Less than 24 hours after he was announced as the Green Party’s candidate in the upcoming Makerfield by-election, Chris Kennedy dropped out. The party’s original explanation for Kennedy’s withdrawal was “personal and family reasons”, but it has since come to light that he had removed himself from the race after it emerged that he had shared posts on social media that described an attack on ambulances run by a Jewish charity as a “false flag” operation.
After being spoken to by Green Party officials, Kennedy – who is a nurse and children’s safeguarding specialist – has since deleted the posts and apologised for any offence caused. A spokesperson for the Greens has said that “these posts don’t reflect the views” of the party. The search for his replacement has now begun, but a candidate won’t be in place before the bank holiday weekend. Hustings are due to take place on Monday evening, after which a replacement will be chosen. The party has not released the names of potential candidates.
After a local election campaign in which numerous candidates were criticised, investigated and suspended for posting anti-Semitic content online, this is another unfortunate moment for the Green Party. It is easy to wonder why comprehensive vetting does not seem to have been done on the party’s potential candidates in Makerfield given the increased media scrutiny that occurred in the difficult few weeks before voters went to the polls for May’s local elections. The context of this by-election means it is likely to be one of the most closely covered in British political history.
Since Josh Simons officially resigned as Makerfield MP on Monday, which triggered another by-election in the northwest, there has been some internal discussion within the Green Party as to whether to stand a candidate. Caroline Lucas, a party grandee and its former leader, said in a post on X that she hoped the Greens would put “country before party” and stand aside in Makerfield. For Lucas to take this position makes sense – as co-chair of Compass, a cross-party progressive campaigning force, Lucas is one of several voices appealing to the “progressive majority”.
But this position makes Lucas an outlier within the Green Party. Resentment lingers from 2019, when informal discussions between Labour and the Greens saw some of the party’s candidates forced to stand aside. There is now a recognition among party members that doing so held back the Greens electoral prospects for several years. As one source told me: “Something that unites both sides of the party is that it was a total mistake.”
Yet how much of a difference would the Green Party standing aside in Makerfield actually make to Andy Burnham’s prospects? Not much. Unlike in Gorton and Denton, where the Manchester City Council wards of Longsight, Levenshulme and Burnage were prime Green-Labour swing territory, the demographic of Makerfield is more similar to Denton. It is therefore more likely to be a straight Reform-Labour fight. Equally, Burnham’s candidacy and what it says about the UK’s national political trajectory, whether fairly or unfairly, diminishes the significance of other progressive parties in this race.
Senior Greens recognise these factors. More than one of them has privately conceded to me that, while they think it is important for the party’s electoral trajectory that they field a candidate, they certainly do not expect to win. In fact, as one insider explained to me, a Green candidate could actually help win the battle against Reform.
As I have written about before, it has been undersold how much of an overlap there is between Green and Reform voters: a voter looking to stick it to the establishment could choose between either party (a recent council election in which the Greens took a seat from Reform seems to prove this). And so by standing in the Makerfield by-election, the Greens could aid a Burnham victory by mopping up seats from Reform.
The party is now searching for a new candidate, with an announcement due on Monday. With less than a month to go before this consequential by-election takes place, the party will need to get its act together swiftly after this ill-timed false start.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: Keir Starmer is a dishonest man]
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