Natalie Bennett is not going to make it four. After the dramatic fall and resignations of Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage, Bennett has made it clear that she is determined to remain at the helm of the Green party and to continue building on a “Green surge”.
Pointing to her party’s success in increasing its share of the national vote – more than 1.1 million voted for the Greens, giving them their best result – Bennett dismissed claims that she lacked the leadership qualities to carry on building support for the party.
“I was elected by the Green party members and re-elected unopposed nine months ago to serve a two-year term,” she said. “The Green party has more than quadrupled its membership in the past year, while I’ve been leader. We’ve just seen us quadruple our best ever result in a general election. We finished second in four seats, which has never happened before. I aim to continue the ‘Green surge’, build it and make it bigger.”
Bennett herself came a distant third in the inner London constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, behind Labour and the Conservatives. But Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion and former leader, boosted her majority from 1,252 to just under 8,000. Lucas, echoing her leader’s sentiments on the “broken” electoral system said: “I think it’s a real travesty over a million people voted Green up and down the country and yet that’s been translated into just one seat.” But when asked whether she intended to keep building on the success of the Greens until the next general election in May 2020, Bennett said: “Well, 2020 is very long way away. I’m certainly committed to the two-year term. After that we’ll see. You know, they say a week in politics is a long time. Eighteen months is certainly a very long time in politics.”
Speaking to the BBC, Bennett also condemned the first-past-the-post voting system after the Greens won – and retained – just one seat in Westminster, despite nearly quadrupling their vote.
Bennett also acknowledged that it would be tough to persuade the bigger parties to support reform of the electoral system and said it would be similar to “getting the turkeys to vote for Christmas”.
- This article was amended on Sunday 11 May to accurately state the length of the Green party’s leadership term as two, not three, years.
