History
The idea of founding our party came from two, out of our three, deputy mayors, namely Jean-Paul and Philip. The end of 2002, Brasserie ‘Comme chez eux’ in London: this is the spot where it all started. Waiting for their lunch, the two friends sat together at the window and looked outside. Philippe noticed that the streets looked far from being taken care of. Jean-Luc backed him up on this point and added that is was the same with the several parcs. The conversation ended up in a waterfall of comments about the general policy in London. They concluded that the tripartite of the socialists, democrats en liberals doesn’t meet their needs and the needs of so many others in London.
This also became obvious after the council election in 1997, where the people didn’t have a clear view for whom they should vote. Every party had his weak points and this lead to a situation, after the council election, where there was no significant majority and every party got some votes. It wasn’t clear which party was preferred by the people and there was a lack of consensus of opinion from the people towards the parties.
After brainstorming for a while, the two friends had a couple of ideas of how they would handle things differently. They decided maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea if they would found a new party. The next day they went golfing with their wives and a couple of friends. Soon their ideas became the subject of conversation and everyone was very enthusiastic. A few weeks later, the word spread around, the first member joined the party, and their idea of going into the politics became reality.
Now they just needed a name for the party. After a board meeting the name POSH came into life, which stands for the values of the party, namely: Progressive, Open minded, Social and Honest.
Just before the council election of June 2003 we disposed of a great number of members among which 33 enthusiastic members who received a place on the election list. Of course Jean-Luc and Philippe couldn’t be absent and they received respectively the first and second place on the list.
On the 21st of June 2003 the time was ready and the tension was almost unbearable. But our vision seemed to hit like a bomb and attract many voters and we came out second in the run for the most votes! We formed a coalition with the liberal party and thus we formed a part of the majority. This has never happened before with a party who attended an election for the first time!
We have at our disposal eight seats in the city council and we could point out three deputy mayors. For the function of deputy mayor we decided to follow the sign given by the electorate and indicate the three people with the most votes. These people were Jean-Luc and Philippe (this isn’t astonishing because they were the founders of our party) and Elizabeth, who was positioned third on the election list. Our three deputy mayors, just like every other member of the party, do their job very well and get a lot of positive reactions. Furthermore the number of members is tripled in the last years.
In the meanwhile, time flies and we are looking forward to the new council election next year!