The Green Ceiling — and how we can break through it

Despite a more promising start to the current parliamentary term, The Green Party has found itself back at its usual recent levels of national support.

This ‘Green Ceiling’ is something we should recognise if we are to understand the challenges that face the party in growing its support and establishing itself as a major party on the UK political stage

General Election polling

Undoubtedly the Green Party has made significant progress in recent years in a number of ways: membership numbers, campaigning effectiveness, policy coherence, and, of course, getting more people elected than ever before.

But despite that progress, we have struggled to move beyond a small level of support for Westminster elections.

The Green Party has never featured in UK Parliament opinion polls for an entire term of government, partly because we didn’t appear in any polls until December 2012 (except for a brief stint after the 1989 European Parliament election), but also because recent UK parliaments have tended to dissolve by the mid-way point. But we now have opinion polls for similar periods of time from 4 parliamentary terms to compare; and they demonstrate a clear pattern of support [1].

As you can see from the graph above, despite exceeding our previous poll ratings for much of the period from the 2019 General Election, the party’s popularity appears to have returned to its usual maximum level.

It appears that the highest average poll rating we tend to achieve is between 5.5% and 6% (our ‘Green ceiling’). This is further eroded at General Elections where we tend to lose between one quarter and one third of that vote — this is most likely the ‘First Past the Post squeeze’ that parties outside of the main two tend to experience, but it seems to affect us particularly hard (and consistently).

This is a cause for concern because it suggests that at the next general election, we might expect to win just 3–4.5% of the vote. After the advances the party has experienced elsewhere, this would feel like a rather disappointing result, and barely any improvement at all since 2015.

But, if the polling data is to be believed, that is where we are currently headed.

Local elections and the Green surge

Of course, the situation in terms of local elections has been very different.

The headline is that the growth of the Green Party in local government has accelerated to unprecedented levels

We’ve all seen the wonderful exponential curve of Green wins in local elections that now seems to be on an unstoppable upward trajectory.

This is of course great news and undeniable evidence of a step-change in the fortunes of the Party.

But it also demonstrate how we have broken through the ‘Green Ceiling’ more than once in local elections

Between 2011 and 2014 the party achieved around 1–2% of the vote share and won ~0.5% of the council seats in this round of elections.

From 2015 and 2018 we achieved around 4–6% of the national vote in local elections, winning us an average of 1.2% of the seats.

And then from 2019–2022 we achieved 8–9% of the national vote share at each election, and secured 2.8% of the seats.

These results are impressive, even if we are still only winning a small share of both votes and seats. They show a virtual doubling of support, and seats, won at each of the last two rounds of local elections (it’s difficult to compare consecutive years because different seats and different numbers of seats are usually contested).

Our performance across ALL local elections in recent years has been reassuringly consistent

2019–9.3% vote share and 3.1% of the seats (contesting 31% of seats) [2]

2021–9.0% vote share and 3.2% of the seats (contesting 59% of seats) [3]

2022–8.2% vote share and 2.6% of the seats (contesting around 50% of seats) [4]

Interestingly, even when the number of seats we contest is very different, we still seem to secure the same overall result. This is probably a product of our targeting approach: regardless of how many seats we contest, we are probably targeting a similar share each time.

Clearly, this change has been substantial and sustained. This is good news. It suggests our growth is not a response to individual political events, which will change from year to year, or a response to other political parties’ fortunes, which have fluctuated throughout this time, but is a product of our own internal development, expansion of activity and improved campaigning tactics.

The challenge for us now is how do we continue this growth of both vote share and % seats won to reach new heights in future elections?

The good news is that we are unlikely to have to double our share of support in the next round of elections in order to double our Cllr numbers. In 2019 we achieved a very impressive 30% result, on average, in the seats where we stood [5]. We are very close to reaching a tipping point in many of those seats, and so winning more should be a slightly easier task than before.

We have also achieved political momentum in many areas, where the presence of a small number of elected Greens (even just one!) can lead to a surge in support and additional election wins. In this period we have witnessed this effect in places as far apart as Hastings, Burnley, Islington, Wirral and Trafford (and many others).

Breaking through the ceiling

There is a general mood of optimism across local parties that we can achieve this breakthrough, but we shouldn’t be complacent.

In almost every area where we have achieved electoral success in the past we have experienced setbacks along the way. Brighton & Hove, Bristol, Oxford, Norwich, Solihull, Lancaster and Stroud have all experienced electoral reverses in the past despite having a sizeable Green group and a history of winning elections locally. Thankfully, in all of those areas we now appear to be back on a growth trajectory.

But their experience is something that we should note. They all reached a ‘Green Ceiling’ of their own and were forced to regroup, restructure and rethink their approach (some might still be in the middle of this process). Going from nothing to a small number of wins is easier than going from a small number of wins to a large number.

The challenge we face as a party is not just winning more seats in the short term (which I am confident will come at a local level at least), but moving from a small-scale electoral operation to a large-scale one.

Drawing on my own observations as the elections co-ordinator within the most successful of the local parties (which has had to learn some pretty brutal lessons over the years), and conversations with some key members from others, it is my view that they have achieved greater scale (or are poised to) as a result of doing three key things:

1. Making their internal processes robust and effective. This includes candidate selection, publication production, council group and local party discipline, local policy development and decision making. If your local party is an anarchic free-for-all, you will seriously struggle to grow beyond one or two councillors
2. Increasing their revenues. We rarely talk about the cost of being a successful electoral machine, but it is significant. You can win one or two council seats purely on volunteer goodwill, but you almost certainly can’t win 20 or 30. Paying for campaign management/assistance, regular external comms support, training and administration will free up your volunteers to do the actual campaigning (which is what most of us join to do)
3. Planning and campaigning over the long term. Having the first two things in place permits a local party to create, and stick to, a long term plan. Working wards and broader political campaigns with a long term view helps build presence with voters and develop a clear and effective narrative. It takes years to win an election, so if your plan doesn’t cover multiple years you will struggle to make significant progress

Local parties should develop a laser-like focus on these three things. Continued growth is not guaranteed and our ability to scale up local successes will rely on their ability to achieve them.

Of course, no local party is an island. We can help and support each other and come together to make this happen in as many places as possible.

The national situation

The discussion locally is all about how to manage success and how to build on growth.

But nationally the conversation is different.

As outlined above, in terms of Westminster elections we are not building on growth, but constantly hitting the same ceiling of support.

Clearly we need to change something in our national campaigning in order to break through this Green Ceiling.

Just as successful local parties have changed in 3 key ways, so too must the national party.

Nationally, we are starting to do 3 better than ever before. But we are struggling with 2, while, frankly, failing spectacularly at 1. Let me take them in reverse order.

Targeting and planning

Targeting our resources in key seats is something we know works when it comes to winning elections. But we have been poor historically at doing this on a national level.

That is partly a function of having very little resource: what we do have has tended to be focused on many local campaigns across the country. But it is also partly a result of having a highly devolved decision making structure. 300 local parties all making individual targeting decisions are clearly more likely to arrive at 300 different local targets, than they are to pick 20 parliamentary targets across the country.

This is nobody’s fault; just a product of our set-up

But the good news is that we are beginning to think more in terms of national targets. Given previous results, there are almost no seats where we currently look like serious contenders, but there are plenty of areas where we now have more Greens elected, are more active, have a strong local presence and are implementing a longer term electoral plan.

Giving national focus (and resources) to some of these areas will build electoral credibility and make it much more likely that we will win extra parliamentary seats, even within our current ceiling of support.

Funds and resources

it would be naive to think we can deliver these targeted, long term plans without significant additional resources.

In 2019, for every £1 the Green Parties of the UK spent, the Liberal Democrats spent £8, Labour spent £18 and the Conservatives spent £20. If we want to compete with these political parties on the national stage, then we clearly need to be spending a lot more.

There is one silver lining in this particular cloud: our opinion poll ratings clearly demonstrate that each £ we are spending is producing greater yield: The LibDems are spending 8 times as much but they’re only achieving 1.5 times the support. Labour achieve 6x as much support for 18 times as much spending. Meanwhile, the Tories are currently polling 5x as much as the Greens, but at a cost that is 20 times as much. We are used to making a little go a long way, so I’d be confident that we could achieve a breakthrough against the big players with perhaps just 2 or 3 times as much funding as we have now.

That is still a massive challenge.

For me to try to explain why we struggle to raise more funds would be pure speculation, so it is probably sufficient simply to state that we are not succeeding in raising the revenue needed to be a real player on the national political scene. Something clearly needs to happen to pull in greater corporate donations from acceptable businesses (our rules currently prohibit accepting funds from fossil fuel producers and other unethical companies, quite rightly), or tap into greater generosity from our 50,000+ members, or attract far larger numbers of members in order to benefit from their membership fees and donations.

The reality is that it costs a minimum of £50,000 per year to run a successful parliamentary constituency campaign, so we’d need another £1 million at least if we wanted to seriously target 20 seats. Having a comprehensive, round the clock, skilled comms team is also an expensive necessity, as is ongoing electoral and data analysis and a capable policy development unit.

A credible national campaign to run alongside our growing local election success would almost certainly require us to double our current level of spending. At the very least.

So, developing our fundraising capabilities and massively expanding our donor base and/or regular donations needs to be an absolute priority of all of us in the party if we are to ever break through on the national stage.

Internal processes and governance

But by far our biggest failing currently is our seeming inability to establish robust and scalable internal processes and structures.

It seems to be one area where there has been virtually no progress in recent years, despite a clear need to improve and an increasing number of red flags being waved in multiple areas of governance.

I admit to finding the discussions around internal party governance of very limited interest. Few people join a political party in order to spend their days discussing internal committee make-up, policy development procedures or disciplinary rules, but these details are the foundation on top of which everything else sits.

And in the Green Party of England and Wales, at a (bi) national level, these details are completely and obviously unfit for purpose. Our current rules were established for a party of 5000 people, that had a handful of councillors and was almost never invited on to national platforms. If we are now aiming to be part of the political mainstream in this country, we need a national decision making structure which is clear, accountable and effective.

And that almost certainly means

• Streamlining our national governance bodies. Why are there 2 national committees? There needs to be a single executive with clear responsibilities, whose office bearers are required to deliver regular reports on activity, and who are seen as accountable for all operational decisions. And there must be an easier way to recall those executive members who go off the rails, or simply don’t turn up
• Moving towards an elected delegate conference. There are no large scale democratic bodies that operate as a self-selecting free-for-all, in the way that we do. It’s simply not practical any longer. The fact that conferences in recent years have often ended in total paralysis, or farce, is a testimony to the fact that this setup does not work for an organisation of our size and ambition. Many of those self-selecting individuals quite like the set-up because it gives them a personal platform that they might not otherwise have. But the rest of the party needs to assert itself and create a more accountable structure, or we will continue to fail to organise ourselves effectively
• Having much tougher and swifter disciplinary processes. We almost never expel anyone, even in the face of horrific behaviour, and permit the most disruptive activity from small groups an individuals who are openly intent on sabotaging the party’s stated political aims and/or undermining our electoral campaigns. We are a political party with a clear and very important set of objectives. We are not a care home, or a social work department. It is not reasonable to expect local parties, candidates and individual members to dedicate considerable resources to managing unacceptable behaviour from a tiny minority. We need to have tougher disciplinary rules and enforce them properly and consistently
• Restructuring the policy making process so that it becomes more responsive, but also more accountable. It is currently incredibly difficult and time consuming to develop good policy that is coherent, costed and tested (it takes years and is littered with opportunities for individuals to derail and confuse the process), but very easy to create bad policy (just pick a slogan, get a small group excited about it, ignore any related policy and then get conference to vote for it with almost no discussion). It needs to be the other way around. Of course, the people able to pass bad policy will insist we’re being undemocratic by requiring a greater degree of research, assessment and consultation, but we are strongest in areas of policy where we have really done our homework, so their frustration is a price we will just have to pay.

If we genuinely want to change the world, we must first change ourselves.

We cannot grow the Green Party to a point where we have thousands of elected councillors and dozens of nationally elected MPs and Assembly members, with internal processes designed for a tiny party with virtually no elected presence.

It just won’t work

Our next step

I’m not assuming that people reading this will all agree with my assessment, but we should all be able to acknowledge our reality:

• There is a ‘Green Ceiling’ of national electoral support, and we need to find a way to break through it
• We have done that for local elections more than once, and we have done it using clearly documented approaches that have involved explicitly recognised changes
• Some of the work needed to create those changes at a national level have begun, but we are clearly not making the necessary progress in several important ways
• If we want to grow and operate as a large scale electoral contender, we must acknowledge what it takes to achieve that. We’re not the first political party to do it, so let’s recognise the requirements of a large scale political operation and copy them (with our own flavour of course)

We are in the midst of an internal election campaign to select a new deputy leader, new members of our executive committee and new members of our ‘Regional Council’. If the candidates for those roles are not talking about what internal changes are required to allow us to break through the Green Ceiling, then, frankly, they will do little more than keep those seats warm.

The Party desperately needs effective leadership to drive the internal changes required to grow our presence on the national stage.

It’s never been more important to elect those who are prepared to offer that leadership and support them in making that change.

(Martin Farley is the Elections Co-ordinator for Brighton & Hove Green Party)

[1] Source: Mark Pack’s Pollbase https://www.markpack.org.uk/opinion-polls/ and Wikipedia ‘Opinion polling for the next United Kingdom general election’ for more recent polls not included in Pollbase — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

[2] Source: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8566/CBP-8566.pdf

[3] Source: http://www.electionscentre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/LEH2019-complete.pdf

[4] Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_Kingdom_local_elections

[5] https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8566/CBP-8566.pdf