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“I ‘m just going to grab something,” Carla Denyer, the co-leader of the Green Party interjects, as she reached into her beige tote bag. It’s a balmy summer’s day on an affluent, residential street in the north of Bristol Central, two weeks prior to Labour’s incoming 172-seat General Election win. Denyer is out canvassing. “It’s clearly extremely close,” she says, pulling out a dark green leaflet which suggests she is projected to win 45 per cent of the vote for the Bristol seat (her main rival, Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire, is set for 46 per cent). “We’re making sure that everyone knows how powerful their vote is here because, compared to most constituencies in the country, they’ve got a very good probability of changing the outcome.”
And change the outcome the Greens did. On 4 July Denyer romped to victory in Bristol Central, taking 56.6 per cent of the vote (Debbonaire, the incumbent, who ended up on a total of 32.6 per cent, lost more than a quarter of her 2019 share). She wasn’t the only Green to strike gold: her fellow co-leader Adrian Ramsay won in Waveney Valley; former leader Siân Berry succeeded in Caroline Lucas’s former seat of Brighton Pavilion; and Ellie Chowns won out in North Herefordshire.
With four MPs, the Greens have quadrupled their parliamentary representation in the space of one election (Lucas first won the Brighton seat in 2010). But what is the primary purpose of the new Green MPs? “We can be that voice of constructive challenge to the incoming Labour government,” Denyer – sporting ballet flats, navy trousers, a pink short sleeve shirt and her trademark cropped haircut – tells me. The Greens, she adds, would be an important left-wing ballast to stop Labour’s “slide further to the right” of British politics. In its policy positions, the Green election manifesto implicitly pushes Keir Starmer to be more radical on tax, NHS reform and welfare, among other areas. But, most pressing for Denyer’s party will be ensuring that the new Labour government invests enough in the transition to a green economy.
But the green economy is arguably the area that the Greens currently have the least ammunition to push Labour on. In its first week in government, the Labour Party has lifted the Cameron-era effective ban on the construction of onshore wind farms; banned new North Sea oil and gas licences; announced a £7.3bn National Wealth Fund for green infrastructure; and is preparing to set up the state-run investment vehicle GB Energy at next week’s King’s Speech. Labour’s green plans were an “important issue” that had a “positive response” on the doorstep, Debbonaire told me during the election campaign. “The Green Party does not have a monopoly on green values,” she said.
The Green Party response would be that Starmer’s party doesn’t go far enough in its green ambitions. The Greens’ manifesto calls for a £40bn annual investment (compared to Labour’s watered-down £4.7bn) into the green economy; a £12.4bn investment in green workforce training; and a “carbon tax” on fossil fuels. “The Green Party has been consistently in this position on the political spectrum,” Denyer told me as she wrapped up her canvassing for the day.
We soon hopped in a petrol-powered people carrier and headed for an event celebrating the 20th birthday of a local sustainable social enterprise group. On the way, Denyer reflected that while many join the Green Party for various reasons – in support of drug reform, anti-austerity measures, and proportional representation, for example – most “Greens are Greens for the environment”. YouGov polling prior to the election found that, unsurprisingly, four fifths of Green voters (86 per cent) believed that the previous government was not spending enough to reduce carbon emissions, compared to two-thirds of Labour supporters (67 per cent).
But could the new Labour government’s fast start on the green transition cut into the newfound support for the Green Party? Adrian Ramsay faced media attention this week after calling for a “pause” on a proposed 114-mile electricity pylon route that runs through his constituency and East Anglia (Ramsay is calling for “other options” to be considered). Such headlines feed into a view of the Greens that the party is gaining political capital out of not-in-my-back-yard (Nimby) campaigning.
But Denyer is clear on what her party’s responsibility is in the era of a new Labour government: to hold it to account, particularly on the delivery of a green economy. Starmer’s previous dilution of the £28bn-per-year green transition spending pledge is evidence, in her view, that the party needs to be pressured on some issues. “Labour have gone this way and that in the wind,” Denyer said of the party’s policy positions. “The question for voters… is do you want Labour with a huge majority without that challenge from the left, pushing Labour for a fairer, greener country? Or do you want a handful of green MPs and to make history?”
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