Sylvain Magne wants voters to do something the borough has never done: send a Green to Wandsworth Council.
He understands why that would be a new and novel thing for many: he himself only joined the Green Party this year.
“I was recently inspired to become a member when the Green Party led by Zack Polanski offered a new perspective and a programme that resonated with my views,” the candidate for the 27 August by-election told Putney.news.
The by-election for one seat in Trinity ward in Tooting matters: the council currently has 29 Conservative councillors and 27 Labour, with independent Malcolm Grimston acting as kingmaker, allowing the Conservatives to govern under a confidence and supply agreement. Win Trinity and the Conservatives have a working majority, with no further need of Cllr Grimston and the improved governance structure he has attempted to put in place.
Magne’s pitch is that a Green in that chamber changes the arithmetic in a different direction.
“A Green seat would be the first step towards breaking the two-party trap,” he says. “Our first-past-the-post voting system is unfortunately failing to represent voters. We need many Green councillors to enact progress, but even a single Green councillor can hold the council leadership accountable. It’s time for change.”
“Borderline criminal”
Magne’s sharpest words are for the cuts the new Conservative cabinet approved last month, among them the cancellation of holiday food vouchers for 10,000 children on free school meals.
The cabinet is working against a gap that the previous administration buried on page 77 of a cabinet paper appendix in May: £137m across the next two financial years, rising to £154m if planned savings do not materialise. Two-thirds of it is a government grant cut.
“Cutting emergency support for children and freezing essential housing projects isn’t a solution, it only creates more problems further down the line,” he says. “It is an established fact that such austerity measures will never fix our problems. Anyone claiming otherwise is deceitful.”
Then he goes further than most candidates would in a ward contest.
“At this point, right-wing politics hurt people so much it’s borderline criminal, while centrist politics is business as usual and offers no long-term solution.”
It is a line aimed at both the administration and the opposition: not a bid for a seat at the table, but an argument that the table itself is the problem.
Magne grew up in the south of France and spent eight years in Switzerland with his wife, who is from Birmingham. Trinity has been home for twelve years. He has a background in architecture and animation, and this is his second attempt at a council seat in four months: he stood in Wandle ward in May, finishing sixth with 541 votes.
Asked what he hears on the doorstep, Magne describes concerns that “gravitate around the same core issues of cost-of-living, housing security, safety, pollution, cleanliness, the environment”.
The case he makes for Trinity is a case about the country rather than the ward, sandwiched between Wandsworth Common and the Balham and Tooting Bec tube stations.
“Trinity has more potential than people imagine if only it could get the right attention and funding it deserves,” he says. “That is true for any part of the UK, but we need representatives working genuinely for the interest of people to make those improvements.”
What Magne is offering is less a list of ward fixes than a claim about why the fixes never come: that austerity is a choice rather than an arithmetic necessity, and that the money exists if the politics change.
“I am quite frankly tired of hearing about austerity measures when there is a clear path towards funding our needs,” he says.
The environmental case and the social one cannot be separated, he argues: “More and more people are waking up to the fact that social justice and environmental justice are inseparable. While climate change puts pressure on our communities and threatens our future, we absolutely need a healthy society to tackle those environmental challenges before it gets worse.”
Open questions
What Magne does not have a clear answer for is where the money comes from. Around two-thirds of Wandsworth’s £137m gap is a cut to its government grant, a decision taken in Whitehall, not in the town hall. Austerity as a choice is a national argument; closing a £137m hole in a Wandsworth budget is a local one, and the answers to it are council tax, reserves, borrowing, commercial income, or cutting something else. Magne does not say which.
It is also unclear what one Green councillor could do. If the Conservatives do not win the seat (it was previously held by Wandsworth Labour’s deputy leader), it will mean the current agreement with Cllr Grimston is likely to stand and under changes he has insisted upon, Magne would at least be able to raise issues at Town Hall – something the previous Labour Administration under Cllr Simon Hogg had removed. But he would still effectively be a lone voice in a chamber that has become so partisan that even agreement on basic governance measures is hard to reach.
As such a win – and it is possible given the surge in support in this part of Wandsworth during the recent May election – the impact would be symbolic. It would be the first time in over 40 years that a representative of a party other than Labour or the Conservatives was elected to Wandsworth Council. It would be hard to read that in any way other than a clear signal from voters that they are tired of the two-party politics that has dominated this part of London for so long.
All five candidates in the Trinity by-election have been approached for interviews. Read our interview with Liberal Democrat candidate Dylan Henderson.
When it comes to cancellation of holiday food vouchers maybe he could set up a system where concerned people could donate to a new scheme. He could start by donating himself. For the six week summer break a £25/week a private donation would cover a child’s food over the summer period. He could set a precedent by being the first to donate.
‘that austerity is a choice rather than an arithmetic necessity, and that the money exists if the politics change.’
This candidate clearly has no clue and would bankrupt us all. Clearly got his economic knowledge from the back of a cereal packet.