Category Archives: UK Politics

Green Party Gains Gorton and Denton in historic win

The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has won the by-electon in Gorton and Denton which took place yesterday and secured her place as the fifth Green MP in Parliament.

The Greens crushed Reform and Labour, securing over 40% of the vote in a performance that defied even the most optimistic polling.

This by-election win represents a victory for hope and progressive politics over the tactics of division and hate used by the other parties.

For more on what this victory could mean, check out our post from yesterday.

A Green win in Gorton & Denton would be the Reset Britain Needs

Voters go to the polls today in the Gorton & Denton by-election to choose a new member of Parliament.

The election appears to be a close three-horse raise between Labour (defending the seat), Reform UK and the Green Party.

Whoever wins, the maths in Parliament won’t change very much. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party will still have a massive majority and another 3 years or so to cling onto power until the next general election.

However, the result of this election is bound to determine the future of political discourse in the UK For years to come.

If Labour win, Starmer’s position as leader and Prime Minister will be safe and his team will claim it as proof that the country backs his vision.

If Reform UK win, we will no doubt see a further lurch to the far-right. Those of us in the know understand that this wouldn’t represent a change in a direction, but the acceleration of British decline.

Only if the Greens win will there be a great reset in British politics. The Greens will have won this election fighting from the left, and a win here would force Labour bigwigs to reconsider their strategy under Starmer.

Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK have become a homogenous blob of parties that manage the decline of our public services while blaming immigrants and minorities for the problems caused by politicians.

The Greens are the only party standing up and saying: Tax the rich, put public assets back in the public’s hands, stop demonising migrants and start rebuilding a Britain that works for everyone.

Voters in Gorton & Denton have a chance to choose the direction taken by the whole country going forward. If you have that power in your hands today, make sure you get out there and use it wisely.

Blame the rich: Greens must hammer home this message

The cost of living crisis hasn’t gone away. If you read the newspapers or watch the TV, you might think that the biggest problem Britain faces is a few small boats landing on shores. The truth is, families in the UK are still struggling. Utility bills are sky high. Weekly shops are still vastly more expensive than they should be. Benefits are being reduced, withheld, even scrapped by the Labour government.

Who is to blame for the problems facing our country, then? The poor people on boats who just this second turned up? Obviously not, and yet, nobody is pointing fingers at the real culprits. Labour, Reform and the Conservative Party are all on an anti-immigrant, anti-trans, anti-poor, anti-disabled rampage. Blaming as many minorities and vulnerable groups as they possibly can. To protect these people, to direct the blame to where it is truly deserved, and to win over the public, the Green Party must adopt a radical narrative of The People vs. The Profiteers.

The Cost of Profit Crisis

The cost of living crisis – rumbling on now for at least five years – has always been framed as an unavoidable consequence of external factors. First Covid, then the war in Ukraine, now Gaza and of course, if you’re Reform UK, “Net Zero”. Of course the truth is, the cost of living crisis is caused purely by private profits. An upward redistribution of wealth from the People to the Profiteers. Private companies and their shareholders are draining money out of the pockets of ordinary people, out of the British economy, and into their already-bloated bank accounts.

Take supermarkets, for example. I’m personally still struggling with shopping bills significantly higher than they used to be, I’m sure you are too. If this was caused by external factors we might expect to see a dent in the supermarkets profits, but do we? No. Last year, 2024, Tesco made £2.8 billion in profit, Waitrose £1.1 billion, Sainsbury’s £1 billion, ASDA upwards of £1 billion (2023) and M&S £620 million. This is profit – money earned after expenses. After paying staff. Pure profit.

These supermarkets could be paying their staff more, or charging their customers less, and they choose not to.

What about utility bills? Surely gas & electricity companies have been badly hit by instability in Ukraine and the middle east? Of course not. Last year, Centrica (the owners of British Gas) made £1.5 billion in profit. In 2023, EDF Energy’s French Parent Company made €39.9 billion in profit. In 2022, E.ON SE made €2.2 billion in profit.

Again this is all pure profit, after expenses. These companies can absolutely afford to lower our bills or pay their staff more and they don’t. If we nationalised gas & electricity in the UK, those profits could indeed be used to lower rates, invest in infrastructure, or pay for day to day government spending.

The list of companies and individuals earning extreme profits at the public expense goes on and on.

An Opportunity for The Greens

The Green Party already knows all of this. We already have the policies that would correct the problem. Renationalisation of key industries, wealth taxes on the super rich, a universal basic income. So why not start shouting from the rooftops about it?

The Green Party has professionalised its image over the last few years, which has helped us to win more council seats and four members of parliament. But we now need radical action to tackle the real problems Britain faces, and to protect the vulnerable communities being used as scapegoats by the far-right.

We know Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK won’t stand up to the Profiteers. The Liberal Democrats and the SNP, while commendable for their relative civility, are ultimately parties of capital, with donors who expect them to toe the line. Only The Green Party is in a position to go to bat for The People against The Profiteers. It’s time we accepted that role and got far more radical with our messaging.

That’s why I’m standing the Green Party’s elections to become External Communications Co-ordinator. It’s time for the Greens to adopt a bolder narrative, on social media, on TV, in newspapers and on the doorstep. Only by filling the vacuum of ideas on the left can we grow as a movement and fix Britain’s problems at the same time.

(Promoted and produced by Daniel Johnston as part of his campaign for election to the post of External Communications Co-ordinator. This is not an official communication from the Green Party of England and Wales.)

General Election 2024 Coverage

🔴 Live reporting: 650 out of 650 seats declared. 326 seats needed to win.

412 ▲211	121 ▼251	72 ▲64	5 ▲5	4 ▲3	36 ▼31

LAB	CON	LDM	REF	GRN	OTH

Popular Vote

LAB	33.7%
CON	23.7%
REF	14.3%
LDM	12.2%
GRN	6.7%
OTH	9.3%

Key Points

Labour win massive 412 seat landslide victory on just 34% of the vote, with fewer votes overall than Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party received in 2019.
The Green Party wins all 4 target seats Brighton Pavilion, Bristol Central, Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire.
Tories wiped out as Reform eat into their vote.

Final Prediction: Labour Majority of 176

My final prediction of the election campaign, based on an average of national polls weighted by the situation on the ground in recent local elections.

Labour 413
Conservatives 108
Lib Dems 78
Reform 8
Green 4
SNP 15
Others 24

My view is that Labour will not achieve an astonishingly large percentage of the national vote share – probably Starmer will entice fewer voters in total than Corbyn did in 2017, maybe even 2019. This low turnout will help boost the Conservatives, but with Reform UK still picking off a large chunk of their voters, Labour will win a landslide anyway.

I’ve got the Greens and the Liberal Democrats on more seats than most other models because they have incredibly strong ground game – something missing from Reform & the Conservatives in particular at this election. Recent constituency polling suggests the Greens will in fact win all 4 of their target seats.

Stay tuned for more coverage of the election after polls close tomorrow at 10pm.

Greens set to take Bristol Central – Poll

A new constituency-level poll by WeThinkPolling / Omnisis shows voters in Bristol Central are backing the Green Party’s Carla Denyer over the Labour Incumbent, Thangam Debbonaire, by 49% to 40%. This comes hot on the heels of two constituency-level polls showing the Green Party on course to win Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire, sparking our prediction that the Greens will win at least four seats at the general election.

In even more damning news for Debbonaire, who is currently set to be the culture secretary in Keir Starmer’s post-election cabinet, when presented with a simplified two-horse race between the Greens in Bristol Central voters opted 68% – 32% in favour of the Green Party against Labour.

Whatever the outcome of the election for the major parties on Thursday, it seems clear that the Greens are set to have a surprisingly good night defying national polling and various MRP projections.

Prediction: Greens will out-perform nationwide polls, win 4 seats

As Labour and the Conservatives take a tumble in the opinion polls, it becomes harder and harder to predict the outcome of the upcoming general election. So hard in fact, that we’re stopping our series of seat prediction posts.

MRP polls from major reputable pollsters and producing wildly different results, and are almost completely based on guesswork at this point without any consideration for the facts on the ground.

It’s this lack of consideration for strong local campaigns which led us to predict far lower vote shares for Labour & Reform, and much higher vote shares for the Lib Dems & the Greens, in our previous two election predictions.

Now it appears that the Green Party are indeed out-performing national polls and may be on course to win at least 4 seats on July 4th. Two constituency-level polls by Omnisis, where the polling company actually asked people in a target constituency how they are going to vote, show The Green Party winning their target seats in Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire, as reported in The Guardian. It’s widely predicted by most other pollsters and commentators that The Greens will also gain Bristol Central from Labour and retain Brighton Pavilion.

Party	Waveney Valley Voting Intention	North Herefordshire Voting Intention
🌻 Green Party	36%	38%
🌳 Conservative Party	23%	29%
🌹 Labour	17%	15%
➡️ Reform UK	16%	13%
🐤 Liberal Democrats	6%	4%

These figures, from actual polls taken in the constituencies in question, paint a wildly different picture to other prediction models. Electoral Calculus has the Tories in first in both seats, with Labour in second and the Green Party a distant third in Waveney Valley and fourth behind the Liberal Democrats in North Herefordshire.

Meanwhile, an Ipsos MRP released the other day showed the Green Party winning Waveney Valley on 33% of the vote (so far so good) but with Reform UK in second on 28% – which seems like a drastic overestimate.

Why is this happening? Why do the national polls seem to be so inaccurate and why are they also saying wildly different things? This is a highly unusual election, where we are seeing the opposite of a “squeeze” in vote share for the smaller parties. The longer the campaign goes on, the more voters are switching from Labour and the Conservatives to the Greens, Reform UK and the Lib Dems.

The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats have long histories and incredibly strong networks of activists on the ground, which makes it possible for them to do well in targeted seats. Reform UK are polling well nationally because they get a disproportionately large amount of media coverage, and are therefore gaining a kind of “15 minutes of fame”, but they don’t have the members on the ground to deliver victories under First Past The Post voting.

If the Green Party and its network of activists can continue their good work on the ground, we may well be looking at a significant upset in the polls nationally as well as 4 well-earned seats in Parliament. Only time will tell.

Prediction: Labour landslide may come on similar vote share to 2019

With three weeks to go until the general election, our modelling predicts that Labour may win a landslide victory with 391 seats on a very similar share of the votes to that achieved by Jeremy Corbyn’s party in 2019. This result would surely strengthen the case for electoral reform in the UK.

Where the parties stand 3 weeks out

Clearly since the start of the campaign Labour and the Conservatives have lost ground compared to the smaller parties. Our model doesn’t conform to the exact numbers being shown in mainstream opinion polls, but rather applies the general direction of travel from them to the actual results of the most recent local elections.

Here’s where the parties stand on our model 3 weeks out from the election:

Party	Predicted Vote	Predicted Seats	Change w/ 2019
🌹 Labour	34.6%	391	+194
🌳 Conservatives	22.1%	144	-232
🔶 Liberal Democrats	14.8%	64	+56
🌻 Greens	11.0%	2	+1
➡️ Reform	10.7%	3	+3
🎗️ SNP	3.3%	21	-27
👤 Other	3.5%	25	+5

Why are the Lib Dems and the Greens higher than Reform when opinion polls say otherwise?

Simply put: parties’ capacity on the ground is important. Before the local elections in May, Reform were polling 12.8% on average in opinion polls… but in seats where all 5 major parties had candidates they actually only got 9.6% compared to the Greens’ 10.8% and the Lib Dems’ 13.8%.

The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats are parties with long histories and tens of thousands of genuine grassroots activists to knock on doors and get their vote out. Reform is popular because they are platformed disproportionately on TV, but they don’t really have the ground game to back it up and we think our model will prove itself come polling day.

Starmer Landslide on Corbyn-like Vote Share

The funny, if rather unsettling thing about this prediction is that Labour would win a massive Parliamentary majority on 34.6% of the vote, when Jeremy Corbyn famously got crushed in 2019 after winning 32.1% of the vote. No doubt the ruling right-wing of the Labour Party would attempt to claim this as a masterful victory, but the reality is it would lay bare our broken voting system and strengthen calls for proportional representation.

As a final thought – under PR, the seat total could look more like this: LAB 225, CON 144, LD 96, GRN 72, RFM 70, SNP 21, OTH 22.

Immigration: The Establishment’s Convenient Bogeyman

Immigration featured heavily, again, in tonight’s ITV election debate. In fact, the issue has featured heavily in every election debate and in public discourse for at least the last 15 years (if not, forever). The Conservatives, Labour, Reform UK and even the Liberal Democrats are all signed up to the establishment consensus: make sure the public are shit scared of immigrants to keep them voting for you.

You can see why the establishment parties keep flogging this horse – it works! Politicians can drive attention away from their own failures, and from the fact that they’re robbing the public blind, by blaming the “others”, the “foreigners”. The Conservatives have won four elections in a row by doing exactly this, but thankfully it seems the game is well and truly up.

Still, there aren’t enough public voices speaking out in favour of immigration. For every 1 article like this questioning the establishment narrative, there are 1,000 pushing anti-migrant dogma, shared to the masses via the mainstream media and a network of shady far-right Tweeters and TikTokers.That’s why I’m making it my mission to lay out my positive case for migration here.

Nations and borders are arbitrary & elitist

First of all, the philosophical argument for immigration is incredibly strong (we’ll come to practicalities later). Countries and their borders are entirely arbitrary. We’ve made them up, and they change all the time. In the old days they used to change when Kings and Queens rode armies into neighbouring countries and claimed the land for themselves. These days it might be through armed struggle from separatists, or by government decree. Several entirely new countries have come into existence since the year 2000 alone!

The point is, countries & their borders change all the time. Heck, the concept of countries with borders and passports has existed for a mere fraction of the time that humans have. It is, philosophically speaking, just utterly stupid to accept as fact that we must obey imaginary lines drawn on a map by our politicians, which they can change any time at the flick of a pen.

My firm belief – and I realise this is quite extreme even for most liberals – is that humans should have a right to roam wherever they please regardless of the geographic area in which they were born (and over which they had no choice!). The vast, overwhelming majority of people on this planet are nice, and kind, and deserve to be welcomed wherever they decide to make their home.

Having said that, we live in organised societies with limited housing & access to public services, so obviously I have to dial down my fantasy world of free movement and cover the practical arguments for immigration.

Public services & an ageing population

Let’s talk practicalities then. The UK has an ageing population. We have a birth rate of just 1.6 children per woman. That means we have a declining population of British-born citizens. Think about it as simply as possible: every couple (2 people) is having less than 2 children. So as couples grow old, retire and eventually pass away, they are not being replaced by the same number of British-born children.

Every British child who will come of working age within the next 18 years has already been born, and there aren’t enough of them to replace the people in their 60s, 50s and late 40s who will retire in those 18 years. Even if you listen to Labour & Reform UK who say we should “train up our citizens to fill skill shortages”, you have to ask: what citizens??

If you accept the premise that we need to keep our public services, our economy, running smoothly for the next 18 years, and that we need to replace workers like-for-like, then you come to an obvious conclusion. Even if people suddenly started having more babies right this instant, we would still need net-positive migration for the next 18 years just to keep the economy running. Or else, people will have to retire later (which nobody wants to do either!)

Large numbers of migrants are currently propping up incredibly important British services like the NHS – but they’re also contributing to our economy more generally in other jobs across many sectors. You’d notice them if they were gone, trust me. Now let’s end with an argument about what kind of country we want to be, and how this debate is pushing away some much-needed talent.

Family values, dependents & British brain drain

During this election campaign Nigel Farage has turned his sights on a much more specific subset of migrants: dependents. What does that mean? Who are they? Dependents are husbands, wives, children and other family members who come to the UK on family visas. Some of them are the family members of other migrants who are coming here to work & study, and some of them are the husbands, wives and children of British citizens.

If you believe in family values, in the idea that people should be allowed to marry & live with the person they love in a stable home, then you should accept the idea that British citizens should be allowed to marry foreign spouses and live with them here in the UK. Nigel Farage’s blanket reduction of migration would break up British families or force British citizens to live abroad in their spouses’ home countries. This potentially leads to a phenomenon where we not only exclude migrants from working in our important public services, as discussed before, but we actually force skilled British workers to leave the country too.

Not only should British citizens be allowed to live in a stable home with their families, but so should the migrants who come here to work in our economy. Why should we say to a foreign doctor, nurse or care worker: “Yes you can come and work in our NHS, but you have to leave your family in your home country thousands of miles away”. It’s cruel, it’s not in keeping with any of the family values that conservatives usually espouse, and it’s counter-productive – because those migrants may not come to work in our public services at all. We need them.

Summary

The debate around immigration in this country is deeply dishonest and incredibly unfair. Right wing politicians are using migrants & their families as political footballs. Preying on the insecurities of British voters to win votes, and quite simply lying about the impact that immigration has on this country.

The only political parties coming out of this election campaign with an honest and positive view of migration are the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. Even their principal spokespeople have little first-hand experience of how it feels to be part of a migrant family. While they may articulate the facts, they aren’t quite capable of conveying the emotions felt by many families across the UK like mine.

Will me and my wife be allowed to live in the UK after July 4th? Do we have the security to start a family of our own? And what about the family we will leave behind if the likes of Nigel Farage force us out? I hope more people will think about these things when marking their ballots on June 4th.

Labour purges left-wing MPs right before general election

The ruling right-wing of the Labour party has begun deselecting left-of-centre MPs and candidates en masse as the general elections looms.

Earlier in the year the party blocked Jeremy Corbyn from standing in Islington North, even though he remained a Labour member and had the support of his local Labour Party. After the general election was called, Corbyn revealed he would stand as an independent candidate and was fully expelled from his party.

Finally rid of Corbyn, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Labour Party leadership would stop there and try to maintain the illusion that the party is a “broad church”. But in the last few days it appears that Starmer’s team have taken the decision to purge left-wing candidates from the general election entirely.

Diane Abbott, long time Corbyn ally and MP for Hackney, was given the Labour whip back earlier this week before rumours immediately started to fly that she would be blocked from standing for the party in the next election.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the left-leaning MP for Brighton Kemptown, was suspended from the Labour Party today after a “complaint” was made right before the dissolution of parliament, meaning he won’t be Labour’s candidate at the upcoming election.

Rumours (read: leaks to the press from Labour insiders) are circulating that other left wing candidates – like Faiza Shaheen, Apsana Begum and Zarah Sultana – are also about to face deselection by the leader’s office.

On the other hand, the party has been parachuting extremely right-wing, small-c conservative candidates into safe seats – like Luke Akehurst who has been announced as Labour’s candidate for North Durham.

It’s become very clear, if it wasn’t already, that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has no intention of delivering change after the general election. They intend to impose a right-wing government on a British public who are desperate to vote for change.

The question now is, what will deselected Labour candidates, left-wing Labour activists and their outriders in the media do about this? Are they going to lie down and take it, and campaign for a right-wing Labour landslide government? Or will they finally say “enough is enough” and throw their weight behind a genuinely left-wing party with a chance of causing an upset, like the Greens?

As the nomination deadline approaches, all eyes are on disgruntled Labour activists to see whether they’re willing to instigate the biggest political earthquake this country has ever known (and desperately needs).

Sunak calls General Election for July 4th

Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the UK, has called a general election for July 4th, 2024. Political parties will now begin 6 weeks of campaigning to see who will win the election and form the next British government.

A soggy Sunak, standing outside 10 Downing Street in the pouring rain, announced that he had already spoken to King Charles III to ask him to dissolve parliament and call a general election for the 4th of July.

Where the parties stand 6 weeks out

We’re using our own prediction model which takes the result of the 2024 local elections back on May 2nd and applies swing from national opinion polling since then. This model finds that Labour would win with a majority of 160 if the election were held right now…

Party	Predicted Vote Share	Predicted Seats	Change vs. 2019
🌹 Labour	36.5%	405	+203
🌳 Conservatives	23.7%	135	-230
🔶 Liberal Democrats	13.8%	64	+53
🌻 Greens	11.3%	3	+2
➡️ Reform	8.2%	0	–
🎗️ SNP	3.1%	19	-29
👤 Other	3.4%	24	+1

Of course, the election isn’t being held right now. It’s being held after a 6 week campaign where the parties will go to the country with their manifestos and try to win the public over.

We’ll keep our coverage and predictions coming throughout the next 6 weeks.

Council’s Web Searches Fund 3,600 Trees in 2 Years

In 2021 I wrote to South Gloucestershire council asking them to change their search engine to Ecosia on computers, phones and tablets owned and operated by the council. In January 2022 they did exactly that and have been quietly using Ecosia as their search engine ever since!

Yesterday, May 1st, a source at the council contacted me to thank me for my “nice idea” and shared with me some statistics about the council’s progress over the last 2 years. In that time, users of council-owned devices have searched using Ecosia over 170,000 times, funding the planting of an estimated 3,600 trees.

Ecosia reaches 200 million trees planted

Ecosia is a search engine launched in 2009. The company behind it uses advertising revenue to fund tree-planting projects around the world and hit a total of 200,000,000 trees planted back in February this year. Over the last 2 years searches on devices owned by South Gloucestershire Council have contributed an impressive 3,600 trees to that tally.

But why stop at one council? There are 317 councils across England alone, whose internet searches could be planting over 500,000 trees per year if they all follow the lead of South Gloucestershire. Why not write to our local councillor today and ask them to switch their devices to Ecosia?

On a personal note, as a member of the Green Party for over 10 years, this news represents a win for Green politics and proof that the Greens work hard to protect the environment even from the side-lines. With zero members of South Glos Council, one Green Party member managed to instigate a massively positive change in the way the council operates. I look forward to campaigning for more change on similar lines in future, and hope that one day some Greens will get elected to South Glos Council to have a bigger and more direct impact!

Polls show the Greens have a chance to achieve greatness in 2024

The Green Party are currently averaging around 6% in opinion polls – enough to win 2 seats at the general election this year. It hardly sounds like a breakthrough, but beyond headline voting intention there’s a story developing that gives hope for a Green surge in 2024. Let’s take a look…

Keir Starmer is deeply unpopular

Despite Labour being, on average, 20+ points ahead in the opinion polls, Keir Starmer is a deeply unpopular figure among the general public. Around 44% of people currently intend to vote Labour at the general election this year, but according to Ipsos only 25% of the public approve of the job Keir Starmer is doing as Labour leader. 56% are dissatisfied. For Labour this is quite a worrying starting point to kick off a general election campaign.

Green Party policies, dropped by Labour, are popular with the public

According to surveys by YouGov, the general public consistently and overwhelmingly support policies to tackle climate change and achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050; rent controls; nationalisation of rail, mail, energy, healthcare and water; A higher minimum wage; higher taxes on the rich and peace in the middle east. Keir Starmer has largely abandoned the progressive, left-wing policy platform on which he won the Labour Leadership election in 2020, and has instead positioned the Labour Party as socially conservative, pro-big business and pro-privatisation in order to court favour with the right wing press.

The public really, actually like the Green Party

Opinion polling regularly shows that the Green Party are the most “liked” party in the UK, the Green candidate for the 2024 London Mayoral election is the only one with a net positive favourability rating, in preferential elections voters often give Greens a hefty number of second preference votes, voters regularly believe “good” fictional characters like Father Christmas & Doctor Who would vote Green and a recent Ashcroft poll asking the likelihood that voters will back each party in a general election put the Greens on a whopping 13%. Voters genuinely like the Green Party – the Greens are the “good guys”. When voters know the Greens have a chance of winning – in elections with proportional voting systems – they vote Green in much larger numbers than in first-past-the-post elections.

So What?

According to current headline voting intention, Labour will win in an absolute landslide victory at the next General Election. The Conservatives will be decimated – maybe even wiped out entirely – and the Greens will gain only a handful of seats at best. But that’s not the whole story. Keir Starmer’s deeply unpopular Labour Party is winning by default, so can the Greens capitalise on their popularity with the public and present themselves as a credible alternative to voters?

Many voters would love to vote Green, but don’t think they can win elections. The Green Party’s task over the coming months is not just to make the public like them, it’s to help the public truly believe that voting Green means electing a Green MP. That it’s not a wasted vote. That they can wake up one sunny Friday morning in 2024 to many, many Green voices in Parliament, not just 1 or 2 or 4. This will be the true test of Carla Denyer & Adrian Ramsay’s leadership. Their legacy.

Four our sakes, let’s hope they meet the scale of the challenge.

Scottish Greens to hold vote on continuing SNP alliance

The Scottish Greens are set to hold a vote on whether to continue governing Scotland in a power-sharing deal with the SNP. The Greens and the SNP have been in power together in Scotland since signing the Bute House Agreement in August 2021. This week the power-sharing deal came under fresh strain as Scotland was forced to ditch climate targets.

The parties have also had their differences over support for Trans rights, with the Greens being staunchly pro-LGBT and the SNP having a mixed record of supporting and opposing more rights for trans and non-binary people.

Following a difficult week for both the Scottish Greens and the SNP, the Greens will hold an extraordinary meeting where members can vote on whether or not to continue sharing power with the SNP in Scotland or return to opposition. It’s understood that Green co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie will encourage members to vote in favour of continuing the alliance with the SNP.

Labour leftists looking for a win should embrace the Greens

These days you’d be hard-pressed to find a left-leaning Labour member who’s happy with the direction their party is taking. Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign pitched him as Corbyn-lite, but three years on he’s positioned himself to the right of the Conservatives. Long gone are the pledges of nationalised utilities, freedom of movement and a foreign policy based on peace and justice. Instead, Starmer’s Labour is a party of big business, harsh immigration rules and war in the middle east.

Understandably many left-wing activists have abandoned Labour and cancelled their memberships, while others choose to stay inside the party machine and criticise Starmer from the sidelines. In both camps we see great swathes of disaffected but passionate activists promising to boycott the next election entirely, resigned to five more years of misery.

These people have more power than they think. They’re still following politics, tweeting tweets, writing letters, signing petitions, and attending protests. Under Corbyn they were the whirlwind force of door knockers and leaflet posters who delivered the stunning upset of the 2017 general election.

If all of that energy could be channelled into a focused political movement, a truly left-wing party with progressive policies and grassroots decision-making at its core, Sunak and Starmer could face their own shock at the ballot box next year. This movement, this fantasy political party already exists: The Green Party.

The overlap between Corbyn’s Manifesto – even Starmer’s ten broken pledges – and Green Party policy is immense. Economic justice through higher taxes on the rich, abolishing tuition fees, promoting peace instead of war, public ownership of utilities, defending migrants’ rights, strengthening trade unions and of course bold action on climate change. These are all staples of Green Party policy.

Not only do they exist and share the Labour left’s top priorities, The Green Party are clearly capable of winning enough votes to break the Labour/Tory duopoly. Currently polling at an average of 6%, the Greens peaked at 12% in a national election as recently as 2019, convincing nearly two million voters to back them at the European Parliament elections. All this with a mere fraction of the funding and membership numbers of Labour or the Conservatives.

With the addition of thousands of former Labour members the Greens could see a surge in voting intention similar to the leftward shift we saw in the summer of 2017. What the Greens lack in balanced media coverage, a problem Corbyn’s Labour also faced, can always be overcome with people power.

And it’s not like this new influx of members would be outsiders working for a rival party. They would have agency and ownership within the party. Unlike Labour or the Conservatives, the Green Party’s policies are made by the membership, local parties choose their own MPs and leadership elections happen automatically every two years. If a Keir Starmer-style Thatcherite ever lied their way to the Green leadership, they would not be able to purge the left, overhaul party policy or impose right-wing MPs on local parties.

With a strong Green Party as a left-wing option on the ballot paper, with the right number of passionate activists to make them a viable force in British politics, this country doesn’t have to face five more years of Red or Blue Conservative government. We can have real, meaningful change for the better. Leftists should embrace the Green Party with open arms and set off the political earthquake this country desperately needs.

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