Helena Dollimore is the new Member of Parliament for Hastings and Rye. The Labour and Co-operative Party candidate topped the poll in the General Election with 19,134 votes to defeat the incumbent Conservative, Sally-Ann Hart, to win the seat with a decisive majority of 8,653. It was the largest winning margin achieved by any party in this traditional bell-weather seat in over 40 years.

Lucian Fernando of Reform UK came in third, ahead of Becca Horn of the Greens and Guy Harris of the Liberal Democrats, with the three other candidates: Phil Colley (Workers Party – For Britain, For Gaza), Nicholas Davies (Communist Party of Britain) and Paul Crosland (Independent) all failing to secure the 5% of votes needed to save their £500 deposits.

Voter turnout of 60.8% was broadly in line with the national average of 59.9% but was markedly down on the two previous elections here where 67.4% of people voted in 2019 and with 71.6% voting in 2017.

The full result of the election was as follows:

The result of the election was declared at 4.21am after a long and exhausting night at the Horntye Park Sports Complex, off Bohemia Road. In her victory speech, Helena Dollimore said it was “the privilege of my life to be elected as the Labour member of parliament for Hastings and Rye.” She paid tribute to her predecessor, Sally-Ann Hart and, in particular, to her commitment to support the victims of domestic abuse. Looking to the future, she said she would “focus on the priorities of all her constituents and work to deliver the change the people across the country had voted for.”

Ms Dollimore headed off to Westminster the following week for a series of inductions and introductions, security briefings and party meetings. She was formally sworn in as a Member of Parliament on Wednesday (10 July) after standing in a seemingly endless line before finally taking the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown.

The new MP is in the process of setting up her team in Westminster. She is also establishing an office in Hastings and Rye to use as a local base for her staff to address the concerns and problems of constituents.

However, the Independents have announced that they will be fielding candidates in eight other wards as well – six currently held by Conservatives (Ashdown, Baird, Conquest, Maze Hill, St Helens, West St Leonards and Wishing Tree), two by Labour (Central St Leonards and Wishing Tree). 

Cllr Andy Batsford has admitted that, without any national party organisation to back them, they are heavily reliant upon local volunteers to provide logistical support, including social media messaging, for their relatively unknown candidates. One candidate, however, Peter Bailey in Baird, should be well known to local voters, having headed the opposition to redevelopment of the Pilot Field within the ward.

Labour and Green party canvassers have in the meantime been out in strength in the streets of several wards. Labour brochures appear designed to appeal on a broad front, preparing for a forthcoming national election as well as the local ones: they refer to their constituency candidate Helena Dollimore, championing her role in saving the Ridge Fire Station. Both parties take pains to ascribe pothole responsibility to East Sussex County Council (under a Conservative administration) while claiming that their candidates will make it their priority business to maximise reporting on incidents within their wards. 

The Conservatives, who will be defending eight of the 16 ward seats in the borough, seem to have kept a lower profile. But Reform UK has established a new local constituency branch in Hastings & Rye following the selection of Lucian Fernando, who, as ward councillor for Silverhill on Hastings Borough Council, defected from the Conservative party to Reform last year, to contest the parliamentary seat in the next general election.

The launch event in the Laya restaurant in St Leonards last Thursday (22 March) was also attended by Cllr Abul Azad, who represents Bexhill North on the county council and is Reform’s candidate in the neighbouring constituency of Bexhill & Battle. Cllr Fernando said his party was “dedicated to fostering an inclusive and transparent political environment where every voice is heard, and every concern is addressed”. He promised to “work tirelessly to enact positive change and to build a brighter future for everyone in Hastings and Rye”.

Correction:

In HIP 247 we published an article Can you hear the election drums Fernando which stated that in June 2021 Cllr Fernando had been “arrested and charged with being drunk in charge of a car. He was later fined and disqualified from driving for a year.” He has told us that he was “detained” and not “arrested”, and that he was disqualified for six months, not a year.

In the latest of our series of interviews with the Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) of the main political parties ahead of the next General Election, we feature Lucian Fernando of Reform UK.

Given the rise of small and independent political parties both nationally (George Galloway’s by-election win in Rochdale last month for the Workers Party of Britain) and locally (the rise of the Hastings Independents who left the Labour Party late last year) it is timely to take a look at Lucian Fernando, who has recently been selected by Reform UK to contest the Hastings and Rye parliamentary constituency in the forthcoming General Election.

The 33-year Fernando, who currently represents the Silverhill ward on Hastings Borough Council, is a self-confessed old-style Tory at heart, a proud Thatcherite who joined the Conservative Party almost as soon as he arrived in the UK in 2008. He is staunchly pro-business, a supporter of free markets and firm believer in the traditional Tory values of hard work, self-reliance and individual responsibility. Indeed, he was elected as a Conservative when he won the Silverhill ward in May 2021, before defecting to his new party two years later.

Highs and Lows

His shock victory over the Labour incumbent Margi O’Callaghan by 70 votes could have signalled the dawn of a bright new political career.

However, just the following month, he was arrested and charged with being drunk in charge of a car. He was later fined and disqualified from driving for a year. Then in December 2021 he was caught driving whilst disqualified and was charged with failing to provide a blood sample. He was given a 12-month Community Order, including 200 hours community service, fined again, and disqualified from driving for a further three years.

Unsurprisingly, these events soured his relationship with his Conservative colleagues. There followed complaints in respect of his conduct, including allegations that he had made physical threats to another Tory councillor, which he strenuously denies.

Things came to a head in early 2023 when a special disciplinary meeting was convened to review his conduct and to consider his expulsion from the Conservative Party. Fernando claims he resigned the party whip beforehand and so did not attend the meeting. It went ahead regardless, and the decision was made to expel him from the party for breaches of group rules. Cllr Andy Patmore, the Conservative group leader, made a point of informing a meeting of the full Council the following week that Cllr Fernando had been expelled rather than having resigned.

Joining Reform UK

Shortly afterwards he joined Reform UK. When announcing his defection, he made no mention of the problems he had experienced, saying only that he had taken the decision after becoming “disillusioned with the Conservative Party’s betrayal of Tory principles and its drift to the left since Brexit.”

Since his departure from the Conservative Group (and before the recent split in the Labour ranks), Fernando tended to side with the minority Labour administration, and his support enabled them to win a series of votes over the last year – no doubt much to the irritation of his erstwhile associates – although he denies there is any animosity between himself and his former colleagues.

Background

Born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka in a devout Catholic family, Fernando puts his commitment to public service down to the values instilled him at an early age in the family home. After moving to Britain some 15 years ago, he lived in Coventry and worked in family-owned off-licences and corner shops across the West Midlands. He then applied to City University in London to study asylum and immigration law and later joined HM Revenue and Customs as a security officer at Gatwick Airport.

He has volunteered with the British Army Cadet Force, became a Police Support Volunteer at the Metropolitan Police, and trained as an NHS first responder. He currently works on the railways.

Will he stand again in Silverhill? Fernando is unsure as to whether he will stand again in the Silverhill ward in this coming May’s local elections, but says he is looking forward to the General Election and believes the collapse in support for the Conservatives has given Reform UK the perfect opportunity to make an electoral breakthrough.

Programme for Government

Reform UK emerged from the Brexit Party, which was founded by Nigel Farage in 2018 as a vehicle to pursue a hard-line, no-deal Brexit. It is now led by the far less charismatic Richard Tice but, like its earlier inception, it continues to court controversy, particularly with its scepticism over Covid vaccines and opposition to climate change policies. The party has published a 28-page pre-election manifesto entitled “Reform is Essential: Let’s Make Britain Great”. It includes some eye-watering spending commitments running into billions of pounds but contains very few details as to how they will be paid for, other than through vague savings, and by restructuring quantitative easing debt with the creation of new 75-year bonds.

Among the spending commitments are plans to free six million people from Income Tax by raising the tax threshold to £20,000, and changes to Corporation Tax which would exempt 1.2 million businesses/self-employed paying that tax.

There are also pledges to increase spending on defence and the police, and the promise of an end to all NHS waiting lists, with patients given vouchers to go private. It makes no mention of how this would be achieved or, indeed, whether the private medical sector has the capacity to treat the record number of patients who are currently on hospital waiting lists.

In addition, the programme proposes the re-nationalisation of the energy utility companies, again without identifying where the billions of pounds that would be required to achieve this goal would come from.

The programme is dismissive of projects to tackle climate change and to clean up the environment. It describes net zero targets as “net stupid” and proposes their abolition, along with granting new licences to exploit fossil fuels.

Lucian Fernando says he fully endorses this “radical programme” but, when challenged, was unable to explain how the plans could be afforded, let alone give a timeframe for when they would be implemented.

He was equally unsure of Reform UK’s main policy plank of introducing net-zero immigration. When asked what measures his party would introduce to stop the almost 45,000 people who came across the Channel by small boat from France last year, he disputed the official figures as reported on the BBC to claim that there were in fact 670,000 illegal crossings. When challenged about the veracity of his figures, he said the BBC is “openly corrupt” and “twists the figures”.

Populism

The core assumptions within “Let’s Make Britain Great” are clearly designed to tap into the current distrust of politicians and exploit the disconnection many people feel towards those who govern them in Westminster. The strategy seems to be working: opinion polls show support for Reform UK steadily increasing over the last year to the point where, nationally, it has overtaken both the Greens and Liberal Democrats, with some 11% of voters currently backing its brand of right-wing populism.

Such has been the increased levels of support that the party is extremely bullish ahead of the General Election and plans to contest every parliamentary seat. Fernando is optimistic that his party’s polling numbers will surge even higher if Farage returns to take up a formal role ahead of the election campaign.

Even with its current levels of support, Reform UK may not win any seats in the election, such are the vagaries of the first-past-the-post electoral system. However, the party will take lots of votes from both Labour and the Conservatives, increasing the uncertainty of the outcome.

Cllr Fernando has joined the Reform UK party since his departure from Conservative ranks (“I resigned”, he claims; “he was expelled”, says Cllr Andy Patmore, the leader of the Tory group). However, with no councillor colleagues to align with, it seems that his new party will let him go his own way in local politics.

And, in effect, he could exercise a balance of power in the council chamber, since the Labour party administration, holding 15 seats, would need his vote to tie with any opposing combination of the Conservatives (11 seats) with the Greens (five seats), and thus trigger a casting vote in their favour from Labour mayor Cllr Margi O’Callaghan. He says, on the other hand, that he is “not inclined to take sides based on political affiliations. My focus remains on objectively evaluating each issue and considering its potential impact on our community”.

There is the potential for a vote, for instance, at the next full council meeting on 28 July concerning the proposed relocation of Hastings United Football Club from Pilot Field to Tilekiln. Although the Labour cabinet passed a firm resolution on 5 June to reject the move (which would require council approval as the freehold owner of both sites), Conservatives and Greens have in the past shown more support for it and could in theory combine to overturn the rejection. So what are Cllr Fernando’s intentions?

“I have not yet made a definitive decision”, he told HIP last week. “As with any significant matter, I believe it is essential to engage in open and meaningful discussions with my constituents. I want to gather their perspectives, understand their concerns, and incorporate their input into my decision-making process… If Silverhill residents want to share their views on this matter, I am encouraging them to send their views to my inbox, which is open for them 24 hours a day”.

One issue that he has taken up in recent weeks is the failure of the Highways Department of East Sussex County Council (ESCC) to cut the verges on several roads in his ward. Concerned residents had complained of grass growing to a height of almost four feet which (he says) was impeding visibility and posing safety risks for both pedestrians and motorists.

ESCC responded to him that they were “using available budgets in the most cost-effective way. Repairs are prioritised based on the level of risk an issue poses.” However, they do appear to have mown most verges in the area in recent days.

HUGH SULLIVAN

Hastings Borough Council leader Paul Barnett started his regular column in the Hastings Observer last Friday – “I was delighted that at this week’s Annual Council meeting, an all-female mayoral team was elected. Cllr Margi O’Callaghan is our new mayor, with Cllr Heather Bishop as her deputy”. He went on to confirm an unchanged cabinet of Labour councillors, described as “a strong and professional team to lead the Council through what promises to be a very challenging year”. He made no mention of the political drama being played out around him.

At the centre is Cllr Lucian Fernando, elected as a Conservative in 2021 to represent Silverhill ward and remaining under the Tory whip until less than three months ago but recently transferring his allegiance to the Reform UK party.  He voted at the council meeting last week for Cllr Bishop as deputy mayor along with her Labour colleagues against a combination of his former party and the Greens, who favoured an alternative candidate (also female), Cllr Claire Carr.  The contest was therefore tied at 15-15, and the freshly seated Labour mayor O’Callaghan was able to exercise her constitutional power within minutes of acquiring it to declare a casting vote on party lines in favour of Cllr Bishop.

Cllr O’Callaghan had been deputy to retiring mayor Cllr James Bacon over the past year, and her own election to the higher position was politically uncontroversial. All 31 remaining councillors voted unanimously to elevate her.  The contest between Cllrs Bishop and Carr then ensued.

Green leader Julia Hilton told the chamber: “Given the make-up of the council now [in which Labour holds 15 seats, a minority], it’s about time we started rotating the mayoralty between the political parties, as happens in many other local councils. The leader of the council made some mention of looking at this last year, but nothing further has happened. We have supported Margi as mayor…We need to demonstrate the direction of travel that actually makes some tangible commitment to cross-party and collaborative working.”

Generous speeches were made from each side, glowing personal and community virtues being attributed to Cllr Bishop from Labour ranks, the same to Cllr Carr from Green and Conservative benches. The latter was “a true community champion” according to fellow-Green Cllr Glenn Haffenden. Then came the vote on a show of hands, followed immediately by Mayor O’Callaghan tipping the balance with her second vote.

Next on the agenda was Cllr Barnett’s announcement of unchanged cabinet portfolios, including the reappointment of Cllr Maya Evans as deputy leader, followed by votes on a slate of appointments for chair and vice-chair of council committees. In each contested case the Labour candidate was successful over Green or Conservative challengers, to the extent that Cllrs Alan Roberts, Nigel Sinden and Trevor Webb ended the evening holding eight chair or vice-chair roles between them and a total of 16 committee places. The explanation is easy to relate: Labour voted as a immoveable bloc whilst their opponents failed to (or chose not to) exercise similar resolve. In no case was the vote of Cllr Fernando decisive.

Another casting vote

However, that wasn’t the case with the final agenda item – Cllr Barnett’s proposed programme for the year, in which he has described the main challenge as tackling homelessness while achieving a balanced budget.

Here all 32 councillors again voted on party lines, Labour supporting the motion to approve the programme, Conservatives and Greens opposing in concert. Cllr Fernando again lifted his arm along with Labour. The resulting 16-16 tie was again resolved by Mayor O’Callaghan giving her casting vote to her own party.

A storm of recriminations followed from the losing side. Cllr Haffenden asked: “Is there an alliance with Reform UK that we’re not aware of?”

Conservative councillor Peter Pragnell described Labour’s behaviour in taking advantage of Cllr Fernando’s vote as a “power grab…propped up by one member of an extreme right-wing racist party”.

Cllr Fernando responded: “There is no alliance. I voted for the good of Hastings borough.” He also denied that Reform UK was a racist party. “I myself come from a minority – I would not be standing for a racist party. Controlling immigration is not racist.”

“Diametrically opposed”

Cllr Hilton addressed Cllr Barnett directly. “In your last leader’s column in the Observer you talked about how all 32 councillors are here because we care about our town, its people and economy. But your actions this evening show that you don’t really care about the opinions and skills of the non-Labour members of this council and have returned to the old ways of working within your Labour cabal. It seems a short-sighted move to abandon all commitments to shared working and rely on the support of a councillor who belongs to a party with views diametrically opposed to your own.” 

She went on to ask if there was any real commitment to improving governance when meetings to reform the constitution have been repeatedly cancelled at short notice, despite unanimous support for her motion calling for improved decision-making back in December. “At the moment the only way to get information on key decisions like the future of St Mary in the Castle or what might happen to football in this town seems to be to force a motion to come to full council. This is no way to conduct decision-making.”

Beyond the chamber she was even blunter. “Even a quick glance at Reform UK’s twitter feed shows a party whose views are against policies to tackle climate change and using all the standard far-right tropes that immigration is causing the crisis in our NHS”, she said. “Hastings Council is a proud supporter of our town’s status as a Community of Sanctuary. How does that square with a Labour administration relying on the votes of a councillor sitting as a member of Reform UK whose whole belief system is anti-immigrants?”

However, Labour councillors and members seem unrepentant. They are pleased, as their leader confirmed, with the outcome. Moreover, one source indicated that while they might have been willing to support another Green party councillor such as Cllr Haffenden to become deputy mayor, they regarded the choice of Cllr Carr to be the alternative candidate as a provocation, deliberate or otherwise. It may be recalled that the latter defected from Labour to the Greens two and a half years ago, some months after she was the only councillor in the chamber to refuse to endorse the appointment of her then Labour colleague Ruby Cox as deputy mayor. There’s an irony there, bitter or sweet according to taste.

Lucian Fernando, the man at the centre of the voting storm reported alongside, was elected to Hastings Borough Council as ward councillor for Silverhill in May 2021 on a Conservative ticket – a shock victor over Labour incumbent Margi O’Callaghan. He had been a member of the Tory party, he says, for 12 years.

The following month, June 2021, he was arrested and charged with being in charge of a car while drunk and, later in the year, fined and disqualified from driving for a year. 

Then in December 2021 he was caught driving whilst disqualified and also charged with failing to provide a blood sample. He claims that he reported these charges promptly at the time to Conservative party leader Cllr Andy Patmore, though a party spokesperson has denied that he did so until shortly before he entered guilty pleas to them in August last year. 

Under party rules he was then suspended pending sentencing. The verdict could have seen him jailed and barred from office. He was, however, given a 12-month Community Order including 200 hours community service, fined again, and disqualified from driving for a further three years.

Reinstatement

Once the sentence was known, Conservative group rules allowed for a vote on whether his suspension should be lifted. A secret ballot took place. According to party sources, he was reinstated by six votes to three.

These sources go on to indicate that the majority decision to reinstate Cllr Fernando was taken in an attempt to support his mental health and overall rehabilitation. He says he believes that it was only because of the arithmetic of party numbers within the council chamber. Either way, it is clear that issues remained between him and certain members of the party. 

As an avowed “right-wing Conservative” he also felt unhappy at links made by his colleagues with the Green party. Complaints were made in respect of his conduct, including allegations that he had made physical threats to another Tory councillor (which he strenuously denies); police became involved in an allegation of racism; he was also accused of breaching party rules on a matter of confidentiality. 

There was a general feeling that he had shown a lack of remorse in respect of his criminal convictions, though he maintains that he was always apologetic. “I made a mistake, and I have learnt my lesson,” he now declares.  

Disciplinary meeting

Matters came to a head on 17 March. The party convened a special disciplinary meeting to review the councillor’s conduct and to consider expulsion. He says that he met with the party leader Cllr Andy Patmore earlier that day and tendered his resignation both from the party whip as councillor and from membership of the party. In a subsequent email, sent prior to the meeting, he told Cllr Patmore – “I am so disappointed with the actions you have took as a leader who discriminated me from the start. You are not discriminative person but you are taking sides on this matter rather than speaking out strongly”.

The disciplinary meeting seems to have gone ahead that evening in his absence, regardless. He received an email the next morning informing him that he had been expelled from the party for breaches of group rules. Cllr Patmore made a point of informing the council chamber at last week’s meeting that Cllr Fernando had been expelled rather than having resigned. 

Be that as it may, Cllr Fernando told Cllr Patmore in his resignation email that he intended to continue in office as an “independent councillor” for Silverhill. It then emerged, prior to the full council meeting, that he had joined the Reform UK party and would from now on present himself under that banner. 

“British values”

Asked whether he subscribes to his new party’s national policies and doctrines, including their most forthright plank of “controlling immigration”, Cllr Fernando did not venture any reservations.  “I believe in British values,” he says, “freedom of speech and power to make my decision for local people. Whatever the right thing is for Hastings I’ll vote for it. My [new] party has given me free rein to decide.”

He is of course well aware that his vote, along with the casting vote of Mayor O’Callaghan (ironically, the Labour candidate he defeated two years ago) allowed the minority Labour administration to win two key votes last Wednesday which they would otherwise have lost. But he is adamant that there was no prior pact with the Labour leadership to this intent, nor would his vote at future meetings be determined save in accordance with what he thinks is best for the town.

“I voted for Cllr Bishop because I thought she was the best person for the job,” he says. “And I voted for the programme put forward by Cllr Barnett because I think it’s pro-active, and also because in my opinion he has done a good job in the previous year. He was very effective in persuading the county council not to close the fire station on The Ridge. He has also been very strong in his condemnation of Southern Water over sewerage issues – unlike local Conservative MP Sally-Ann Hart.”

As to future voting, he makes no commitment. “Group leaders could come to me to discuss what they intend”. He says this with a smile. It’s clear he sees a role for himself beyond any party control.