The Green Party is at a crossroads. Is it time they get angry?
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Baroness Bennett believes it’s not just the party’s policies that need attention, but also its internal structures and how it runs campaigns. “I would like to see a real focus on working out exactly how we use political tactics, how we get those messages out, how we build campaigns that don’t just preach to the converted but are reaching out to new audiences.”
Dr Paul Tobin, who researches the Green Party at the University of Portsmouth, says that however the party decides to define itself, “the Green party has to expand its base. All the evidence in politics shows the Greens have to.”
But Ramsay argues that Polanski’s anti-system approach is flawed. “We’ve got a lot of anti-system voters in our electorate just now who are not voting for the Green party,” he says. “To win they need to see us as a credible alternative and that means being able to speak about the issues that matter to them in their language, not our language.”
‘Chipping away’
It’s a truism in UK politics that small parties tend to be squeezed out by the two main parties when an election rolls around. But Prof Carter says this narrative doesn’t account for the way smaller parties can win “incremental increases” in support over time.
That suggests the Green party might yet succeed by “a process of gradual chipping away.”
That argued, previous success at a local level, suggesting the approach Chowns and Ramsay is taking might provide a route to that slow build.
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Chowns says some voters already have a “generalised warm feeling” towards the Greens
Nonetheless, Chowns adds that time is of the essence. “The success of our strategy really hinges on getting that message out there and getting people to understand the shift in approach and realising that the Green party really is a credible alternative that can win seats all over the country,” she says.
“With the conference on the horizon we’ve reached a really pivotal moment.”
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