The party is struggling to cope with such an unprecedented increase in numbers
The party is struggling to cope with such an unprecedented increase in numbers

The Green Party website reportedly crashed last night and parts of this morning under the strain of thousands of supporters attempting to join.

500 people joined between the hours of midnight and 9am this morning, after 6000 people joined on Wednesday and Thursday – a surge which led the party to overtake first UKIP and then the Lib Dems across the UK (including the Scottish and NI Greens).

Around 1000 people had joined by midday on Friday

This 6,000 is, some have noted with tongue in cheek, around the same number as Left Unity, the Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers’ Party membership combined. The less sectarian comparison is to note that it is around half the total membership of the Greens when Caroline Lucas was elected MP in 2010.

The Green Party of England and Wales will pass the 40,000 member mark on its own by early afternoon – twice its membership back in September.

The site is now back up:

It is now being reported that the anti-austerity parties – the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP – will together overtake Conservative Party membership this afternoon.

In other news, the Young Greens – GPEW’s youth branch – are now the largest Green youth branch in Europe: 

The daunting task now of course is to mobilise the thousands of new members – moving them away from Twitter and onto streets across the UK before the General Election. It is of course a ‘problem’ that most parties can only dream of having.

Bring on May.

[BG note: beneath all the hype of this week’s astonishing ‘green growth’ (sorry), GPEW announced its new spokespeople. Some excellent choices in there.]