Despite pressure from Labour, the Green Party’s co-leader, Carla Denyer, has said that winning four seats at the next election is “absolutely realistic.” Denyer stated that the plan was “ambitious,” but after “record-breaking” gains in this year’s English local elections, her party was confident in their ability to achieve it.
The Green Party of England and Wales has only ever had one MP, Caroline Lucas, whose Brighton Pavilion seat is a target for Labour. Denyer hopes to not only keep Lucas’s seat but also win the newly created seats of Bristol Central, Waveney Valley, and North Herefordshire in the next election.
At the party’s annual conference in Brighton, co-leader Adrian Ramsay expressed the party’s openness to forming deals with other “progressive” parties at the election, but so far, there has been “no interest” from either Labour or the Liberal Democrats. At the last general election in 2019, the Green Party formed an anti-Brexit electoral pact with the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru.
The party’s campaign in the local elections focused heavily on housing, which will be a key theme in the co-leaders’ speech at the conference. The Greens have recently announced plans to give renters the means to force landlords to insulate their homes. Under the plans, tenants would be able to insist that landlords take up low-interest government-backed loans to carry out the works.
Despite financial pressures, including a proposed 50% increase in membership fees to raise funds, the conference could be the final pre-election gathering for a party that has become an increasingly effective campaigning force. The Green Party of England and Wales had their best-ever results in May’s local elections across England, winning 241 seats and taking overall control of a council for the first time
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