Tamsin Omond and Amelia Womack

Manchester Green Party celebrated its first win in 13 years, when Rob Nunney was elected as councillor to the Woodhouse Park ward in Wythenshawe at the local elections in May.

The tireless work of the local activists meant Rob was able to unseat a long serving Labour councillor in the role for over 20 years. The successful campaign followed the Green Parties local election strategy, who led activists and volunteers to successfully knock on over 1,200 doors during this year’s short campaign and distributed thousands of leaflets (on recycled paper of course!) in mostly rainy Manchester weather.

During this long campaign we are delivering 7,500 newsletters every single month – these are 51 delivery rounds, which take about one volunteer hour each.

Manchester Green Party is the largest local party in the North West, but only a fraction of those who join become active members. Most new members we talk to join for the obvious reasons: the lack of action on the climate crisis and rising inequality. As grateful we are for each new member, those two big issues of our time do not play a big part in winning local elections and it is not always easy to motivate members – however dedicated – to offer their Saturdays for yearlong election campaigning!

This is where the vision of Amelia Womack and Tamsin Omond for their co-leadership bid comes in.

Their focus is firmly on electoral success as the path to addressing the most urgent issue of our time, the climate crisis. And they come with experience. Amelia’s background is in environmental science and her work, before she became the Green Party’s deputy leader seven years ago, was in securing changes for social and environmental justice. Tamsin is not only an environmental activist, author and successful fundraiser, but worked in sustainable industry to push the Green agenda.

Theirs is a grassroots campaign which will translate into inspiring members to become volunteers. When I joined the Green Party in 2014 and became active not shortly after, it was not only the tireless work by Natalie Bennett, who was leader at the time, but the many visits by Amelia over the years which had a huge impact on me and local Manchester activists. Amelia’s track record in this respect is known, but through this leadership election campaign I got to know Tamsin as well and I am impressed. Their successful bio as a campaigner and fundraiser for the Green movement speaks for itself, but I experience them as a thoughtful listener with an incredibly quick grasp on issues and challenges local campaigners face.

It may be a while for the rising strength of the North West to translate election success into constituency seats, but we live in fast and interesting times. We all need to be ready. Amelia and Tamsin’s bold vision for Green electoral victories, both for council and constituency seats, meets the hunger for change of so many people. With their passion and energy, both Amelia and Tamsin are poised and ready to lead the local teams. And that is crucial.

This is an exciting Green Party leadership election. The calibre of candidates shows how much our party has grown. There are two co-leadership teams that are capable to be a serious and inspiring voice in the public to get Greens elected and to voice opposition to the Government. My first choice went to Amelia and Tamsin and my second choice to Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay.

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