Carla Denyer: the most ignored woman in British politics

The Green Party is on the up. Having never had more than a single MP, the party took four seats at the general election and secured almost two million votes.

At the local level, it has more than 800 councillors and plays a role in running several councils. But the political mainstream still finds it quite easy to ignore or dismiss the Greens. They get much less coverage than Reform because Nigel Farage’s party has a bigger intrinsic influence on UK politics – while it only has one more MP than the Greens, it got twice as many votes, and the Conservative Party is much more nervous of Reform than Labour is of the Greens.

That’s partly because the Green Party is still regarded as a left wing “protest vote”, an eccentric organisation with not one but two party leaders. That view wasn’t helped in the run-up to the election when the party became embroiled in an argument over caesarian sections, and a plan to reduce their numbers. The proposal was quietly deleted from the party’s website. They can also appear to be a catch-all party for the disaffected hard left, who were put off by Keir Starmer at the last election because of his tack to the centre and his perceived soft stance on Israel.

When I met the co-leader of the Green Party, Carla Denyer, she told me that’s not true. OK, she said, people voted Green for the first time because they were disillusioned with Labour, but they changed their vote because they liked what the Green Party had to offer. Denyer herself won the Bristol Central seat after a hard fight with Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire.

“The fact that they’ve seen Greens working really hard in their city for years – that did it,” said Denyer. “People have had a positive experience of Greens working hard, not just pitching up at election time and asking for their votes.”

“They saw that our values were very aligned with the values of the majority of people in Bristol. We were consistently being pro- a humane asylum system, pro- well-funded public services, workers’ rights, as well as the things you would expect, like the environment.”

Denyer’s seat is exactly the sort of seat you would expect the Greens to win, but her analysis misses out the enormity of the Tory defeat at the last election. It was very clear Labour was going to win the election in a landslide – people could vote Green knowing there was no chance the Tories would creep back in.

We met in The Society Café, which Denyer herself suggested. There were plenty of vegan and gluten-free items on offer. Denyer, who is now 38, was relaxed and seemed at home. As we talked, an older customer interrupted for a few minutes to discuss energy storage with his new MP. She seemed happy to get stuck into the conversation.

The Greens didn’t win four seats by luck, she said. Like the Liberal Democrats, the party targeted its resources very carefully. With victory, though, comes a greater degree of scrutiny. Denyer’s fellow co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, came in for particular flak from the online pro-building Yimby group (Yes, In My Back Yard), as it was reported he was opposing pylon building in his constituency, intended to support a large onshore wind farm.

The story fitted into a broader narrative that the Greens are generally much better at being against things than for them, such as when the party opposed HS2. Critics argue that the Greens are pro-environment in theory, but oppose any of the actual developments needed to cut emissions in practice.

Unsurprisingly, Denyer rejected this. “There’s an awful lot of misinformation circulating about Adrian’s position on wind farms and on pylons,” she said. In reality, she argued, the wind farm scheme is still a few years away from being built and there is time for a consultation on the route its pylons could take – which Ramsay is merely feeding into. “Adrian, as constituency MP, was supporting his constituents.”

Denyer points out that the party has 800 councillors across the country, and that the times when they appear to obstruct or reject environmental projects will be cherry-picked, while the projects they approve are never mentioned.

However, Ramsay’s apparent opposition was so problematic because the Green manifesto explicitly supported a large increase in onshore wind – meaning that a party leader seemed to be opposing his own manifesto. By convention, the Green Party doesn’t whip its MPs or councillors, meaning that each is free to vote as they wish. What does it mean to have an agreed manifesto, in that situation?

“Most voters, when they hear about how severe the whipping operation is in other parties, are amazed,” she said. Her party, she says, has “a different way of doing things, but it’s one that gives our elected representatives a great degree of discretion, which I think is, frankly, what most voters want.”

That kind of discretion works if your movement is very closely aligned, but the global green movement has its divides. Some people are drawn to environmentalism through conservation – a desire to protect species and habitats. Others feel an urgent need to tackle climate change, which can mean lots of building and an attack of biodiversity.

Some see environmentalism as the best political route to ending our current version of capitalism, or else think this is a necessary requirement to tackle climate change. Figureheads like Greta Thunberg refuse to be cuddly “green” figures – Thunberg says tackling climate change is incompatible with capitalism. Is Thunberg right? Is degrowth the only option?

Denyer says no. “The green movement as a whole and the Green Party is getting much better at describing a positive future where we have lower carbon emissions,” she says. “We’re never going to go all the way down the retail politics avenue, but I think it is important – especially for people who are on lower incomes and focus on getting three meals day in front of their kids – to explain how our policies will help them in the here and now, not just abstractly in 10 or 20 years.”

The Green Party wants more nationalisation – water is an obvious one, she says – higher taxes and more regulation, she says, but not an overthrow of the structures of society.

Denyer is characterising the Greens as a party of the mainstream – but that overlooks its alignment with the radical left. It has already worked in cooperation with the bloc of independent MPs (including Jeremy Corbyn himself) in parliament on several Early Day Motions and other tactical measures.

That coalition has sparked hopes of a leftist revival, but has fuelled fears that the Green Party could provide a home for the sort of antisemitism that infested the Labour Party under Corbyn. Even before the election, several Green candidates made extreme and antisemitic remarks that came to the attention of John Mann, the independent adviser on antisemitism. The Greens then issued a statement saying they were working “to better educate Green representatives about anti-Jewish racism”.

“Antisemitism clearly has no place in any country and should have no place in any political party,” said Denyer. “In the Green Party, we’ve always tried to be very clear that if you’re coming to us because you agree with our policies, then great. If you’re coming to us because you think we’re going to take a partisan approach and pit one community against another, then no.”

On this somewhat thorny note Denyer noticed that we had overrun by almost half an hour, and that she risked being late for her next engagement – a community outreach event at a nearby mosque. As we left, I asked a final question – let’s say the Greens’ success continues and there’s a prospect in the future of a seat at the cabinet table in a coalition. Which would she take?

“Probably energy or housing,” she said before a long pause. “But I’m open-minded… the Green Party would abolish the Home Office as a long-term goal, to separate crime and justice from immigration.”

“So – energy, housing, or maybe… maybe immigration.”