Green Party Co-Leader Carla Denyer Wants A Seat At The Table
Carla Denyer is early. I arrive 10 minutes ahead of our scheduled meeting time, and she is already sitting at her laptop finishing a cup of tea, various folders fanned out across the table.
We’re meeting in Westminster, at least, in the geographical sense. Despite being co-leader of The Green Party, Denyer is not an elected MP and doesn’t have an office in parliament, so we’ve had to make do with a Crussh juice bar. On July 4, she’s hoping all that will change.
‘I'm not cocky about what we might achieve, but I am optimistic’ she explains, clearing her makeshift desk. ‘Over the last four local elections, we quadrupled our number of councillors. Although we've been stuck on one MP for the last few general elections, if you look over the pond in Canada, where they have had the same first past the post electoral system, they were also stuck on one, in 2019, they went up to three.’
Denyer, the only woman in the UK at the helm of a major party, hopes the Greens will walk away from the general election with four MPs and a much stronger presence in government. That means maintaining control of Brighton Pavilion, winning Waveney Valley in Suffolk where her fellow co-leader Adrian Ramsay is standing, as well as taking North Hertfordshire and Bristol Central – where Denyer herself is running against Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire.
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She has reason to be optimistic, with this year shaping up to becoming landmark one for the Green Party. In May’s local elections, they secured a record number of councillors, boosting its total to 812. In Denyer’s constituency, every ward within the Bristol Central parliamentary constituency elected a Green councillor. They’re hoping to see the same kind of gains in the General Election.
Out on the campaign trail, Denyer says she continually comes across disillusioned Labour voters. ‘People have been proactively bringing up things like Labour's position on Gaza and their U-turn on various policies as the final straw. I think people are tired of the two old parties and their ways of doing things. They really like the Green Party's fresh approach.’
To Denyer, who brought about Bristol City Council's declaration of a climate emergency in 2018, (the first in Europe), Labour's U-turn of their £28 billion climate investment pledge was particularly disappointing. ‘They were ruling out investment on the basis that they couldn't afford it, but we are living in one of the richest economies in the world. There is money in the economy, but it's unequally distributed. Our policies would redistribute that money a little bit into public services that benefit everybody.’
The Green Party stands to offer progressive policies for disillusioned left wing voters, from ending arms sales to Israel to introducing a Wealth Tax on the top 1% (UK individuals with assets of more than £3 million). But they’re also winning numbers on the right, by appealing to traditional Conservative-leaning voters in rural areas through their emphasis on protecting the environment.
‘It is reassuring to see that we have a broad reach and people coming to us from across the political spectrum. That's not because we make different promises to those people. It's because our policies are seen as common sense and what the country needs. Even a retired person that owns their home outright in Suffolk can still see that the housing market is broken and the private rents that their children or grandchildren are paying are unreasonable. You'd be surprised about how wide the support is for things like rent controls, for example.’
With less than four weeks to go before the General Election, Denyer is campaigning hard – from televised debates to canvassing her constituency. It’s the most important fight of her career to date, but should she be elected, another battle will begin. Much has been said of Westminster's toxic misogyny problem, from an exclusionary and sexist culture in parliament to the rampant allegations of sexual misconduct. Denyer says she’s prepared for the ‘unpleasantness.’
‘I'm not expecting it to be a walk in the park’ she says. ‘It’s shocking. If you behaved as many MPs do in Westminster in any other job, you would be suspended pretty quickly, and then probably fired. That said, I think it's important that we get more Greens and more women elected into Westminster. Hopefully doing that will help to change the culture a bit. I've got quite a track record, from my time as a councillor of shaking up old institutions from the inside. That’s what I hope to do in Westminster as well.’
Her thirst for confronting the status quo began at school, when a teenage Denyer and friends lobbied their sixth form to start stocking Fairtrade products in the canteen. ‘We eventually managed to get them to change the contract, not just for the school but the entire region. That was probably my earliest experience of campaigning, and campaigning working.’
With a growing political awareness, Denyer continued to speak on the issues impacting her, regularly protesting against the Iraq War–with somewhat less success. During one summer at University in Durham, she experienced an ‘epiphany’ about climate change. ‘I realised it isn't just an issue, it is the biggest issue facing humanity. And I decided over the course of that I need to dedicate the rest of my life to tackling this.’
Denyer worked as an engineer in renewable energy and joined The Green Party, but was initially reluctant to stand as a councillor. ‘I didn't really think I was politician material. I didn't think I knew enough about policy, which I think is the case with a lot of women.’ She’s grateful to the people around her who encouraged her to run as a local councillor in 2015, and didn’t take no for an answer. Denyer now pays the same attitude forward. ‘When I spot someone with potential. I don't wait for them to put themselves forward, I encourage them to stand.’
She describes her nine years as a councillor as ‘an emotional roller coaster. Sometimes you feel like you're pushing a rock up a hill. It's so difficult to get change, but every now and then you get a breakthrough and realise it was all worth it. Progress is definitely lumpy.’
From local councillor to party co-leader, there’s a powerful momentum in both Denyer’s political career and the rise of her party. Could we see a Green Prime Minister in our lifetime? ‘I'm realistic that I'm not going to get the keys to number 10 this general election…’, says Denyer. Her afterthought is stoked with her signature optimism. ‘...but it could be possible in the future. We work in hope and positivity, we want to help people imagine a brighter future.’
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