Today marked the start of the Green Party of England & Wales’ annual conference, taking place this year in Manchester Central Complex. Following a landmark victory for the party in the recent general election, and a series of strong local election results too, Polanski, and the party’s Head of Elections, Chris Williams, unpacked the ethos and strategy behind the Greens’ recent triumphs.
According to Polanski, the party began to adopt a “strategic process” around 2010, where all their energy, efforts and resources were thrown behind one seat, Brighton Pavilion. Following the election of the Greens’ first MP, Caroline Lucas, it was clear that such targeted, pinpointed focus is what the Green Party needed; the only problem being that Caroline Lucas then found herself ‘carrying the entire party on her shoulders’.
The 2024 election campaign saw the party focus their efforts on four very different seats: the retention of Brighton Pavilion, and the gaining of Bristol Central, North Herefordshire and Waveney Valley. Polanski believes that a combination of ‘a really clear narrative’, alongside the public growing tired of ‘binary politics’ (and ‘heaps of planning’ from Williams and his team) allowed the party to pull off their impressive feat.
Williams believes that preparedness and fast action greatly aided the party’s result, boasting delivering leaflets to around ‘45,000 homes in about three hours’ of the election being called. But he also made it clear that isn’t enough on its own. According to data carried out after the election, 39% of those who voted Green did so because they felt they could trust the ‘party’s motives’, a statistic higher than for any other party. The same data also showed that 12% of their voters were people of colour, 4% higher than Labour, and the highest out of any political party. In fact, the Greens were found to be more likely to attracting votes from marginalised communities more than any other party.
Polanski and Williams’ message for the future is clear – the only way is up. Williams believes that the Greens can ‘win many more seats’, having come second in over 40 on election night. Polanski criticised Labour’s governance since the election, explaining that the public ‘aren’t seeing change’ but are instead ‘seeing a child benefit cap’. Labour’s victory is “built on quicksand”, and after 14 years of a Conservative government that has ‘really destroyed society’, people are starting to really get behind “the power of the Green message”.
