the streets in one particular area to achieve redistribution of pollution in the streets.”
The Conservatives retained five seats in Springfield and Stamford Hill West, their traditional strongholds.
Both the Liberal Democrats and the Independent Network failed to win any seats, but the latter celebrated keeping LTNs on the agenda.
The Network’s Clair Battaglino, who stood in Hackney Central, said housing was also a “big issue on the doorstep”.
She added that some Labour voters told independent candidates that not voting Labour was “in effect voting for Boris”.
People need to realise that local government elections are not just a test of faith or time to demonstrate loyalty to national party political parties, but about local issues and to serve local interests best. National party political parties might value local elections for their publicity value, or as a barometer for their performances, but really the two are quite separate.
What would serve Hackney people much better would be to have some kind of proportionate representation, not Labour having the monopoly over who gets councillor expenses. That Labour will not accept that, and relinquish that monopoly, raises the question of whether they are serving themselves, or serving the people.
I write that as a Labour supporter.
Local elections should be much more about the individuals and issues local people face and, yes, green issues (e.g. air pollution, energy efficiency, traffic etc) should be far more of a concern to us, as they effect everyone.
I suspect such a loosen of single party politics control would even benefit some Labour councillors, allowing them to step out of line and speak up more about such issues. It would also allow for more minority parties to rise.
It would be nice if the labour council invited one of the green councillors to join the cabinet and I say that as a labour member