We have to have confidence in the centrality of these issues to our political message, and not get blown off course by attacks on pro-climate policies by right-wing politicians funded by the fossil fuel companies.
We also have to be confident about elected power. Electoral success is essential to build a better future – and a focus on this is what makes a political party different from a protest movement. And we Greens are getting very good at it.
That’s why I’m supporting Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay to be our next leaders. They both have a truly impressive history of organising to win through cooperation and mutual respect.
Ellie is an amazing person. A former member of the European Parliament and a formidable campaigner, she achieved one of the largest ever general election swings (33%) to win her parliamentary seat in Herefordshire last year. She’s a hugely warm and engaging personality who relates easily and naturally to voters of all kinds.
Adrian is the best electoral campaigner and organiser the party has ever produced, a driving force behind Caroline Lucas’s parliamentary breakthrough in 2010 and part of the leadership team that’s taken us to unprecedented successes in both local and general elections over the past few years.
Times are desperate. I really get that. We’re in an accelerating climate emergency and have a virulently far-right party that’s appealing to a third of the electorate. Plus a government that’s betraying the people who chose it in their urgent desire for change last year. I believe the Green Party is now the last best hope of saving democracy.
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To stop Reform we have to build the biggest possible tent, appealing to people from across the political spectrum, and to people who have lost all faith in politics as a means to achieve real change. It’s important we look like a serious party of government, not just the political wing of a protest movement.
The fastest way to alienate voters floating between Green and other parties is to push ourselves into a leftist corner with off-the-cuff policy suggestions, or with a faction-riven culture that divides us against ourselves. I don’t believe any of the candidates in this leadership race want to see that sort of angry factionalism either, but I’m not sure that some of their supporters on social media understand just how damaging this can be.
Greens all understand the urgency of the multiple crises we face, and we all know our party now needs to win much bigger than ever before. But it would be a serious error of judgment to abandon our successful winning formula and return to our years of pressure group activism. Or to vote for a leader without the experience to win under the first-past-the-post system that’s now working for Reform but that we’ll be facing for some years to come. It’s not the system we want, but to change it, we first have to win within it.
And the party is now in a position to make a much bigger electoral breakthrough at the next election. We’ve come so far to get there and we can’t afford to blow that opportunity.
Baroness Jenny Jones is a Green Party peer and former deputy mayor of London.
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