Why the Greens might soon become the third (nationwide) force in British politics

It has been widely circulated that the membership of the Green Party of England and Wales managed to overtake the membership of UKIP: there are 40,000 members in UKIP but now 42,000 members in GPEW at this time of writing :)

Combined with the membership of the Scottish Greens and the Green Party of Northern Ireland, this means that the Greens combined are now ahead of the Liberal Democrats in terms of membership. Only Labour, the Conservatives, and the Scottish Nationalists have more members in Britain in terms of party membership than the Green Party now-and the membership of both Labour and Conservatives has been declining for years.

The Green Party is now regularly polling at 8-9% in national opinion polls-better even than the 6-7% they were polling just last year, and managed to obtain second place (only to Labour) in voting intention amongst people under 25 years of age. I believe they will easily be on course to become the second or third political party in many parts of the country after polling day, especially in places where the Lib Dems once held sway as the anti-Labour/anti-Conservative alternative.

Despite this, the media are still not paying that much attention to the Green Party, partly due to the fact that many newspapers are still planning to officially endorse the Conservative Party (although there are unconfirmed rumours that the Daily Express will endorse UKIP this time), and not one newspaper has given an official endorsement to the Green Party. Although the rise of online media has caused a considerable decline in newspaper readership, newspaper readership numbers are still enough to be decisive in the outcome of this year's general election, especially since most parliamentary seats are safe (more are becoming marginal, though, and the Greens are playing their part here). With this surge in membership, I believe the Green Party, contrary to earlier expectations of around 430 seats (120 more constituencies than they contested in 2010), should be on course to contest more than 500 Parliamentary seats in 2015 across England and Wales (out of 573).

Keep up the good work, Green Party, I say, in these next few months, and keep on campaigning for a brighter and fairer future for the UK :)

Alan.

Comments

  1. Simonron15 January 2015 at 22:25

    Thanks :-) It really is about time. I just hope there is enough time left.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of local by-elections from 22/11/18

Readers, the results of this week's British local by-elections were as follows: Enfield LBC, Bush Hill Park: Conservative 1540 (52.4%, +12.7%), Labour 828 (28.2%, -8.3%), Liberal Democrats 313 (10.7%, -0.8%), Green 127 (4.3%, -6.6%), WEP 79 (2.7%), Independent (Oyaloyu) 50 (1.7%). [UKIP did not stand] Westminster LBC, Lancaster Gate: Conservative 913 (47.2%, -1.5%), Labour 684 (35.4%, -1.0%), Liberal Democrats 275 (14.2%, -0.7%), Green 62 (3.2%). Windsor & Maidenhead UA, Datchet: Conservative 525 (56.0%, -3.1%), National Flood Prevention Party 223 (23.8%), Labour 121 (12.9%, -9.1%), Liberal Democrats 48 (5.1%,-13.8%), Green 21 (2.2%). Wirral MBC, Upton: Labour 1490 (61.3%, +3.1%), Conservative 705 (29.0%, +0.4%), Green 151 (6.2%, -0.5%), Liberal Democrats 83 (3.4%, -0.8%). [TUSC did not stand] All changes are since May. The open divisions in the Conservatives, which resulted in a failed attempt to call for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May by the European Researc...
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian ...
Read more

On the French local elections of 2020: Vive le surge de vert!

The French local elections finally concluded yesterday, having been originally scheduled to take place on 15 March; they were postponed due to the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  The most sensational story of these elections was the many triumphs by the main French Green Party, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV). In major French cities (those with more than 100,000 people), EELV captured the mayoralties of Annecy, Besancon, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, and Tours. They also performed impressively in the munciipal elections for those cities as well. However, in the midst of all this triumph there was one notable setback for them: Eric Pollie, the first Green Mayor of a major French city, decided to contest the mayoral election there as an "Independent Left" (divers gauche) candidate instead. Furthermore they narrowly missed out on unseating former PS leader Martine Aubry from her post as Mayor of Lille; in the second round she held on by 227 votes, a sig...
Read more