Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay

I’ve been a Green campaigner since 2017, brought in by a sharp campaign manager who saw I knew how to get things done – I’d already run multi-million-pound social enterprises. I threw myself into campaigning and was soon elected.

Why? Because I discovered there was a strategy.

I’d watched my husband campaign for years without success – leaflets, street stalls, but no structure. The local party hadn’t yet adopted Target to Win. When I joined, they were just beginning. After Campaign School 2, I realised: there’s a plan – you just have to follow it.

Fast forward eight years. Lewes District has gone from 3 green councillors to 9, then to 17. We’ve been running the Council since 2019, putting Green policies into practice, decarbonising council housing at scale, and leading nationally on climate action.

In 2021, I stepped away from my Chief Executive role to become the Party’s Local Elections Lead. I helped devise the strategy that moved us from steady gains to exponential growth. Many staff can speak to my determination to keep stretching what’s possible – a drive that helped deliver our record-breaking results in 2023. Had elections not been cancelled in key areas like Sussex, Suffolk and Norfolk – where major consolidation was underway – I’ve no doubt we would have reached 900 councillors.

In July 2023, the Party asked me to lead Sian Berry’s General Election campaign for the first six months. Brighton and Hove had just suffered a huge loss of councillors, and the local party was, frankly, on its knees. I built the team, recruited the organisers and campaign manager, and together they went on to win.

I share all this because I know a thing or two about change, strategy, and about what it takes to win at scale. I’ve campaigned alongside many of you, supported your campaign managers, commented on your literature, and people say I run a mean polling day op! I don’t say that to boast – that wouldn’t be very Green of me! – but because I want to name something clearly: when I hear people suggest we haven’t done well, or that we’re “slow and steady,” or that there are short cuts to this work, I smell magical thinking. And that worries me.

I’m proud to be backing Ellie and Adrian, not least of all because they understand the strategy and they have the skills to make it happen at a scale we have never thought possible.

To call Target to Win “slow and steady” is to fundamentally misunderstand the strategy. TTW is not about incrementalism – it’s about focus. About tailoring resources where they can win. And it works. Places like Lancaster, Mid Suffolk, and Bristol prove that when used strategically, TTW delivers exponential results.

Another narrative I keep hearing is that TTW – the ground campaign approach – won’t win us 30–40 General Election seats. That in places where we hope to win more than one MP, like Bristol or Suffolk, we simply won’t have enough people on the ground. And so we’re told what we need is an “air campaign” – slick messaging that “cuts through” and somehow turns us into household names overnight. Some point to Farage as proof. But let’s take these ideas in turn.

First – the idea that our 2024 GE wins were just about the ground game is simply false. We had an excellent air campaign – our national comms team did incredible work. Our manifesto landed, it resonated, and it was amplified. And when we knocked on doors, people told us they were voting Green because of what they’d seen and felt over months – not just the final weeks. That’s the long campaign, not the short one. And there are no short cuts to long-term trust.

Second – the idea that winning a GE seat is “too expensive” is naïve. No smaller party wins without spending over £250,000 across the long campaign. That’s just the cost of serious electioneering. Which is why we need leaders who know how to raise that kind of money – and support candidates across the country to do the same.

Third – the idea that our leaders haven’t “cut through” because of personality or their presentational skills is baffling. What do people think our MPs, leaders, and spokespeople – including the Deputy Leader – have been doing? As Colin Boyle (former London Regional Coordinator) put it in his excellent blog: it’s not like they were saying, “Sorry, can’t come on Question Time, I’m washing my hair.”

Farage’s media profile was built over a decade, fuelled by billions in broadcast and social media investment. That’s the scale we’re talking about. Competing at that level isn’t about charisma – it’s about cash and capacity. Ellie and Adrian raised multiple six-figure sums for their campaigns – because they had to. Their constituencies were sprawling, rural, and tough. But they pulled it off. Can the other team do the same? Have they ever?

Yes – to win at scale in a General Election, we need to evolve. We need strategy, vision, belief. We need to work smarter, not harder. We need to up our messaging at national and local levels. And yes, we need more resources. But let’s be clear: this is not about abandoning what works. It’s about building on it.

I remember the summer of 2023. Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire were, at first, the third priorities for the party as targets. Brighton had become the top priority – defending a seat with a new candidate, which almost never works. But Ellie and Adrian proved it can be done. Everyone said they were outside chances – but they built their teams from the ground up, largely from within the Eastern and West Midlands regions and neighbouring regions. With turnouts of 65%+ and vote shares of well over 40%, they toppled long-standing Conservative majorities.

That’s the kind of leadership we need now – determined, visionary, practical. Ellie and Adrian understand strategy. They understand the graft. They’re not chasing magic bullets or fantasy shortcuts. And they know how to raise the funds our party needs to scale our success.

Let’s not tear up our winning strategy. Let’s build on what works. Let’s back proven, compelling leadership that knows how to win.

Zoe Nicholson is Council Leader and Leader of the Green Group on Lewes District Council