Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
Some colour combinations are hard to pull off. Hence the old adage: “blue and green should never be seen.” But if you look at a map of this month’s local election results, there’s no avoiding it; the true-blue Tory heartlands don’t look so blue anymore.
As is usual at a time of Conservative unpopularity, the South has become jaundiced with Liberal Democrat yellow.
But the big difference from previous low points is the rapid advance of the Green Party. It made a net gain of 241 seats. That’s less than the Lib Dems or Labour, but the Greens were starting from a much lower base (240 seats). In other words, they’re growing exponentially.
Furthermore, the majority of these gains were made at Conservative expense. According to Ben Walker of Britain Elects and the New Statesman (who produced the above map), 129 wards switched from blue to green.
The old stereotype of the Greens as the student ghetto party is out-of-date. In fact, they were crushed (by Labour) in the Green redoubt of Brighton, but more than made up for those loses with gains in the rural villages and market towns of the Blue Wall.
Even at the height its popularity, UKIP never came close to matching the number of councillors the Greens now have. In local government terms, they are making steady progress towards major-party status. To put it mildly, this is significant and the national media is beginning to notice — see the Sunday Times and BBC for examples.
Readers of ConservativeHome, however, had advance notice. Back in October 2021, I wrote about a string of Green by-election victories in previously rock-solid Conservative wards: “A pattern is emerging”, I said, “and if I were running CCHQ I’d be worried about it.”
Now that the trickle of Green victories has turned into a torrent, CCHQ has some explaining to do. What evidence is there that they saw this coming? What did they do to limit the damage? And do they have the slightest understanding that things could get much, much worse?
It is true that local elections throw up weird results. The combination of parochial concerns with small electorates and low turnout means that a small group of determined activists, or even just one, can swing a local seat against the national picture.
But Green gains are no longer isolated. They’ve spread out from bridgeheads secured in earlier years to take neighbouring wards.
The most dramatic example is Mid Suffolk, where they gained an absolute majority on the district council. Other concentrations include East Suffolk, East Hertfordshire, inland Sussex (i.e. not Brighton) and the Forest of Dean. In Kent, they’re expanding outward from Tonbridge in the west of the county and Hythe in the east.
Clearly, we need to look at every patch of green on the map and stop taking the surrounding blue for granted.
Then there’s the matter of Green cooperation with other anti-Conservative parties – especially the Lib Dems. Though there’s no official electoral pact, it’s quite clear that in some areas the two parties have been dividing territory between them.
There’s nothing especially sinister about this. With a limited number of activists it makes sense for the greens and yellows to target different wards.
This isn’t happening everywhere though. There are many places where the two parties are still running against one another – which means there’s potential for further deals, and further Conservative losses.
Then there’s the question of leadership. It’s a curious feature of the Green Party that as it becomes more successful its leaders become more obscure. For instance, most of us have heard of Caroline Lucas, still the only Green MP. She was succeeded by Natalie Bennett, who in turn gave way to the joint leadership of Jonathan Bartley and Siân Berry.
But who leads the party now? I must confess I had to look it up. (The current co-leaders are Adrian Ramsay and Carla Denyer.)
So far, the Green Party is building its strength from the bottom-up, relying on pavement politics and community action. Clearly, that’s working out well for them.
But one wonders how much more they could achieve if they found a compelling national leader. A genuine star could do for them what Nigel Farage did for UKIP.
Perhaps the biggest factor at play here is the impact of generational change. It’s no secret that young people are much less likely to vote Conservative than their parents and grandparents (and much more likely to vote Green). Furthermore, there’s little evidence of them gravitating to the right as they get older.
And no wonder. We used to have a secret weapon for turning young lefties into middle-aged Tories – i.e. affordable home ownership – but, in a fit of insanity, we’ve decommissioned it.
At the same time, there’s been no let up in the net outflow of young-ish professionals from London. They continue to quit the capital in their thirties, bringing their student debt and voting habits to the Blue Wall. Indeed, there’s evidence to suggest that people in their twenties are also turning their backs on urban life – and given big city rent levels, who can blame them?
In some parts of the Blue Wall, the share of the population aged between 18 and 30 is now trending upwards; no wonder the Greens are finding a receptive audience.
Finally, let’s not forget that all of this is happening before the Greta Thunberg generation starts forming a significant part of the electorate. If we do nothing, then the big switch from blue to green can only accelerate.
But what can we do?
Well, we could react against these trends and become the anti-green party. But who exactly is that going to appeal too? The various UKIP successor parties have tried such a tack and it’s got them nowhere.
Anyone who thinks that the Conservative Party can abandon their southern heartlands to look for an alternative power base in the Midlands and the North should read the polls. In the Blue Wall and Red Wall seats alike, voters are pretty green.
There’s also not much sign that petrolhead politics is big vote winner. Those who see the fight against low-traffic neighbourhoods and pollution controls as a fight for freedom against tyranny are mistaken. It’s actually a fight of one freedom against another: the right to drive versus the right to clean air and safe streets.
The bottom line is that people everywhere care about their quality of life, and will vote to protect it.
That, of course, is why we need to get our housing policies in order. As things stand, we’re in a sour spot where we’re building enough units to fuel nimby campaigns up-and-down the country, but too few to make home ownership more affordable.
Needless to say, the Greens (and Lib Dems) are having it both ways, opposing housing developments while also exploiting the discontent of Generation Rent. It’s breathtakingly cynical, but having had 13 years to solve the housing crisis, we are the ones providing them with the opportunity.
So, given the proof that the Green threat is no mirage, can we expect CCHQ and Downing Street to rise to the scale of the challenge?
I’m not holding my breath. In Number 10, thoughts will have turned away from the local elections and back to the next general election. It will be assumed that the Green Party won’t be of much relevance in Westminster constituencies. (Suffolk may be an exception, given the county’s extraordinary local election results.)
However, the Greens would need to move from fourth to first place to unseat the likes of Thérèse Coffey in constituencies like Suffolk Coastal. Elsewhere in the Blue Wall, Conservative MPs may even welcome a Green surge, because it might split the anti-Conservative vote.
Still, we should be careful what we wish for. It’s not just the next election that matters, but also the next twenty years. If we don’t want splodges of green to start appearing on the national map, then the time to wise-up is now.