The Green Party in 2023: Caught Between Two Stools.

Is it possible for the Greens to win in both Beccles and Bristol?

I thoroughly enjoyed the local elections. As a master’s student in the last month of my degree, it gave a fantastic excuse for me to put off writing my thesis. This article, too, is performing this function as I write it.

Yet, it wasn’t only the procrastination-inducing effects of the elections that made me thoroughly enjoy them. The Conservatives were humiliated, losing over 1000 seats, and losing disproportionately in Con-held swing constituencies – Broxtowe, Erewash, Thanet South, South Swindon etc. Fantastic writing from Ben Walker has underscored that these results, if replicated in a general election, would lead to a Labour majority government.

But these losses weren’t incurred only to the benefit of Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The Green Party – long seen as a party of environmentally-minded urban graduates in Brighton, Norwich, Bristol, Hackney, and Streatham – were able to extend their appeal into traditionally Conservative areas.

The big-ticket gains for the Greens came in Suffolk. Most notably in Mid Suffolk District Council, where they took their first council, winning seats in deep-navy market towns such as Stowmarket and Needham Market. In neighbouring Babergh District, Greens stormed ahead to be the largest party, making gains in Sudbury and Hadleigh. In East Suffolk, they took seats in places such as Beccles and Framlingham.

I have been to Stowmarket and Sudbury. It is plain that the appeal of the Greens in these areas does not, sadly, come from their call for a ‘Green Economic and Social Revolution’, with £100bn a year spent on a Green New Deal. It doesn’t come either from their support for a universal basic income.

Instead, looking at the adverts the Mid Suffolk Greens paid for on Facebook during the campaign, conservation of the nature was foregrounded. Candidates ranged from a co-owner of a whole foods shop to a science teacher with a PhD in marine ecology. However, the word conservation is key. The environment at-large fell by the wayside.

Part of their campaign in Gislingham Ward involved opposing the construction of pylons in the area – proposed as part of the National Grid’s project to beef up the East Anglian transmission network so it can carry energy from offshore wind farms to London. In Stradbroke and Laxfield, they opposed the construction of the Sizewell nuclear plant. Climate change was not at the centre of the campaign either. In all of the candidate biographies combined it was mentioned once.

Also important to the Greens’ success in Mid Suffolk, though orthogonal to environmentalism, was capitalising on disquiet over housebuilding. In Bacton Ward, opposition to ‘housing policies [which] have encouraged developers to build here’ was central. In Babergh, to the South-West, opposition to the Wolsey Grange housing development – with 750 homes starting at £165k –  featured heavily on local Green literature.

This was in stark contrast to their campaign in Brighton (where, incidentally, the party lost control of the council to Labour over bin collections issues), with Greens proposing the construction of 800 new affordable and council homes by 2028. This would be a jolly good thing, in my view, but is totally at odds with their messaging in Suffolk.

Part of this is arguably down to the different needs of urban Brighton and rural Suffolk. It is the case that all parties emphasise different messages when communicating to disparate parts of their coalition. Politics, especially elections for district councils, is overwhelmingly local.

However, the urban and rural components of the Greens’ voter base are so far apart, it may become difficult to effectively communicate with both simultaneously. This was made clear in an interview of the co-leader of the party, Adrian Ramsay, by Laura Kuenssberg in the run-up to the elections.

Local Green parties oppose the construction of solar farms in places such as Rutland, Chelmsford, Reigate, Alfreton, Faversham, and Hastings. Yet, the national party calls for the achievement of net-zero emissions ‘as quickly as possible’. In Cambridgeshire, the Greens brand the construction of a busway and cycle lane to Cambridge ‘environmental vandalism’.

This poses a challenge for the Greens in terms of their parliamentary representation. Their best chances to add to their one-woman band in the Commons come in Labour-held urban seats with high levels of students and graduates – think Norwich South and Bristol West. The chances of winning Bury St Edmunds, the constituency that encompasses much of Mid Suffolk; or South Suffolk, which contains much of Babergh are slim, given in 2019 the Tory candidates in both seats won in excess of 60% of the vote.

In the election next year, if it becomes increasingly clear to voters in their urban targets that Greens start opposing the development of a green energy grid, solar farms, and new homes as soon as they leave the city boundaries, it is likely that Norwich and Bristol will stick with Labour. At the same time, the party’s radical national profile makes it near-impossible to make headway in rural Conservative constituencies.

Stuck between two stools, it may be better for the party’s long-run prospects to pick a side and double-down. Going all-in on the urban part of their coalition would be better for their chances of winning more MPs. This is particularly crucial given the likelihood of a Labour government – which will undoubtedly produce swathes of disaffected urban, young, left-wing Labour supporters that the Greens would be well-placed to pick up.

The Greens’ predicament also speaks to a wider tension in ecologism between conservation and environmentalism. It is not possible to achieve meaningful reductions in carbon emissions without significant infrastructural development in energy, housing, and transport. This entails the building-over of some green land. Degrowth, attempting to square the circle of this contradiction, has near to no political constituency outside of academia and activist movements, and it is unclear how it would be operationalised. How the Greens position themselves in this debate in the coming years will be hugely consequential for the future of ecologism in the UK.