6 May 2017
Kent remains a sea of blue after last Thursday’s vote but, thankfully, Ukip have been wiped out and no longer has any councillors on the County Council.
By retaining his seat in Hythe, Martin Whybrow has ensured that there will be a Green voice on the county council and he will continue to push for social and environmental justice as he has done for the last four years.
In Tonbridge, Mark Hood and April Clark (April is also our parliamentary candidate) doubled the Green vote compared to the last KCC elections giving the Division one of the largest Green votes in the county. By working tirelessly in the local community both April and Mark show week in, week out, what Green politics is all about. People like this deserve the support people have given them and their voices deserve to be heard.
It is worth reflecting that, although the Tories received just 50% of the vote, thanks to our unfair First Past The Post voting system, they have ended up with 82.7% of the seats. We don’t begrudge them their majority, after all, people voted for them, but we do think that their total domination of the County Council is not justified by the figures.
A fairer voting system would have seen the Conservatives gain just 50 seats – still the largest party – but, with Proportional Representation, we would now have a more balanced and representative County Council that better reflects the range of views across the county. There would be 14 Lib Dems, 19 Labour, 10 Ukip and 5 Greens now sitting in County Hall.
Under such a system, the parties would have to talk to each other and a more consensual form of politics would emerge rather than the one party state we currently have. One of our main priorities is to change the voting system to make it fairer and more representative.
By voting Green on 8th June, you will help us to send out that message.
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