Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, has announced her intention to retire at the next general Election. She was first elected in 2010 and is still the Green Party's only MP. Her majority when she first won the seat was 1,252 in a contest that was close to a four-way tie. At the last election her majority was just short of 20,000. Supporters of all parties in Brighton & Hove acknowledge that she has been a very good constituency MP. Her status as the party's only MP will have made her job even more difficult.

 

Her status in Brighton was illustrated for me very clearly today. I was on a Yr 10 geography field trip in the city centre. While we were there a group of people showed up ready to film something. When I said that one of the people there was Caroline Lucas several of the students got quite excited, even rather starstruck. One of them asked her who was doing the filming (it was BBC South East) and she answered them. That sort of engagement with people who were clearly too young to vote is one reason why she is so popular here. She could easily have just ignored their question.

 

The heavy defeat suffered by the Greens in the council elections last month may have played a part in Lucas's decision although I suspect she would still have won. The seat will now be a major target for Labour at the next election and they will probably win it. It could be good news for the Lib Dems too. The Greens have been showing a lot of interest in Lewes, just along the coast. That raised the prospect of them winning enough votes to prevent the Lib Dems from winning and handing the seat to the Tories. Lewes Greens may now be encouraged to work in Pavilion in an effort to keep that seat.

Shame in a way as she was a great MP but I hear that she doesn't feel that being an MP helps with the Climate Emergency and takes away from focussing on that. In a way, I understand you only have to watch what happens in Parliament to see how useless it is with its adversarial, unfair system.

Brighton Pavillion to go Labour then. I imagine at least. Very hard to name another high profile candidate in the Green Party who could keep the seat even with that majority.

 

It's a shame to see Lucas go as one of the MPs I agree most with but with the Greens mostly siphoning votes off of Labour and with barely a better environmental policy than Labour (atm), might be for the best for them to go into the wilderness, get the NIMBY out of their system and regroup. Those council seats they got don't particularly feel very left-wing environmentalist (though some will be for sure).

Sad to see her go, she was one of the few principled MPs in parliament!

Like others have said, a lovely M.P. and such a shame she is going.