In England's Green and Pleasant Land
/Why the Green Party is the Biggest Threat to the Conservatives in England’s Shires.
By Jake Dibden
To parody a cliché; “A spectre is haunting England’s shires — the spectre of Green local government”.
In 2015, the most electoral success the Green Party of England and Wales had seen was winning a single seat in parliament; Brighton Pavilion in 2010, and taking control of Brighton and Hove City Council, which it has since formed the administration of for six out of eleven years.
In the 2019, a breakthrough year for the Green Party locally, they won 9.2% of the vote, despite only running candidates for 30% of the seats available and following the 2021 local elections, the Green Party are a formal part of 19 council administrations, of which it leads two (Brighton and my previous home district of Lancaster), whilst also running, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, our own Oxfordshire County Council.
The Green Party of England and Wales has seen an explosion in its performance at local elections. The colloquial view of the national Green Party, it is fairly safe to argue, has typically been fairly patronising if not out right negative. A party of woke, hippie, student-activist, academic, bleeding heart, middle-class, vegans (to hit all of the stereotypes), however, some of the largest improvements in Green performance have come in heavily rural counties. Areas in Suffolk, Staffordshire, Kent, Devon, the Home Counties, and the West Country have seen the Green Party achieve as much as 15, 20 and 30% of the vote in local elections. In Westminster elections there has been increasing discussion of a Blue Wall ready to be torn down by the Liberal Democrats, but locally it looks to be the Green Party who form the greatest threat in the countryside.
So the question then is, why, in rural settings that are typically much more Conservative at national elections, are the Green Party doing so well?
Simply put there are a few possibilities but as someone who has lived in areas with rapidly improving rural Green parties, (Lancaster and Staffordshire), it is fairly evident that these can be grouped into two broad factors. Firstly; rural, voters actually tend to have a lot in common with their local Greens, particularly on policy, and secondly; the idea of a Green council is far more palatable to many conservative voters then a Green government, and voters can and do make this distinction when choosing their preferences.
On the first issue, the Green Party are efficient at connecting with the local issues voters care about. It is fairly evident that the main priorities of many voters in blue shires are better services for rural communities, particularly in public transport and road maintenance, NIMBY planning decisions, and “preservation” of the environment (often serving as the pretext for the previous point), and rarely do local Greens disappoint.
Most rural voters like living in the countryside, and feel that the construction of new housing and large scale infrastructure will ruin their own experience of rural living, and potentially lower the value of their own property, therefore when centrist and left wing parties adopt NIMBY-ist tones in their campaigns (as the Liberal Democrats pointedly did in the Chesham and Amersham by-election in 2021), they do significantly better. The Greens, on the basis of protecting biological stock and England’s natural beauty, frequently adopt NIMBY attitudes on planning outside of towns and cities, in doing so appealing to this streak in local voters.
Then there is the issue of rural transport. The Greens almost universally support investment in bus services, including the upgrading of rural fleets to more modern, hybrid and electric buses, and improved frequency. As an illustration of how poor local services are, in the district of East Staffordshire for instance, where I live, my nearest bus stop is served by only 4 buses a day to Uttoxeter, and 5 to Stafford, the last of which leave at 2pm and 5.30pm respectively, meaning that rural workers cannot rely on public transport to get to and from work in the county’s towns.
Not to mention the fact that many rural voters have no public transport on a Sunday.
Beyond advocating for these changes to local services, the Greens also benefit from the very apparent lack of care taken by the Conservative government to improve these services. In April for instance, the Shropshire unitary authority applied for £98m of government funding to improve bus services for their population of almost 320,000. With this money they would have been able to introduce electric-hybrid buses, live bus timetables, and Sunday bus services, amongst other changes, with a similar proposal for £41m being made by the Telford district council. Instead of this £98m of funding, both councils received all of zero pounds. Many rural voters, who have been relatively blue for so long, undoubtedly feel as though the Conservatives have begun taking their vote for granted, and are instead looking for other workable options. Given the option of a Green candidate, who promises to oppose rural construction and destruction of the environment, whilst improving public services and protecting agricultural interests, some voters have been considering, and are now voting, Green.
Beyond this, many voters can and do make a distinction between the idea of voting for the Greens in a general election, and in a local election, which mitigates many of the negative perceptions and concerns “small-c” conservatives may have about the Green Party. The prospect of a Green government is deeply concerning to some, but what many perceive to be the most potentially damaging or concerning elements of the Green platform cannot be implemented locally. Worries about foreign policy, Road Tax, policies on cars, public spending and debt, and (most notably in the rural setting), possible taxes on some agricultural products, especially meat, are largely mitigated by the fact that most voters understand that these policies cannot be introduced by a local authority, and therefore, voting for the Green Party at local elections is a significantly safer move for more risk averse, conservative voters in the countryside.
As it was once phrased to me by a Green Party member and campaigner “it is hard to collect bins in a socialist manner”.
This is of course supplemented by the fact that the Greens are good at picking candidates and running campaigns locally. Usually, the Greens pick candidates that fit the local demographic, in student areas, they run student candidates, in central London they run young, diverse, open-minded liberals, and in the countryside they nominate rural, middle-class, middle-aged candidates. As a result, rural, middle-class, middle-aged voters are likely to feel much more comfortable with even slightly radical proposals.
Overall, with the government pressed for spending and unable to offer improving services for rural areas, or choosing to prioritise metropolitan areas instead, and a Green Party that can offer a more palatable option for rural, green-fingered voters who are protective of their property value at the local level, it is not wonder that the Green Party continue to make strides in the once solidly blue shires of England. It is possible that come the next election, at least in the countryside, the Green Party may bring a whole new meaning to the poem by William Blake.
Jake Dibden (ex-Committee Member) is a first-year reading History and Politics at Trinity College.