Britons’ favourite ideology is environmentalism. That’s according to an illuminating poll published by YouGov last week (it was the preferred choice of 64 per cent). This isn’t reflective of a nation of Just Stop Oil sympathisers but one in which David Attenborough is a secular saint and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has 1.2 million members.
Nevertheless, in a country of environmentalists, you might expect the Greens to be thriving (concern about climate change exceeds 50 per cent in every seat). True, at the general election, they enjoyed their best-ever result. The party won four MPs and finished second to Labour in 39 seats. It also now has more than 800 councillors (and stands to make major gains in next year’s locals). All of this suggests insurgent potential.
But the Greens have featured little in the political conversation since the election. It’s Reform that has dominated debate and surged in the polls (the Greens have flatlined around 8 per cent). Recurrent talk of new left-wing parties shows that they still aren’t viewed as the default progressive alternative to Labour. What’s going wrong?
One answer is that, in an age of personality politics, the Greens don’t have one leader but two: Carla Denyer (MP for Bristol Central) and Adrian Ramsay (MP for Waveney Valley). That denies them a single national figurehead for the media and voters to look towards. An Ipsos poll in September found that only 8-9 per cent of voters knew a “great deal” or a “fair amount” about Denyer and Ramsay.
“They’re not going to be a player until they get a proper leader, a proper policy platform and a proper organisation – they have none of those things,” a Labour strategist told me earlier this year.
The Greens also face a wider identity challenge. They are split between left-leaning “watermelons” (green on the outside, red on the inside) and more centrist “mangoes” (a Lib Dem orange). While the former are concentrated in urban areas, the latter dominate in Tory-held rural seats.
In some respects, this political ambiguity is a strength. Until entering coalition with the Tories, the Lib Dems pulled off a similar balancing act. But this further dilutes the Greens’ identity.
It’s also worth noting those areas where Labour is appealing to progressives. Policies that are both popular and salient include the sewage bill, the minimum wage increase, the renters’ rights bill, the employment rights bill, GB Energy, and the partial ban on Israel arms sales. This “red-green” agenda is denying the Greens political space that might have been available under an alternative Labour administration.
A final thought: an important part of politics is capturing the zeitgeist. Farage – bolstered by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, GB News and TikTok – is seeking to do precisely that. What of the Greens?
For a period, there appeared irresistible momentum behind the net zero agenda. But that’s changing both domestically and internationally as consensus fragments (the European Greens lost 14 seats in last year’s elections). The increasing sense that progressives are losing the future is yet another challenge the Greens face.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here.
[See also: Inside Labour’s China policy]
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