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What's Green, idealistic and not a serious party? The Green Party. At least, that’s the way voters
tend to view the latest political party in British politics attempting to break
into the mainstream. As they gather for their Spring conference in Liverpool
this weekend, we assess how the Green Party are doing.
Many claims have been made about an apparent
“Green surge” in recent weeks and months. Suggestions of a surge were
then replaced by suggestions of an outage. The Green shoots felt the
destructive effect of leader Natalie Bennett’s weedkilling media appearances
around their “pre-launch”. However, in the same way that reports of a “surge”
for the Greens were exaggerated, so were any suggestions that a disastrous
interview on LBC would end the Green’s campaign before it had begun.
The fact is that the Greens in general, and
Natalie Bennett in particular, came from a low starting point and therefore the
crash landing from the Leader’s “brain fade” wasn’t a disaster simply because
there wasn’t far to fall.
Yes, the Greens certainly ought to improve
their lowly 1% vote share in 2010. But it is easy to get carried away with just
how well they might do. They are currently averaging around 6 points in the
polls, with the occasional higher score, but even pre-2010 they achieved the
odd 8% high.
There is certainly the climate for the Greens
to ripen further: just look at the opposite side of the political spectrum and how
well UKIP have done in this anti-politics atmosphere. UKIP have capitalised on the
moment in British politics when many voters are fed-up with the status-quo, a
lack of differentiation between the main contenders, and no effective,
appealing opposition. With a Labour Party only recently ejected from office, a
leader with a public image problem, and the only other party on the left of
British politics in an unpopular Coalition with the Conservatives, the
conditions ought to be near perfect for a Green storm.
There are, however, two key differences which
point to why the Greens have not managed to emulate the success of UKIP. They
lack a strong, charismatic leader who can capture the mood, and they don’t have
a strong policy niche on a politically salient issue. The Greens may be about
being, well, Green, but UKIP have the more powerful and popular issue –
immigration, having moving sideways from the European Union.
UKIP’s success – winning the European
elections, becoming the third most popular national party in the polls – is
based heavily on both the popularity of Nigel Farage to a specific group of
voters, and their effectiveness in becoming the party most trusted on one of
the key electoral issues – immigration. Voters don’t yet know much about
the Green Party, but what they do know doesn't suggest a Party on the verge of
greater electoral success. Idealistic (41%), amateurish (35%) and fluffy (26%)
are the commonly associated labels while just 9% think they are a “serious party
of government.” On leadership they fare no better: a mere 6% of
voters think the Greens have a strong leader, compared to 25% who say the same
of UKIP.
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The
Green Party therefore suffers, still, from a lack of profile and
awareness. Although Natalie Bennett’s poor media performances may not
have been fatally damaging, they did place the brakes on any attempts to
grow any momentum and were a missed opportunity to make an effective
appeal in the way that Nigel Farage rarely misses. Remember, UKIP got
to where they are now in the polls before they had even one single MP in
the House of Commons.
The
TV debates therefore are probably more important for the Greens than
anyone else. Without them they are likely to struggle to make any
breakthrough into an already crowded national picture.
Whereas UKIP can look realistically to eye
gains on their two seats (setting their sights at around 10 though more likely
to finish on nearer 5) the Greens will have to work hard to defend their only
seat in Brighton Pavilion and the most they can realistically hope for then is
a handful of second place finishes and thus build for the future. In the same
way that UKIP are benefitting from an unpopular Conservative led government, so
the Greens may be in a better position to push on post-2015 if Labour are in
government.
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