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New Statesman
3 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
The eco-centrists want the Green Party back
In last year's General Election, the Green Party quadrupled its representation in parliament (from one in 2019 to four in 2024, albeit). Caroline Lucas, elected in 2010, was for a long time the party's only MP. After years of the Green's representation in Parliament resting solely on Lucas's shoulders, July 2024 was a turning-point. 'I spoke in the House of Commons five times yesterday, on a range of topics,' Ellie Chowns, the Green MP for Northwest Herefordshire told me when we met on a drab evening at a café in St James's Park. 'We as Greens have got a much stronger voice [in Parliament] speaking day in day out on the issues that really matter,' Chowns said. Alongside her, Adrian Ramsay, the Green MP for Waveney Valley nodded. During our 45-minute interview, we were all variously forced to dodge the pigeons who kept flying dangerously close overhead. Ramsay has been the current co-leader of the party, alongside Carla Denyer, the Green MP for Bristol Central since 2021. But their term is almost up; the party will hold a leadership election later this year. While Denyer has decided not to re-contest, Ramsay, who has been a Green Party politician since 2003 felt he isn't done yet. He is running once again to be co-leader of the party once again, with Chowns as his co-star. Chowns and Ramsay's pitch to Green Party members is simple: a vote for them is a vote for two experienced leaders, who already have a position inside parliament and a proven track-record of winning elections .'We're the only candidates in this [leadership] election who have won under first-past-the-post,' Ramsay told me, 'and we want to build on that success, it is about substance.' He added: 'Anyone can say that they want to be popular,' Ramsay said, 'we've shown how you actually do it.' Chowns agreed: 'The only way to change politics is by winning more seats in the system,' she said, 'and Adrian and I have shown how to do that. You build the biggest possible coalition of voters.' The pair have received backing for precisely this reason from Green Party Grandees such as Lucas and Baroness Jenny Jones. This is all no uncertain dig at the pair's main competition: current deputy leader, Zack Polanski. Shortly after the May local elections, in which the party won an additional 181 councillors, current Polanski, launched a (not so surprise) solo-leadership campaign. His platform of 'eco-populism' has exposed a split in the party between the radical left wing (which Chowns and Ramsay indirectly describe as 'loudhailer politics') and those who want to appeal to a wider base, including former Conservative voters. Ramsay is irked by Polanski's decision to run. The current co-leader, who wrote the Green Party's handbook on how to win council elections, has spent most of his political career working out how to turn the party from a fringe group into a force capable of winning Parliamentary elections. The election of an additional three Green MPs last year, was the culmination of this, or so he says. Polanski's wants to position the Greens as a left-wing mirror to Nigel Farage and Reform. In fact, when I spoke to him shortly after he launched his leadership bid in May, Polanski said he may even actually 'agree' with some of 'Nigel Farage's diagnosis of the problems' . Chowns and Ramsay think this is the wrong approach. 'We've already demonstrated how ecological ideas can be popular,' Chowns said. She added: 'I don't aspire for the Green Party to ape Reform in any way neither in its content, not its style…We can't out shout Reform.' Polanski is a member of the Greater London Assembly, but if he is elected he will sit outside the machinations of Westminster; an arrangement which could cause more trouble than it's worth. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe 'There are some major pitfalls that would need to be addressed here,' Ramsay said, 'journalists look to what's happening in parliament to see where each party stands on the issue of the day because parliament is the centre of British political debate.' Having a leader outside of Westminster could become particularly troublesome if there is a disagreement between the party's leadership and its MPs. In some ways, this has already happened. Polanski has said the UK should withdraw from NATO, a policy which neither Ramsay nor Chowns support. 'If on that day you had the leader, who was outside parliament, speaking for the party saying I want to leave NATO and then our foreign affairs spokesperson in Parliament saying that the Green party want to stay there and reform NATO, then who do you look to as giving the Green Party's position?' This could get messy. Members of other parties are looking at this race, curious about where it could leave the Green Party (one sympathetic Labour MP told me they thought it would be a 'disaster' and would alienate much of the party's more moderate base). Polanski did not inform Ramsay or Chowns of his intention to run before going public with his campaign. When I ask the pair how things will work if Polanski does win, Ramsay said: 'I think that's for Zack to set out… he's certainly had no conversations with the MPs about whether that would work or how he would make it work.' As I went to ask my next question, Ramsay shot back, 'he's made no attempt to talk to us about it at all.' Though Chowns and Ramsay's campaign may not have landed as loudly as Polanski's, they have election-winning credentials. As Ramsay said, it took time to build the 'broad coalitions' which have pushed the Green Party to where it currently sits. With polling for the leadership election opening in a matter of months, the pair may need to ramp up the volume in order to win the fight; it won't take much time for that 'broad coalition' to be unpicked. [See more: Did Zia Yusuf jump, or was he pushed?] Related
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Green party must choose again between election-focused or activist leaders
So here we are again. Much as was the case in 2021, the last time the Greens picked their leaders, members have a choice that could be broadly presented as the more sober, election-focused professionals versus insurgent activists. On one side of the equation are Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, both MPs, and in the case of Ramsay, already a co-leader. Four years ago, he and Carla Denyer saw off Amelia Womack and Tamsin Omond with a self-stated mission to change the party and win elections. While Womack was hardly an outsider – by then she had been deputy leader for seven years – she was running with Omond, a climate activist who co-founded Extinction Rebellion, and their candidacy was seen as more aimed at younger Greens, and those with an interest in direct activism. In this summer's leadership election, for which party members in England and Wales will vote during August, Ramsay and Chowns are up against Zack Polanski, who took over from Womack as deputy leader in 2022 and wants to turn the Greens into what he called an 'eco-populism' mass movement. As a London assembly member who hopes to also become an MP, Polanski is not averse to the electoral route. But his view is that the Greens could and should do more to match the appeal of Reform UK, which is polling at about three times the level of the Greens and has a membership about four times the size. Ramsay and Chowns are expected to be the favourites and have one particularly strong card to play: they can point to the approach already taken by the outgoing leadership team, and argue that it worked. When they took over from Siân Berry and Jonathan Bartley, Ramsay and Denyer promised to build up the Greens' councillor base with a view to expanding the party's single parliamentary seat. In 2023 came a more specific promise, to win in four specific Westminster constituencies, a target many observers – and some Greens – viewed at the time as hugely ambitious. But nine months later, at the general election, it happened. Two of the wins were in Green-friendly, Labour-facing seats – Berry successfully took over Brighton Pavilion from the departing Caroline Lucas, while Denyer, a Bristol councillor since 2015, removed the Labour frontbencher Thangam Debbonaire from Bristol Central. More notable still were the victories for Ramsay and Chowns, in rural and fundamentally Conservative areas. Ramsay won the newly created constituency of Waveney Valley on the Norfolk-Suffolk border and Chowns overturned a near-25,000 majority in the previously Tory constituency of North Herefordshire. The pair can thus present themselves to Green voters as exemplars of the party's long-term mission of building up a Westminster presence via local government, with both serving as councillors in the areas they eventually won. This approach is being spread more widely, with the Greens holding more than 850 councillors on 180-plus local authorities, and finishing second last year in 40 parliamentary seats. Polanski's counterargument is not that this approach is wrong, simply that it should be allied with a less cautious approach to policy and presentation, one that would transmit Green messages to potentially supportive voters with more urgency. Polanski, who trained as an actor and is happy to take on even hostile broadcast hosts, is arguably a more natural media performer than Ramsay or Chowns. On the debit side for some members will be a policy approach that can raise eyebrows, such as last week's suggestion that the UK should quit an 'out-of-date' Nato. Which version will win out? In some ways it is hard to predict, not least because this is the first leadership election for four years in a party that normally holds them every two. Ramsay and Denyer were initially given a three-year period as Berry and Bartley broke their tenure midway, with the general election then delaying it again. And then there is the size of the party – yes, smaller than Reform but now above 60,000. In 2021, Ramsay and Denyer won easily with just 5,000 first-round votes, on a turnout of about 20%. If one side or another can motivate the members, anything could happen.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Adrian Ramsay to stand for re-election as Greens co-leader with Ellie Chowns
Adrian Ramsay is to stand as Greens co-leader with another of the party's MPs, Ellie Chowns, amid what the duo describe as an unprecedented fracturing of political allegiances that meant it was vital to have leaders in Westminster with a proven record of winning. Ramsay has already been co-leader for four years, alongside Carla Denyer, who with Ramsay, Chowns and Siân Berry were elected to parliament last year in the party's greatest electoral triumph. Last week, Denyer revealed to the Guardian that she would not re-contest the leadership, instead focusing on her Bristol Central constituency and campaigns such as net zero and affordable housing. While nominations for the leadership do not formally open until next month, the contest is likely to be between Ramsay and Chowns, and Zack Polanski, the current deputy leader, who has already announced a bid to take the party towards what he called a Reform-emulating 'eco-populism'. While praising the outgoing duo's achievements, Polanski said he believed the Greens should be less cautious, and try to emulate Reform in becoming an insurgent, mass-membership political force. Unveiling their joint bid to the Guardian, Ramsay and Chowns dismissed this implicit criticism, saying that their record in winning rural, Conservative-dominated seats in July showed they could win over new supporters. 'We've both won seats that were previously considered unwinnable,' said Chowns, who overturned a near-25,000 Tory majority to win her North Herefordshire seat. Ramsay's Waveney Valley constituency, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, was made up from parts of previously Conservative seats. 'We know what it means to win against the odds. We know what it means to build the biggest possible, most inclusive possible campaign teams, to inspire people to take action that results in previously unthinkable political change,' she added. Asked about Polanski's criticisms, Ramsay said such results showed they could take the Greens' message 'to people who don't normally vote for you', and that it would be hard for a non-MP to lead the party. He said: 'The reality is the MPs are setting the tone of what the Green party is saying on the issues of the day, because they're being debated in parliament. There's a reason why parties have their leaders as MPs.' The need to focus on electoral growth was all the more vital, he said, with the current 'crossroads in British politics', with polls showing Westminster voting intentions are now closely matched between five parties. In what could be seen as a coded swipe at Polanski, Ramsay warned against the Greens seeking to 'appeal to your existing supporters or to a particular base', adding: 'We're seeing with Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives what can happen if a party elects a leader just based on appealing to a particular base of support.' As a new MP – and the only one of the four Greens in parliament to never lead the party – Chowns is less well-known but also very experienced, having been a councillor and, briefly, an MEP with a background in international development. She said her and Ramsay would be 'a really well-matched pair' as leaders. With the previous team, Denyer was more likely than the slightly quieter Ramsay to be sent into mass-party TV debates, a role Chowns seems set to follow. 'Both of us have got a huge history in the Green party,' she said. 'We are MPs, so we have that credibility of already being there at the heart of UK politics. And I think it's really important for the party that our leaders are MPs, there every day, speaking out on that key political platform.'
