Whoever wins the election will become the public face and most prominent figure within a party that is on the up, and has an enormous potential to appeal to the millions of disaffected progressive voters who reject the Labour Party.
But we can only do that if we fulfill our potential, and we’re not doing that.
Coming third in the London Mayoral race was a good feeling. But in the sober light of day we have to remember that we still didn’t get 5% of the vote. We did increase our vote by 20,000 votes and gain a share of 4.5%, a testament to the hard work of hundreds of dedicated activists, to Jenny Jones and her team and also to the increased coverage we received.
But the real reason we came third, rather than a stronger fourth, was because the Liberal Democrats nosedived and haemorrhaged 140,000 votes. On the Assembly list we also came third, but we did exactly what we did in 2008 - won 8.5% of the vote and two Assembly Members. Once again, the Lib Dem collapse was what pushed us into third.
We proved the pollsters, who had predicted a Green wipeout, wrong once again, but we have to be honest with ourselves. It’s a great achievement to win 180,000 votes when every other minor party failed to come close to that, but simply staying still will not make us the third party.
Outside of London, meanwhile, Liverpool Greens gained fourth place (just shy of third) and a saved deposit in their Mayoral race - no small feat in a city dominated by the Labour Party, whose candidate won 60%+ of first preference votes. But across the country, the Green Party gained a net of just four councillors. We can’t honestly say that this was a good result in a Labour landslide, or anything like that. It’s nowhere near good enough. It’s not fulfilling our potential.
We have the potential to appeal to both disaffected Lib Dems and Labour voters, and - in some areas - to Conservative voters who fell for Cameron’s ‘green’ rhetoric. Certainly Diane Hoy’s council by-election victory (taking a seat from the Tories in Rochford) indicates this is possible, as does the success of Norwich and Brighton Greens in taking Tory council wards.
But ultimately the people turning back to Labour are doing so only by default, and they can be convinced to plump for a progressive alternative.
We should be aiming to win up to 50 new councillors every year, not four. We should be aiming to win all the Green MEPs we missed out on in 2009, and still more. And we should be aiming to save deposits in nearly all the constituencies we contest, and win not just not two but five MPs in 2015, and double that number in 2020.
But we are not aiming to do that.
Instead we seem to be content with standing still, and saying that four councillors is good enough.
Whoever leads the Green Party after September will need to build a party that is a truly national party, and fights elections everywhere.
Because that’s exactly what we can do.
From Cornwall to Cumbria, from Bristol to Bath and from Newport to Norwich we are a party that can appeal to people of all classes and all backgrounds.
Our ideals and our policies are ones that everyone - except for the very rich and powerful - can share and benefit from. Evidence shows that, where we put our minds to it, we can win anywhere, whether in Dudley or Rochford.
We need only to have the ambition to be a truly national party, and the determination to make the Green Party a strong and vibrant force in British politics.
We can do it, I’m sure - but only if we believe that we can.
UPDATE: Well, blow me down.
Peter Cranie launched his campaign just after I'd written this and called for an ambitious national Green party, saying there must be no more 'No Go' areas for the Green Party and saying we need to aim to elect 7 MEPs in 2014 and 5-10 MPs by 2020.
UPDATE #2: And now after I posted this, Natalie Bennett has thrown her hat in the race, also calling for greater electoral ambition.
UPDATE #2: And now after I posted this, Natalie Bennett has thrown her hat in the race, also calling for greater electoral ambition.
Great post. I agree we need to be more ambitious but ambition alone won't get us 7 MEPs and 10 MPs. I think most members would agree that to reach this goal we need to abandon our current targeting tactic and act more as a national party rather than a collection of local parties (and I'm aware that several candidates have said words to that effect already), but for this to work we need to regularly be polling much higher than 2 or 3%. Obviously we cannot achieve higher polling figures through canvassing alone, there is only one way we can catch up with UKIP and the Lib Dems and that is to have much more media attention. So my question to the candidates is simple, how do we get more media attention? Because whilst this blog post is right that we shouldn't be content with such little progress every year, so far I don't think any of the candidates have outlined a plan that will help us to reach these new ambitions that seem to be so central to their campaigns.
ReplyDeleteHi Jerzy - Thanks :) And yes, I agree that simply saying we need to reach higher won't get us there! The spirit of my post is more that we need to reach high and have a plan to get there.
ReplyDeleteI'm still undecided on who to vote for (there could be yet more candidates anyway) but Natalie Bennett seems to have concrete ideas for how to make us a national party and new ideas and techniques: http://www.natalie4leader.org/?page_id=107
Absolutely media attention is key, and I think that is a question the candidates need to answer (I'll be asking it at hustings). We definitely need to start pulling ahead in polls and catching the spotlight. Headlines like "Greens overtake Liberal Democrats" will be pretty helpful!
We seem to hitting 4% as a peak in opinion polls which saddens me. There doesn't seem to be a strategy for boosting our profile.
Hi - I agree with much of what you say, and with Jerzy's comment.
ReplyDelete'Target to win' for Council seats has become a sacred cow. We need to raise a wider political challenge at national & local levels, and not reduce being in the Green Party to being told to go out canvassing, surveying & leafleting for the next local election. And by the way, the next local elections are 23 months away for people in London boroughs & English metropolitan authorities. What about now, and the politics of the global economy, UK cuts and inequality, and climate change?
By the way, you mean Rochford in Kent, not Rochdale in Greater Manchester.
Oops - you're right David! Have corrected.
ReplyDeleteAnd quite, you're spot in saying we need to be bolder. I'd say we should mount a national push during Parliamentary by-elections. We leave it to the local party to fight, which is frankly ludicrous. Every other party gets national support in a Parliamentary by-election.