Inside the Green Party’s general election fight

On Sun­day May 19, I sat in the sun­shine in Bish­op­ston, Bris­tol watch­ing the final match of the sea­son as I wait­ed for the co-leader of the Green Par­ty of Eng­land and Wales, Car­la Denyer.

A coun­cil­lor from May 2015 to the most recent local elec­tions, Deny­er assumed co-lead­er­ship of the par­ty in 2021. She is also the Green Par­ty can­di­date for the new­ly cre­at­ed Bris­tol Cen­tral seat. The week­end we met marked the first major mobil­i­sa­tion for Denyer’s cam­paign since the coun­cil elec­tions that saw the Greens come with­in a whisker of a major­i­ty on Bris­tol Council.

“Win­ning a major­i­ty [of the 70 seats on the coun­cil] was an absolute stretch tar­get,” Deny­er tells me as we set up shop in a café. It’s also an event space fit­ting­ly filled with plants and quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Bris­to­lian ephemera, which will serve as the base for activists who had been out leaflet­ing all weekend.

“We did do, I would say, a bit bet­ter than most of us expect­ed,” Deny­er con­tin­ued, a wry smile draw­ing itself over her mouth. ​“We’ve now got 34 out of 70 seats, which means we have the leader and deputy leader of the coun­cil.” The Greens have had, by Denyer’s own reck­on­ing, a great set of four local elec­tions in the city, steadi­ly increas­ing their num­ber of seats across Bristol’s wards.

Across the coun­try the Greens pol­i­cy plat­form of nation­al­i­sa­tion of pub­lic ser­vices, rad­i­cal reform of hous­ing pol­i­cy with the intro­duc­tion of rent con­trols, an imme­di­ate cease­fire in Gaza and rad­i­cal action on cli­mate have proved pop­u­lar, espe­cial­ly with younger and pro­gres­sive vot­ers. There approach to work­ing cross par­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the new ​‘com­mit­tee’ sys­tem of gov­er­nance Bris­tol has adopt­ed also attracts many voters.

“We think no one par­ty has a monop­oly on good ideas and work­ing cross par­ty is some­thing woven into the Green Party’s DNA,” Deny­er says, as we talk through the new sys­tem which will see both the Greens and Lib Dems take chair­ships of dif­fer­ent com­mit­tees over­see­ing dif­fer­ent parts of the council’s work.Labour declined to take up the offer of chair­ships. ​“We’re look­ing for­ward to see­ing hope­ful­ly some bet­ter qual­i­ty, more last­ing deci­sions com­ing out of this new sys­tem,” Deny­er tells me.

For all the talk of work­ing togeth­er, draw­ing ideas from oth­er places and a dif­fer­ent kind of pol­i­tics, Deny­er does not hold back when talk­ing about the Labour par­ty. I put to her that tak­ing over the admin­is­tra­tion of a local author­i­ty, after 14 years of cuts, is a poi­soned chal­ice and per­haps the Labour par­ty not tak­ing any chair­ships could be con­strued as a polit­i­cal move. After all, in a straight fight between Labour and Greens, as is the case in Bris­tol Cen­tral, it ben­e­fits the for­mer if the lat­ter is in charge of a col­laps­ing administration.

She art­ful­ly side­steps the more con­spir­a­to­r­i­al ele­ments of my ques­tion but agrees, ​“you get the cards you’re dealt but, I think any­one going into admin­is­tra­tion in local gov­ern­ment at the moment is receiv­ing a poi­son chalice.”

“What is scary,” Deny­er adds, shift­ing a lit­tle in her seat, ​“is that the incom­ing Labour gov­ern­ment have been quite clear they’re plan­ning to keep the poi­son in that chal­ice, to stretch the metaphor per­haps a bit more than it goes.”

She points to shad­ow chan­cel­lor Rachel Reeves’ repeat­ed state­ments indi­cat­ing she will not ​“bail out” coun­cils if her par­ty forms the gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing the next gen­er­al elec­tion. ​“To para­phrase,” Deny­er states, ​“Labour would rearrange the mon­ey a bit, but there would­n’t be any new mon­ey, which is incred­i­ble, giv­en that any Labour politi­cian work­ing in local gov­ern­ment knows that the cuts they’ve expe­ri­enced over the last 14 years are going far, far beyond what can be achieved through mak­ing efficiencies.

“They’re cut­ting into mus­cle and real­ly, real­ly affect­ing coun­cils’ abil­i­ties to deliv­er basic ser­vices,” she concludes.

She’s keen to talk about the clear water between the par­ties when it comes to pol­i­cy. The Greens, she says, are not afraid of talk­ing about tax­es, claim­ing that the tax­a­tion sys­tem in this coun­try is ​“incred­i­bly unfair.”” She says the Greens have a plan to raise over £50 bil­lion per year by the end of the next par­lia­ment to fund ​“good qual­i­ty pub­lic ser­vices.

​“We’d intro­duce a wealth tax that applies to peo­ple’s assets rather than income and would only kick in on wealth above £10 mil­lion. So it’s only affect­ing the real­ly, real­ly super rich who can eas­i­ly afford to pay a bit more,” Deny­er states. ​“We’d also make changes to the cap­i­tal gains tax. Most peo­ple with assets to sell are the very wealthy, and yet cap­i­tal gains tax is low­er than the income tax that we will pay on our income from work. That’s obvi­ous­ly the wrong way around so we would equalise those two.”

Of course our con­ver­sa­tion, though not abstract by any means, took place in a dif­fer­ent real­i­ty. Since Prime Min­is­ter Rishi Sunak’s sur­prise announce­ment of an elec­tion, I won­dered what, if any­thing, had changed for them.

“The Green Par­ty is ready for the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, as is Bris­tol,” Car­la tells me after­wards when I ask her if the sur­prise nature had shift­ed any­thing in their strat­e­gy. ​“Vot­ers here know that the Con­ser­v­a­tives are on their way out of Gov­ern­ment but are feel­ing utter­ly unin­spired by Starmer’s Labour. They are excit­ed at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote with their val­ues and elect the city’s first Green MP.” For Car­la and the Bris­tol Greens, this will be the cul­mi­na­tion of years of hard work. They are, she told me, ​“feel­ing pre­pared and excit­ed for 4^th July.”

Across the coun­try Greens have had to accel­er­ate their plans, throw­ing every­thing they have into their four tar­get seats — Bris­tol Cen­tral, Waveney Val­ley (con­test­ed by Denyer’s co-leader Adri­an Ram­say), North Here­ford­shire (where for­mer Green MEP Ellie Chowns is stand­ing) and Brighton Pavil­lion, home to the first Green MP in the shape of Car­o­line Lucas. Lucas announced she’d be step­ping down last year so the seat is being con­test­ed by ex-leader Sian Berry. They’re also field­ing their first ever full set of can­di­dates across Eng­land and Wales which is, Deny­er says, ​“very exciting”.

It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant for the par­ty where ​‘Short Mon­ey’ is con­cerned. Short Mon­ey is the com­mon name giv­en to finan­cial assis­tance made avail­able to all oppo­si­tion par­ties in the House of Com­mons who secure either two seats, or one seat and more than 150,000 votes at a gen­er­al elec­tion. Under the scheme par­ties like the Green Par­ty, who received over 850,000 votes at the last elec­tion, can gain mon­ey (£42.82 in finan­cial year com­menc­ing 1 April 2023) for every 200 votes received, as well as funds allot­ted per seat won. For Car­o­line Lucas’ par­lia­men­tary office, this meant approx­i­mate­ly £200,000 of fund­ing each year. It’s one of the rea­sons why Deny­er is so pleased that ​“Green par­ty mem­bers and sup­port­ers every­where will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote for Green candidates.”

I ask whether there are any deals to be done with inde­pen­dents or can­di­dates from oth­er par­ties, specif­i­cal­ly Jere­my Cor­byn, for­mer leader of the Labour par­ty, now run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in Isling­ton North.

“So the Green Par­ty is always open to col­lab­o­rat­ing with peo­ple who we agree with,” Deny­er tells me, before point­ing to the Unite to Remain agree­ment which was a pact between Plaid Cym­ru, the Lib­er­al Democ­rats and the Green par­ty for each par­ty to step aside in cer­tain con­stituen­cies to allow the oth­ers with a bet­ter chance of win­ning a fair­er shot. The idea was to ensure the largest num­ber of anti-Brex­it MPs returned to Par­lia­ment. ​“Its effect was lim­it­ed because the Labour Par­ty declined to take part, in fact, it’s writ­ten into their con­sti­tu­tion so even under Cor­byn they were total­ly unwill­ing to con­sid­er any kind of collaboration.”

Deny­er says that this time around there are ​“no signs of any will­ing­ness to col­lab­o­rate from any of the oth­er par­ties or can­di­dates”, adding that ​“if that changed, then my door is always open but as a Green par­ty, we’re not going to just be rolling over and hand­ing over any seats unilaterally.”

Days lat­er a sto­ry emerged in the Isling­ton Tri­bune which revealed an inter­nal memo urg­ing local mem­bers to keep the Green cam­paign ​“bor­ing.” Mem­bers of the local Green Par­ty I spoke to were very keen to make sure I saw the sto­ry. The Green Par­ty, unlike the Labour Par­ty, has a much more neb­u­lous approach to par­ty dis­ci­pline, with local branch­es and par­ties much more autonomous than their Labour Par­ty counterparts.

This is cer­tain­ly not the case in oth­er places going to the polls. Across the coun­try the Greens are now com­pet­i­tive in places they bare­ly thought pos­si­ble a few years ago. They now have over 800 coun­cil­lors and are in admin­is­tra­tion in over 10 per cent of all local author­i­ties. Aside from the improved per­for­mance in Green heart­lands like Bris­tol and Nor­wich, the par­ty also saw sur­prise break­throughs in places like Bas­ingstoke and New­cas­tle at the May local elec­tions. The par­ty has been slow­ly amass­ing sup­port in var­i­ous rur­al com­mu­ni­ties, which have been solid­ly Tory since before the birth of time (prob­a­bly). It’s an incred­i­bly broad church of vot­ers from across the spec­trum.

How is it then that the par­ty will keep that coali­tion togeth­er as we move towards a gen­er­al election?

“We achieve that by a com­bi­na­tion of get­ting peo­ple that had pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed for Labour, Lib Dems, et cetera, to swing behind us as the only cred­i­ble alter­na­tive to the Con­ser­v­a­tives in that area and get­ting peo­ple to turn out to vote, who had­n’t pre­vi­ous­ly and, yes, get­ting some peo­ple that had pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed Con­ser­v­a­tive to vote for us.”

The par­ty did­n’t con­struct this coali­tion, Deny­er assures me, by ​“hid­ing our true poli­cies or promis­ing things that we’re not going to deliv­er.” Peo­ple across the polit­i­cal spec­trum actu­al­ly like what they’ve got to say and agree with the poli­cies, even those much of the main­stream media would deem to be ​“une­lec­table”.

“I think you’d be sur­prised how rad­i­cal some peo­ple in Suf­folk are because they can see the prob­lems with the sewage in their water­ways. There’s strong pub­lic sup­port for pub­lic own­er­ship of the water com­pa­nies, even amongst peo­ple that vot­ed Con­ser­v­a­tive in the last gen­er­al elec­tion.” Like­wise, she adds, many in places like Suffolk(a Tory strong­hold) sup­port rent con­trols, even when they own their own home out­right because ​“their chil­dren or grand­chil­dren are affect­ed and can’t get onto the hous­ing ladder”.

Green Par­ty vot­ers or new mem­bers are dri­ven to the par­ty through a num­ber of dif­fer­ent routes. ​“Some­times it’s cli­mate,” Deny­er begins, ​“some­times it’s nature, some­times it’s about demo­c­ra­t­ic reform, oth­er times it’s about some­thing real­ly spe­cif­ic like drug reform. In that sense, we are a broad church, and we wel­come many peo­ple, but our prin­ci­ples are pret­ty clear.”

I asked her what her first days, weeks and months of being the first Green MP for the city might look like.

​“My top pri­or­i­ties as an MP will be tack­ling the cli­mate cri­sis and the hous­ing cri­sis,” she begins. ​“I’ve been a cam­paign­er on hous­ing issues for longer than I’ve been a Green Par­ty coun­cil­lor and call­ing for land­lord licens­ing rent con­trols, chang­ing the rules to make it eas­i­er to get more afford­able hous­ing and so on.”

In Bris­tol, like so many oth­er parts of the coun­try, hous­ing is a huge issue for so many peo­ple. ​“When we go out knock­ing on doors, ask­ing peo­ple what they want to see from their MP, hous­ing almost always comes top of the list. I’ve already done work on rent con­trols here at a local lev­el on Bris­tol City Coun­cil by propos­ing a motion that says, although Bris­tol doesn’t have the pow­er to bring in rent con­trols, it lob­bies the gov­ern­ment to do so, so I would con­tin­ue that process.”

Pri­ori­tis­ing the NHS and pro­tect­ing it from pri­vati­sa­tion is also high up on her list. She points to ​“very wor­ry­ing state­ments com­ing out of the Labour Par­ty, with Wes Street­ing not only say­ing he went from refus­ing to take pri­vati­sa­tion off the table to active­ly propos­ing it.”

Push­ing back on Labour’s ​“enthu­si­asm for Con­ser­v­a­tive fis­cal rules”, ​“chal­leng­ing them to recon­sid­er on cap­i­tal gains tax, wealth tax and so on to raise the funds need­ed to actu­al­ly invest in ser­vices peo­ple need,” and push­ing for demo­c­ra­t­ic reform so ​“we’re not stuck in this sit­u­a­tion for­ev­er” also fea­ture in her ambi­tious plans for Parliament.

Her oppo­nent is incum­bent Thangam Deb­bonaire — the shad­ow cul­ture sec­re­tary who very recent­ly told The House that the polls she’d seen put her ahead in the race by ​“quite a lot”. Talk­ing to Labour insid­ers across the par­ty — from those in the Par­lia­men­tary Labour Par­ty to those in the local par­ty, it’s clear that behind the scenes, there’s pan­ic. ​“A tough fight”, as one staffer put it.

“We were out door knock­ing in the Har­bour­side area, speak­ing to a vot­er who vot­ed Labour in the last gen­er­al but vot­ed Green for the first time in the local elec­tions,” Deny­er tells me. ​“His main issue was hous­ing. He want­ed more hous­ing, specif­i­cal­ly afford­able hous­ing being built and he put it well to me. He said he was will­ing to give Starmer a chance because he said he was going to be a ​‘big tent kind of guy’, but now he’s not even that.”

Indeed, as Starmer con­tin­ues to ruth­less­ly and very pub­licly cut those from com­pet­ing fac­tions out of the Labour par­ty, you do have to won­der how it’s all play­ing out on the doorsteps in places like Bris­tol cen­tral. For many, their minds are already mind up.

​“Peo­ple will tell me, well, I used to vote Labour but then they make a face and kind of trail off,” Deny­er says, after months spent on the doorstep. ​“Some­times they’ll cite spe­cif­ic things. Some­times it’s Gaza, some­times it’s the U‑turn on the £28 bil­lion cli­mate invest­ment, the flip flop­ping on rent con­trols, the unwill­ing­ness to sup­port strik­ing work­ers. For more vot­ers, it’s not just one of those things, it’s the cumu­la­tive effect. A lot of them hung on and gave Labour anoth­er chance or two. And then the next U‑turn hap­pens and now we’re get­ting to the point where we get to the doorstep and more and more peo­ple have already decid­ed — no, I’m vot­ing for you, what can I do to help? Which is excit­ing.”

So is it a fore­gone con­clu­sion at this point that Deny­er will be returned to Par­lia­ment come July 5? It is, she told me, ​“in reach, but not in our grasp yet.”

As the inter­view comes to a close, the room is full of Green par­ty activists, sun kissed from a week­end of relent­less­ly leaflet­ing and talk­ing to vot­ers across the city. You get a sense of a change com­ing. A small shoot of green, work­ing its way up through the increas­ing­ly author­i­tar­i­an Starmerite wave sweep­ing across the nation. Will that shoot blos­som and thick­en and meet all that it promis­es to be? Time can only tell.

Read more Huck Elec­tion con­tent here. 

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