Green leader: ‘We can challenge Labour’

After all the hype of the so-called Green surge ended with a surprisingly comprehensive win for Labour in Bristol West, it looked like the Green balloon may have burst – whimpering and spluttering almost silently to the ground.

But a day after the national count was over, when the decorations were still no doubt hanging at their regional offices, Green Party members cheered themselves up in Bristol by watching their party score its biggest ever success at the local elections – a success which has given them hope again.

“We are definitely in the mood at the moment that we can become the biggest party in the council next year,” says Rob Telford, 31, the party’s newly elected leader.

His party made seven gains in total at the locals – making them the third largest party in the council, behind the Conservatives and Labour. The result left a Green heart gripping the central and western wards – from Easton to Clifton, Southville to Bishopston – in Bristol as the party continued to eat into former Lib Dem strongholds.

But the vote also showed the party has began to chip away at Labour, who they – rather ambitiously – will be aiming to dethrone as the biggest party come next May. Labour currently has 30 councillors to the Green’s 13.

“We’ve proved how much support there is for us in Bristol West areas and we’ve shown we can take Lib Dem seats before,” Rob, a former Lib Dem voter himself, says. “Now we have to play in the whole city, not just Bristol West. And if you look at it, we have already taken two seats from Labour in this election – I don’t see why we can’t take more.”

To do this the party will have to spread to the outskirts of Bristol and somehow win over some of Labour’s hard-core working class vote – something seen as very unlikely, given the Green agenda struggles to resonate in the less affluent areas of the city.

But Rob hopes winning the seats could just be a matter of having more resources to spread their message in time for next year’s election. “We now have more members than any other party in Bristol, we are the fastest growing and have landed one of the biggest ever majorities for one seat.

“In some areas, like St George West, we picked up votes without even a ground campaign,” the former teaching assistant says.

One of the party’s challenges over the next year is finding enough support to put up more than just “paper candidates” in areas like this. “We just need more local activists to come forward and put their names down with us. We say to them, ‘come and have a go at standing for us in your local seat’.”

There is also the small matter of the elections for the city’s mayor – where the real power lies – next year. The Greens finished fifth in 2012 when George Ferguson swept to power.

“We are going to challenge,” Rob insists. “We want to be in the top two at least. We know a lot of people will vote Greens as a second choice, much like they did in the General Election where they voted Labour nationally and Greens locally. We now need to persuade them to move to us as a first choice.”

The final challenge facing the Greens may be credibility. Before the General Election campaign got fully underway, national leader Natalie Bennett was caught out with figures in an embarrassing radio interview. Many also derided the Green manifesto in the run-up to the vote for being unrealistic.

On top of that, critics often point to the Green-controlled council of Brighton, where in-fighting and the lack of a whip to tell councillors which way to vote contributed to a number of stalemates – including a notorious industrial dispute which saw bins pile up uncollected in the streets.

“It’s a different case here, different people,” says Rob, dismissing the Green’s troubles in Brighton. “In Bristol we have a very united group and united party. There are obviously differences of opinion, but it wouldn’t stop us running the council here.”

Here in Bristol, much like in Brighton, the party has a whip by name only. They believe each councillor should vote how they wish on each issue.

Rob adds: “I don’t think not having a whip is necessarily a bad thing. You have to find consensus and I’m hoping under my leadership we can pull it together as we already have a strong sense of our own values.”