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Green councillors Maya De Souza, Alex Goodman and Adrian Oliver |
Are the Greens set to bloom?
Party activists point to Assembly results as evidence they can challenge for power-sharing
THE three eco-amigos have reason to smile. The Green Party may not be running the Town Hall, but for the first time in Camden’s history it has three councillors on board, and the group insist the ranks could soon swell further.
The most optimistic members are even beginning to dream of muscling in on power-sharing discussions should the next borough-wide elections result in a hung council.
Ask them why a party which didn’t even have one councillor two years ago, and hardly anybody even working on election campaigns in Camden before 2000, is brimming with confidence and members point to the breakdown of the London election results.
It shows that when voters were asked to vote simply on what party they supported in the London Assembly member ballot – where candidates names are not used and party preference is tested – the Greens polled better than the Liberal Democrats in 11 of Camden’s 18 wards.
While the Lib Dems – who lead a coalition with the Conservatives at the council and have more seats than anybody else – were last week trying to laugh off the figures as unreliable and skewed by the hype surrounding Ken Livingstone’s mayoral defeat to Boris Johnson, the Greens insist their rivals would be foolish to dismiss the warning signs.
“I think we can challenge anywhere in the borough apart from maybe some of the Tory heartlands,” said group leader Councillor Adrian Oliver. “Our message goes down well and that has been borne out by the results.”
Not so dreamy to think they can win overall control at the Town Hall in the 2010 borough-wide elections, supporters nevertheless believe that a few more successes could force the Greens to the negotiating table if no party claims overall control – a possible outcome which all four parties dare not discount.
Cllr Oliver added “There is probably quite a gap between four seats on the council and a dozen, so we’d probably be looking at somewhere in that range.
“If we just got four, I think we’d be disappointed. There have been noises in the Labour group but I don’t think there would be a pre-election pact. We’d have to look at the arithmetic afterwards and see what was being said. If the Lib Dems hold on pretty well, maybe we’d speak to them but we’d probably be less keen on that.”
The Camden branch of the Green Party is the largest across London, even if the membership, by Cllr Oliver’s own admission, has increased only at a “trickle”. He said the Lib Dems had benefited from a protest vote against the Labour government in the past which could not be relied on in the future.
“I know that some councillors outside our party are sympathetic to what we are doing,” said Cllr Oliver. “I know there are some frustrations in the Lib Dem and Labour groups. The Lib Dems appointed an ‘eco-champion’ but it has been clear that he doesn’t get his way and his recommendations don’t always become policy.”
Election analysis can be spun inside out from every side, but it’s clear the Greens will play a key role in crunch areas at the next council elections. At that ballot, Sian Berry, who has three times gone close to winning a seat on the council, is likely to make another big push to get elected. She won friends on the mayoral election trail – even if the kind words from people who saw her speak during the hustings did not translate into votes.
Green councillor Maya De Souza said: “I think Sian Berry did a good job of communicating to people what Camden’s Greens stand for – even if the mayoral election became a bit of a two-horse race. It reflected in the other results.
“The canvassing that I did in Highgate showed that we are taking voters from lots of different backgrounds. In the past, you might have thought it was owner occupiers, middle classes that were voting for the Greens but it’s beyond that. And it’s not just in Highgate that we can fight campaigns.” |
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