“Dazzling”, because of what the place does to one’s spirit. You arrive like a walking Munch Scream, tired of life and of London, but after a few hours of ozone and fighting the seagulls from your chips, revivification will be complete. There is, too, an energy to be absorbed from simply being among the population, which represents the best of tolerant Britain, and not only with regard to “minorities”. Somewhere (A Place For Us) could have been written for Brighton, but the town is as comfortable for a builder as it is for a drag queen (indeed, if you could combine both skills, I suspect you’d rarely lack work.)  We can put its quickly abandoned attempt to shove “Meat Free Mondays” down the throats of council binmen in the, er, bin. (I’m a vegetarian. I always thought the point was to eat what one desired, not what Greens think best). There’s more than a whiff of student politics about the rest of the administration’s plans, though: the Greens wanted an increase of 3.5 per cent in council tax this year and next.  The man on the 27 bus wasn’t alone in his anger. About 70 per cent of responders voted against the rise, in a long-running Brighton Argus poll. As Mike Weatherley points out (note to Question Time producer: he’s one of the MPs whose name isn’t “Caroline Lucas”, remember?), the Greens were doubly deceitful: they wanted to increase tax each year, but also to avoid triggering the referendum that a 5 per cent increase in any single year would require.  But, look: we knew the Greens were Left-wing. So the taxation fixation wasn’t exactly a surprise, nor the quarter of a million the council channels into trade unions every year, nor the planned 70 per cent rise in trading permit charges (such common sense, in an economic downturn). That they want to close toilets on the seafront and reduce library hours is plain weird, but still not uniquely emblematic of Green rule (there are rubbish councils of every hue that implement such stupid cuts – though neither of those were necessary, as both Tory and Labour amendments to the proposed budget made clear).  But imagine you’re Britain’s first Green council. What would you wish to be remembered for? Isn’t it just possible you’d want to make a positive environmental impact on your city?  How, then, to explain a key proposal of its flagship budget, to raise the charges on city allotments by an astonishing two thirds? What were they thinking? “Let’s put up tax and make it harder for people without gardens to grow their own vegetables.” Perhaps allotment holders aren’t, like, radical enough.  Anyway: the truly historic fact about the first Green administration is that its ridiculous budget was defeated on Thursday, voted down by grown-up Tory and Labour councillors. But its proposals should serve as a warning to anyone wondering, in light of Lib Dem political detumescence, whether that nice Miss Lucas’s party might be a suitable repository for the pox-on-both-your-houses vote.  The real emblem of Brighton isn’t the Pavilion, or the pier, but the Quaker meeting house; a place of dazzling peace, generosity and light. Brighton’s politics used to reflect that comfortable non-conformity, but the Greens are too ideological to be its true inheritors. If you’ve ever wondered what life would be like were we to be governed by the “Occupy” movement, take a trip to Brighton. Green in tooth but red in claw, its council is anything but liberal.
The Green Party wanted to raise charges on city allotments by as much as two    thirds. How green is that?