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

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