Mayor Margi Takes Labour Lead
Following the local election at the beginning of this month, as reported in HIP 251, the political parties now represented on Hastings Borough Council hold numbers of seats as follows:
- Greens 12
- Labour 8
- Ex-Labour
Independent Group 6 - Conservatives 5
- Ex-Conservative Independent 1
It is reasonable to assume that Green leader Cllr Julia Hilton, now heading the largest body of councillors, will continue as council leader. At the time of going to press, no announcement has been made, either by her or anybody else, as to how her cabinet will be composed, or whether indeed the cabinet system is to continue. However, she has expressed, post-election, an intention to develop closer working relationships with other parties. “We campaigned on the basis of wanting a much more collaborative and cooperative council”, she said, “and we will be undertaking negotiations with other parties on that basis.”
In the meantime, the Labour Party has elected current mayor, Cllr Margi O’Callaghan, as their new leader, following the unseating of former councillor Heather Bishop, who had only been in the role since January. Heather Kay, freshly elected as councillor for Wishing Tree, will be deputy party leader.
Cllr O’Callaghan’s elevation marks a further ascent in her personal snakes-and-ladders political career. In 2018 she was elected as councillor for Silverhill, and two years later took office as Chair of the Charity Committee in the cabinet of then council leader Kim Forward. In 2021 she lost her council seat, defeated by Conservative candidate Lucian Fernando (who later joined Reform UK), but in 2022, she was re-selected to contest the Braybrooke ward and won easily.
Cllr Paul Barnett did not restore her to his cabinet, but she became chair of the council’s planning committee. A year later, in May 2023, she was unanimously elected mayor. With Labour no longer commanding an overall majority, she found herself in a position on more than one occasion to use the casting vote given her by this role to exercise it in favour of her party’s motion – and didn’t hesitate to do so. Chairing the most recent full council meeting on 20 March she controversially brought proceedings to a halt when members of the public were seeking to protest over Palestinian issues.
She described her mayoral position then as “non-political”. In her new role, not so much.
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