Recent local elections in Britain delivered a resounding rejection to the status-quo as voters kicked the Tories when they’re down, electing instead political "underdogs" that until recently had been marginalized: The Greens.
The Green Party, which has historically been denied media attention, fared particularly well in the council elections, gaining support from aggrieved voters who chose to make the future of the planet a priority.
The tide, truly, seems to be turning. In what proved to be a humiliating night for the Tories, who lost more than 1,300 councillors, and a disappointing result for Labour, which lost 82 seats, the Green Party gained an additional 265 seats – an increase of 194 compared to the 2015 elections – to emerge one of the election’s biggest winners.
Now, what was once considered a protest vote – choosing Green Party candidates when you’re peeved with the political heavies – is transpiring into a realistic contender whose surge in support poses a real threat to all other parties.
Talking to the BBC, Green Party co-leader Sian Berry said the Greens aren't simply benefiting from a protest vote over Brexit. Rather, their gains reflected “huge new concerns” about climate change.
The elections followed weeks of protests in April by Extinction Rebellion, a climate movement that managed to shut down large portions of London and raise international awareness about the existential threat posed by a warming, changing planet.
The peaceful, mass civil disobedience included people blocking roads across the capital, gluing themselves to trains, marching at Heathrow Airport, attaching themselves to the entrance of the London Stock Exchange and chaining themselves to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s home.
Aiming for “radical change” to “minimize the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse,” the XR movement started in 2018 following the release of a global warming report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and has since spread to dozens of nations.
The activists’ snowballing, climate strike-fueled momentum is now being credited for the Green Party’s success at the ballots. Jonathan Bartley, the Green Party's co-leader, said there was “no doubt” the Extinction Rebellion contributed to the party’s wins in the council elections, saying the activist group was a “powerful force in building awareness of the urgency of climate change.”
Politicians recognizing the crisis
The movement has drawn such attention to the issue that the Tories last month officially acknowledged the climate crisis. One of the key demands of Extinction Rebellion is that the government must declare a climate “emergency” and work with “other institutions” to make sweeping changes to the energy economy.
Following the protests, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tabled a motion to declare an environment and climate emergency. MPs approved the motion, with Corbyn saying it was a “huge step forward.”
Environment Secretary Michael Gove acknowledged there was a climate “emergency” but failed to back Labour’s demands to declare the crisis.
Alongside XRs achievements is Greta Thunberg’s rousing climate change heroics. The Swedish 15-year-old became a global household name almost overnight since she began protesting about the need for immediate action to combat climate change outside the Swedish parliament.
Amid the storm of protest-fueled anger about the government’s refusal to make climate change an “emergency,” and growing awareness of the climate catastrophe at hand, the Green Party secured what Jonathan Bartley described as “the biggest election night in [the party’s] history.”
The climax of the “Green surge” came in Brighton & Hove, the traditional Green stronghold, which is the home of the party’s only MP, Caroline Lucas. Even more interesting is the fact the Greens gained seat in the traditionally Tory-dominated councils of Braintree, South Oxfordshire, Mid Suffolk, Folkstone and Hythe.
Yet unlike Nigel Farage’s tabloid headline-grabbing Brexit Party – a Eurosceptic party that was formed this year in support of leaving the E.U. without a formal withdrawal agreement, and has already amassed more than £3 million, mostly from £25 supporters’ fee and donations – the Greens are comparatively ignored by the media.
There is nothing new about the Green Party’s lack of media attention, however. In the run-up to local elections in 2014, more than 40,000 people signed an online petition claiming the BBC was unfairly biased against the Greens.
The gripe bares uncanny resemblance to the 2019 local elections in which, despite making extraordinary gains across England, the Greens' success was overshadowed in the mainstream media by Tory and Labour’s failings – and perhaps even more worrying, by the Brexit Party’s so-called “meteoric rise.” Farage's party is forecast to win the majority of seats in European Parliamentary elections taking place on May 23.
But despite all that, the Green Party’s rise in electorate popularity should not be overlooked. As Green voter Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett wrotein the Guardian:
“Watching Greta Thunberg’s school strike for climate and the Extinction Rebellion protesters have inspired me. Voting Green is a way of registering my disproval and alarm, and putting my support behind their aim to make the U.K. carbon-neutral by 2030.”
Her sentiment was shared by Michael Lishman, from Manchester, who told Occupy.com: “I voted Green in the local elections and will be doing so in the European Parliamentary elections. If people didn’t vote Green, the government wouldn’t give a rat’s arse about environmental issues. What’s the point of fighting for anything if the planet is crumbling around us? Climate change is the single most important issue of today.”
