Their latest leaflet distributed to Brixton Hill ward - championing Labour's freeze on council tax which is hurting the most vulnerable in Lambeth - contains a graph of the results from the London Mayoral elections in 2012. Although the Greens came second in the ward on both the party list and with the individual assembly candidate (you can see the full results here), the graph produced by Labour mysteriously fails to show the Green vote at all.
Not only were the Greens in second place in Brixton Hill in the London Assembly election, but the Greens in Brixton Hill have been in second place in council elections there for years (see the results for 2002 and for 2006 on the Lambeth Council website).
This does beg the question why Lambeth Labour are suddenly trying to deceive local people.
Labour has a habit of running dirty tricks campaigns against the Greens when it is feeling threatened - as it did against a Green councillor in Herne Hill. They have recently been embarrassed and forced into a u-turn on the Living Wage after their initial opposition to the proposal by a Green councillor that it be extended to subcontractors. (It was a Green Lambeth councillor who originally tabled the motion to get Lambeth to become a Living Wage employer). The Greens have also recently been active in the ward itself. It is not surprising therefore that Labour is scared.
Brixton Hill is of course leader of Lambeth council Steve Reed’s Ward. Council tax payers are still paying him £50,000 a year, while he campaigns full time in Croydon to win a Parliamentary seat, with the support of Lambeth Labour. If Reed does get elected to Parliament, there will be a by-election in Brixton Hill, and voters will get a chance to express how they feel about all this.
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