Le Monde interviewed Green Party Councillor for Chichester South, Sarah Sharp, regarding the local elections. Here's what she had to say. (Translation to English courtesy of Bill Sharp, original article in French can be found here.)
In Chichester, the Tory 'blue wall' is being fought over
In the affluent south of England, the local elections of 4 May are a test for the Sunak government.
REPORT by CECILE DUCOURTIEUX
United Kingdom special correspondent
A beautiful 11th century cathedral, shops decked out in Union Jacks in anticipation of Charles III's coronation on 6 May, friendly pubs, thatched roofs and rose gardens: Chichester, in Sussex, is a cliché of a rich and happy England. On the eve of the local elections on 4 May, this enchanting city of about 23,000 people, 100 kilometres from London, is one of the most contested areas of the 'blue wall' - the south of the country normally won by the Conservatives.
Some 8,000 local councillors are up for re-election in England, and the opposition parties (Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats) intend to take advantage of the setbacks of the former governments of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss to gain the advantage. This election is also the first facing the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, since he took over from Liz Truss in October 2022, and the last before the UK's scheduled 2024 general election.
Adrian Moss, a Liberal Democrat (LibDem) politician in Chichester, is hoping to retain his position on the district council and believes in his party's chances. "The Tories have the majority on the council, with seventeen out of thirty-six elected members, we have eleven [the other parties share the remaining six seats]. But we can turn this around and become a majority. This will make us credible to win the MP seat [held by Gillian Keegan, Mr Sunak's education minister] next year,'' says the elected representative from the party's office, a stone's throw from the cathedral.
The main concern of Chichester residents, he said, is the pollution of rivers and beaches, aggravated by agricultural discharges, but especially by sewage, a particularly acute problem in Chichester, located near a natural harbour renowned among water sports enthusiasts and bird lovers. "People are fed up with the s*** in the water. Many people don't allow their children to swim in the water to avoid getting sick," says Adrian Moss.
At issue are water companies, privatised under Margaret Thatcher's government, which preferred to pay dividends rather than invest in under-resourced infrastructure. Sewers often date from the Victorian era and still collect both rainwater and sewage. As soon as it rains, they become overloaded and the water companies (Southem Water in Chichester) dump the overflow into rivers and onto beaches.
So far the Tories have ignored the problem, refusing to impose deterrent fines on the companies. In Chichester, angry residents have set up a "citizen science" group to monitor water quality themselves. "If we win a majority on the district council, we'll put pressure on Southem Water to change things," promises Kate o'Kelly, another LibDem elected member of the council and the party's local coordinator.
The other major concern of residents, which could cost the Conservatives, in power since 2010, is the cost of living. Here, as elsewhere in the country, people have seen their energy bills double and food prices rise by around 15 per cent over a year. "This is a wealthy community, but many are struggling. A lot of businesses have gone out of business in the city centre because of high rents. In my school we have set up a food bank for some parents," says James Field, who has just left his "very stressful" job as headmaster of a Catholic school to become an executive with the NAHT, the main national union of headteachers.
In the semi-rural township of Chichester, which has only one Labour elected member on the district council, Field is confident of his chances: "People are still angry about the Johnson and Truss Tory governments. Next year's parliamentary elections could be a big surprise with well-known Tory MPs losing their seats," the Labour candidate predicted.
The deplorable state of the National Health Service (NHS) is also on everyone's mind, aggravated by the lack of staff – in Chichester too, getting an appointment with your family doctor is an obstacle course. "But Brexit is no longer an issue here, even though it's why we've lost foreign staff from the NHS," says Sarah Sharp, a Green member of the district council.
Mrs Sharp is also campaigning for more cycle paths and better public transport. The rail network, meanwhile, is in a state of disrepair: the direct train to London rarely runs smoothly. "Trains are often cancelled, there are not enough buses, people are dependent on cars," she said, underlining another failure of the Conservative policies of privatisation and budget cuts.
Greg Hands, the Conservative chairman, has warned that his party could lose up to 1,000 elected positions on 4 May. Experts believe that this pessimism is exaggerated: after the scandals of the Johnson era and the catastrophic economic programme of Liz Truss, hope has returned to the Tory side. The serious, hard-working Rishi Sunak seems to have reassured voters: in the polls, Labour's lead over the Conservatives is now only about 15 points. The left-wing party is counting on the local elections to make gains in the south of the country, and to regain ground in the Midlands and the North, where it suffered a historic setback in the 2019 general election.
But the prospect of a Labour government, which seemed inevitable a few weeks ago, is no more than a prospect and nervousness seems to be spreading among the party's staff. Its leader, Keir Starmer, is constantly positioning himself in the centre, at the risk of blurring his image. On Tuesday 2 May, he even announced that he was abandoning a promise to abolish the enormous weight of university tuition fees, which he made in 2020 during the campaign to replace his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
