Last month, the Green Party met for its annual conference. The mood was, by turns, upbeat and uncertain. The last 12 months, it’s true, had been exhilarating: at the beginning of 2014, the party had 15,000 members; by May 2015 the figure was around 60,000 (surpassing both Ukip and the Lib Dems) and had continued to rise even after an election result which saw the party win only one seat: its existing one, held by Caroline Lucas in Brighton. But by the end of the summer, British politics – these days so tempestuous, so hard to predict – had changed once more: Jeremy Corbyn had been elected leader of the Labour Party, in a tidal wave of popular enthusiasm that made the “Green surge” of the preceding months look anaemic by comparison. Thoughtful Greens present at the conference sensed confusion in the air. “Corbyn’s victory raised a lot of questions for people,” said one. “And I don’t think it was properly dealt with.”
The Greens do have a problem. But it’s not immediately discernible, at least at first glance. The party’s 2015 manifesto – with its opposition to austerity, promises to scrap university tuition fees and commitment to renationalising the railways – was virtually indistinguishable from the platform that won Corbyn the Labour leadership. In this sense, the Greens have achieved a quiet victory over the past few months, as the policies they’ve advocated make their way into the script of the country’s main opposition party. “Everyone’s just really excited about what’s happening in politics at the moment,” says Caroline Russell, a Green councillor who stood against Corbyn in Islington North during the general election. “It feels like anything’s possible.”
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