What are the big issues in the Green Party leadership election?

This summer, members of the Green Party of England and Wales will be voting to elect new leaders and deputy leaders. It’s the first election for the party’s leaders since 2021, and the first for deputy leaders since 2022.

Politics in Britain has changed a lot since then. So too has the Green Party. The number of Green Party members has grown to more than 60,000. There are now four Green MPs and hundreds more Councillors. The last leadership elections focussed on some of the dominant internal debates within the party at the time, as well as how the party could break through in the last general election.

This all means that this time around, the big issues will be very different. In light of this, here’s the big things that will be underline this year’s Green Party leadership election.

How does the Green Party scale up its electoral success?

Yes, the Greens have never had more elected representatives than they do now. But now the party has tasted success it undoubtedly wants more.

There are more than 30 parliamentary seats where the Greens came second at the last general election, and there is no doubt that the party has its eye on converting a number of these into Green MPs next time around. The big question is how to achieve this.

The Greens’ successes – both at local and general elections – have come through laser focussed targeting and an intensive ground campaign. In the 2024 general election, the party pushed all of its members and activists – wherever they were in the country – to deliver leaflets and knock on doors in the four target constituencies.

Scaling this up will be incredibly difficult. It’s possible to imagine that adding two, three or even five constituencies – geographically  spread – to a list of targets would be achievable with either current levels of resource, or a moderate increase.

But 20 seats? 30? Even with the best political headwinds, the Greens just doesn’t have sufficient membership, money or infrastructure to scale up to that degree using the strategies that have secured their success so far.

So how does the party move forward? There could be a number of strategies.

First, would be to significantly grow the party’s membership and resources. Currently the party has around 60,000 members. If that number was doubled, the number of constituencies that could be targeted could be significantly ramped up. More members mean more doors knocked and more leaflets delivered, after all.

The political conditions for this are in the party’s favour. Labour being in government has demonstrably increased the disaffection left-wing voters have had with Keir Starmer’s party. That means there’s a rich pool of people who could be tempted over to join the Greens.

That’s one approach. Another would be to be more competitive with national communications. At the moment, the Greens are – at best – in fifth place when it comes to communications. Labour’s messaging might be all over the place, but its position as the government of the day allows it to dominate national conversation in the mainstream media. Reform has a phenomenally successful social media operation and having Nigel Farage as its leader means the party has anchored much political debate to the right. The Lib Dems continue to grab headlines through Ed Davey’s willingness to look ludicrous on the television. Despite the Tories being completely forgettable under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, being the old party of the establishment and the primary opposition still gives them a clout in the media.

Then we have the Greens. The party’s social media is fine but uninspiring. Greens get more mainstream media gigs than they used to, but it’s still well behind the other parties.

Significantly increasing the party’s national comms outputs, as well as improving them, could be one way to increase the Greens’ presence in the national conversation, and consequently increase their poll rating. Driving up the party’s overall vote share reduces the need for quite as intensive ground campaigns in individual constituencies. The higher the party’s national poll rating, the higher its base level of support will be in seats it is targeting, meaning the number of voters it needs to flip from other parties is lower. As a result, improving the party’s comms operation could unlock greater electoral success by virtue of reducing the level of resource needed to win individual seats.

Those are two possible approaches. Either or a combination in theory has the potential to improve the party’s prospects. There are likely many others. Which of the candidates can make the case for one over the other, or else make the most convincing case that they are best placed to implement them could be a key in determining the election’s outcome.

Where does the party position itself politically?

How the party grows its electoral prospects is partially an operational question. But it is obviously also a political one. Where the party chooses to place itself politically is crucial.

Before starting this section, there’s an obvious caveat. The Green Party’s policies are set democratically by the membership at its conference. Ultimately, any leader’s influence over explicitly changing policy is limited. It stems from their ability to organise internally and win over the membership when it is voting at conference.

That’s not insubstantial, but it’s small fry. The party’s political positioning is only tangentially about it’s formal extensive policy platform. Much of it is about communications. What the policies the party’s leadership choses to prioritise in its messaging, how it chooses to talk about them, what fights it chooses to pick and what vibes it seeks to give off are far more important politically.

Crucially, these are all things the party leadership does have substantial influence over. And similarly crucially, the candidates in the leadership election will likely have different perspectives on this.

There are a number of different potential strategies open to the party to expand its electoral success. Each of these may require different political positionings.

Part of what this comes down to is what the party’s electoral coalition is going to look like moving forward.

On the one hand, the party could seek to pull away more of the people who make up its traditional voter base. That would mean converting people who are similar to those who have been voting for the Greens for some time but haven’t yet reliably put the cross in the Green box when an election comes around.

This would require a political positioning which appeals to renters, students, younger people and so on, alongside left-leaning voters dissatisfied with the direction of the Labour Party.

It’s pretty clear what that would look like – frontlining the radical economic offer, the progressive position on cultural issues, the opposition to the UK’s complicity in the ongoing assault on Gaza.

On the other hand, the party could seek to broaden its coalition. That would mean identifying new groups of voters who aren’t currently backing the Greens on a large scale and identifying what would motivate them to make the change.

If that’s the route the party chooses, it’s slightly less clear what the political priorities would need to be. It doesn’t necessarily mean a lurch to the right, contrary to what might be popular belief. But it could be a case of talking less about some of the party’s positions which energise its base and instead emphasising others.

How does the party counter Reform?

All the above could be key to the question of how the left responds to the growth of Reform, something which looks increasingly like it will be the central question running into the next general election. Assuming Nigel Farage’s party continues to ride high in the polls, the next election will be dominated by how the centre and the left can prevent Reform from winning seats on a mass scale.

The two routes described above could offer two different paths for responding to Reform. The former would be based around mobilising more of the Greens’ existing voter base to turnout and peeling off enough of the Labour vote to get over the line in individual constituencies. The latter would be instead be about building an anti-Reform coalition which pulls from a broader base of voters.

Either or both could theoretically be successful. But thrashing out which is the most likely to deliver is something the leadership election should contend with.

Trans rights

Every Green Party leadership and deputy election since 2020 has been different. But they have all had one thing in common. How the party handles trans rights has been a major issue each time.

In previous election cycles, this would have appeared much higher up the list. There have been times when internal elections have been almost entirely dominated by this issue.

These days, the internal disagreements on trans rights are considerably less prevalent. In the early 2020s, numerous attempts from certain sections of the membership were made to either water down or entirely overhaul the Greens’ strong commitments in support of improving trans rights. Each and every attempt at the party’s conference failed. More recently, by contrast, similar attempts haven’t even been prioritised by members and so haven’t made it onto the conference agenda.

That notwithstanding, there is still a good chance trans rights will feature this time around. Naturally, the chances increase significantly if a candidate emerges from the wing of the party opposed to the Greens’ existing policies.

But even without this, it remains possible that the issue could begin to dominate. This could happen if members seek to push the issue at a number of hustings.

Additionally, there is a reasonable degree of disquiet among some sections of the  membership with how Adrian Ramsay has handled questions around trans rights in media interviews. In particular, many members have raised concerns about his interview on the Today programme following the Supreme Court decision on the Equality Act in which he appeared unwilling to answer whether he believed trans women to be women.

How the candidates position themselves on this issue therefore could have a significant impact on the debate, and possibly even the overall outcome.

Image credit: Jon Craig – Creative Commons