The Greens leadership partnership of Siân Berry and Jonathan Bartley has been re-elected for a further two-year term, with the pair immediately promising to push for radical policies amid the changes brought by coronavirus.
Saying Labour under Keir Starmer had “completely vacated” the political space for innovative and bold policies, Berry and Bartley said the urgent economic response to Covid had shown the possibility of rapid change, and the need for policies like universal basic income.
Berry and Bartley, who took over from the previous leadership combination of Bartley and Caroline Lucas after easily winning the 2018 leadership election, took 49% of first-preference votes, the party said in a statement.
The race for the leadership of the Greens in England and Wales was also contested by Rosi Sexton, a Green councillor in Solihull, who is a former mathematician and elite-level mixed martial arts fighter. She won 27% of the votes.
A third candidate, Shahrar Ali, a former deputy leader of the Greens, took 24%. The party’s deputy leader, Amelia Womack, was re-elected for a fourth term.
Berry and Bartley oversaw highly successful local and European elections in May last year. They also led the party to an increased share of the vote in December’s general election, though the focus on Brexit and a squeeze by the two main parties meant its 2.7% vote share remained lower than the 3.8% recorded in 2015.
After their re-election, Bartley said the Covid-19 pandemic and the interventionist government response to it showed how society could be transformed at speed, with the furlough job retention scheme :”very clearly setting a precedent for a basic income and shorter working weeks”.
He told the Guardian: “People were questioning, is it possible? And we’ve seen that a lot of it is possible. In the face of a crisis – and we’d say coronavirus is part of the wider climate and ecological emergency – things have to change rapidly, and we’ve seen that they can.”
Berry said the need for Green policy ideas was all the greater given the current trajectory of Labour: “They’ve become managerial, top-down, there’s some worryingly authoritarian things coming from Keir Starmer. No matter how much competence there is, that’s not leadership.”
Bartley added: “I struggle to think of one major intervention that he’s made. Where is it? There’s no memorable moments.”
This shift by Labour, he said, meant the Greens were becoming the “political expression” of popular protest movements calling for environmental and racial justice
Bartley and Berry are both councillors in London. Berry is also a member of the London assembly, and is the party’s candidate for the mayoral elections, postponed from May because of coronavirus.
Lucas, the party’s sole MP and still its best-known figure, spent two years as joint leader with Bartley, but decided in 2018 to step back, in part to focus on her Brighton Pavilion constituency, but also to spread the focus to other people in the party.
Lucas became the Greens’ first leader in 2008 after the party dropped its previous system of two “principal speakers”. She was replaced as leader by Natalie Bennett in 2012, but returned in 2016alongside Bartley.
The Greens re-elect their leader, deputy leader and those in a series of other senior posts every two years.
