Election gains are ‘coming of age moment’ for Greens, says co-leader Carla Denyer

While Labour’s sweeping election victory has re-written the history books – the Green party has also been celebrating its most successful result ever, winning four seats.

Carla Denyer is the party’s co-leader and the new MP for Bristol central.

Cathy Newman: Carla Denyer, an historic night for you personally and your party?

Carla Denyer: That’s right. I want to start by saying an enormous thank you to everybody who voted Green in our four target seats, where we’ve now got four brand new Green MPs, and all over the country. This has been a historic result for us in terms of the number of MPs, but also the vote share, the number of second places, and I expect it will be the number of deposits saved as well. This really feels like the Green Party’s moment of coming of age. It comes off the back of five consecutive local elections of massive gains as well. We’ve known for a while, voters have told us on the doorstep they really like Green Party policies. They want to see more Greens elected. If they have a hesitation, it was around whether we could get elected. But they’ve seen now comprehensively at a local and national level that if they want Green policies, they can vote Green and they can get more Greens elected.

Cathy Newman: I’ll come back to that voting system in just a second. But how are you going to use this moment, as you describe it, to hold Labour’s feet to the fire on the environment, given you’ve got four and they’ve got this landslide of MPs?

Carla Denyer: Of course, in the long run I would really like to see more Green MPs elected and Greens in government one day, as is the case in many countries across Europe. But we have to start where we were. We had an ambitious but realistic goal of quadrupling our representation, targeting four seats where we had a good chance of winning this time, but standing a full slate so that everyone had the opportunity to vote Green, and so that we can build on that. But the reason that we have this urgency of getting four in now, frankly, is because our public services are crumbling. We’re in a climate emergency. We need action now. And Labour have been backsliding on many of these policies that would make the economy fairer, give people warmer, more comfortable homes, lift children out of poverty and tackle the climate crisis. So getting a few more Green MPs in the Commons, as we have now done, will allow us to put pressure on the Labour government. Whether that’s through questions, motions, amendments, work on committees and generally taking part in and shifting the political debate about what is politically possible.

Cathy Newman: Let me just cut in there, Carla, because I wonder if you’ve learnt from your previous experience. You had a solitary MP who was in Westminster. I wonder if you’ve learnt from that experience? Because you know the complaints in Brighton that there were weeds growing through the pavement and rubbish uncollected. Have you learnt from that?

Carla Denyer: I think the councillors in Brighton and Hove Council have learnt from that and have listened very closely to what the people of Brighton and Hove want. But it’s worth noting that is just one council amongst many. The Greens are now in administration in well over 10% of councils across England and Wales. In many of those, we’ve been in administration for some time, and voters have liked what they’ve seen and they voted for more Greens. This May, for example, just up the road from here in Stroud, where Greens have been running the council jointly with other parties for over ten years. Also in the north of England, in York, where they got affordable low carbon housing built, won awards for that. In Mid Suffolk, where they got ‘council of the year’ award. So I think folks across the country are voting Green, liking what they see and voting for more of it.

Cathy Newman: Briefly and finally, you’ve always said in the past that the voting system, first past the post, prevented you winning seats. You and Reform to a certain extent have overturned that conventional wisdom last night, haven’t you?

Carla Denyer: I don’t think we have said that the first past the post system prevents us from winning seats. In fact, we’ve often said the opposite that, although it is a very unfair system, the Greens can and will win under that system, and we’ve proved that this time around. Nevertheless, Greens always have and always will campaign for a more proportional voting system because the one we have currently, Labour have got a pretty low vote share – a pretty small proportion of the British population actually voted Labour in this election – and yet they have an absolute landslide in the number of seats. The number of seats just doesn’t match the number of votes. The UK is almost alone in Europe in using this outdated system. So yes, we will campaign for a fairer system so that everybody’s vote counts.

Cathy Newman: You may ally with Reform on that.