Peter Franklin is an Associate Editor of UnHerd.
The National Grid wants to build a new power transmission route from Norwich to the Thames Estuary. That means a line of pylons across the rural heart of East Anglia. Inevitably, at least one local MP wants a “pause” on the entire scheme.
Never mind that a growing population needs new infrastructure. Never mind that we need to get offshore wind power from the North Sea to where it’s consumed. Never mind that the modern world runs on electricity.
What do such trifles matter when Sir Bufton Tufton’s constituents are up in arms and writing letters? Surely their needs – or, rather, wants – must come first. Forget economic growth. Forget the climate crisis. Forget civilisation.
I ought to say the MP in question isn’t actually called Sir Bufton Tufton. In fact, he isn’t a Tory at all. Rather, it’s Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green Party.
I’m tempted to seize upon the hypocrisy of an eco-friendly politician objecting to a project that’s vital to the roll-out of renewable energy. But I want to address a more immediate question: how on God’s green earth did a seat like Waveney Valley end up with a Green MP? Ditto North Herefordshire, which has also been lost to the Greens.
Nothing like this has happened before. Up until this month, there’s only ever been one Green MP: Caroline Lucas, in Brighton Pavilion (the constituency, not the building). That was easy to dismiss as a local eccentricity: Brighton’s always been a bit… different.
But on 4 July, the Greens quadrupled their numbers in Parliament. As widely predicted, they ousted Labour in Bristol Central – another studenty, hipstery seat. Their third and fourth gains, however, were at the Conservatives’ expense.
Waveney Valley is a newly-created seat that straddles the Suffolk-Norfolk border. It was assembled from parts of five pre-2024 constituencies, all of which were Conservative held. Furthermore, all of the 22 wards that make up the new constituency (such as Bunwell and Walsham le Willows) voted Tory in 2019.
The other constituency that flipped from true blue to watermelon green, North Herefordshire, had been held by Sir Bill Wiggin since 2010. Before that, most of the seat was contained within the former constituency of Leominster, which reliably returned a Conservative MP at every election from 1910 to its abolition a century later.
Neither seat was part of the so-called Blue Wall, those Remain-voting southern seats so successfully targeted by the Liberal Democrats. No, these were genuine heartland seats that we should never have lost – and certainly not to a party of the radical left.
As on various other matters, CCHQ has some explaining to do. They can’t say they weren’t warned about the Green threat; indeed, I was one of those who raised the alarm.
Back in October 2021, I wrote about a disturbing new trend in local by-elections: the growing number of Tory losses to the Greens in rural wards. “A pattern is emerging”, I said, “and if I were running CCHQ I’d be worried about it.”
In the wake of 2023 local elections, there was no ignoring the Green advance. They made a net gain of 241 wards, including 129 that were taken directly from us. I raised the alarm once again, suggesting that it wasn’t just council seats under threat, but Westminster seats too.
Admittedly, I did think this was more likely to be an issue in future general elections rather than the one we one we’ve just had; but, on the strength of local Green gains, I did say that “Suffolk may be an exception.” And so it proved.
As Conservative ex-MPs across the country could tell you, a base in local government is base from which rival parties can threaten supposedly-safe Westminster seats. So given the growing strength of the Greens on district and county councils, how many more Tory marginals are in danger?
At first sight, one might conclude that there’s nothing much to worry about. Consider, for instance, the following map. It shows which parties came second in each Westminster constituency.
The Green candidate was the runner-up in 40 seats – about half of them in Labour London. There’s a smaller cluster in the seats bordering the party’s gain in Bristol Central.
But in what remains of the Tory shires there’s not a single Green second place – not even in constituencies like Tonbridge where they’ve made significant gains at the local level. On the face of it, Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire are exceptions that prove the rule.
Complacency-enjoyers might also be reassured by the behaviour of individual voters. Consider Lord Ashcroft’s post-election poll of 2019 Tory voters. Of those that voted again in 2024, 23 per cent defected to Reform, 12 per cent to Labour, seven per cent to the Lib Dems and a mere two per cent to the Greens.
Though there must have been a higher proportion of blue-to-green switchers in Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire, this does not appear to be a significant nation-wide phenomenon.
So does that mean that the likes of Tom Tugendhat in Tonbridge can relax? No, because shifting allegiances at an individual level aren’t the only way that vote shares change at the constituency level. There are other mechanisms.
Most importantly, there’s generational change. Lord Ashcroft’s poll shows that Conservative support now trails Green support among the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups. If these patterns persist, then with the passage of time our position will deteriorate.
This will be accelerated by a second mechanism: geographical change as voters move in and out of constituencies.
The outflow of young, left-leaning professionals from London to more affordable locations beyond the capital brings a harvest of votes for Green candidates in Tory seats. As Patrick English has demonstrated, the last decade or so has seen the greying of city populations (including London) while in some parts of the greater South East the share of young adults has increased.
In this regard, the eastern part of East Anglia stands out as a rejuvenating area. It was also an electoral disaster zone, featuring string of Tory losses to Labour, Reform and (in Waveney Valley) the Greens.
A final mechanism to watch out for is motivational change. YouGov polling shows that over a fifth of all voters vote tactically. But, of these, 30 per cent would have otherwise preferred the Greens – that’s more than any other party. To these one must add the Lib Dem and Labour loyalists who might tactically vote Green if that was the a plausible way of getting the Tories out.
In other words, the pool of potential Green voters is much bigger than raw vote totals would suggest.
And that’s not just a theory. As of this month’s general election, we now have real world examples. In Waveney Valley, the Greens moved from nine per cent of the vote in 2019 to 42 per cent in 2024; in North Herefordshire, the leap was almost identical: nine per cent to 43 per cent.
Furthermore, they didn’t need second place as a springboard. They achieved these two victories from third and fourth place respectively.
That’s something that should give every Conservative MP with Green councillors on their patch cause for concern. Even if the Greens don’t become the main threat at the next election, there’s always the election after that.
Give the Grim Reaper another decade to do his sombre work, and the young tenants of London another ten years to flee their grasping landlords, and the electorate in our crumbling heartlands will be transformed.
The age of the Tory-Green marginal is already upon us. There will be many more to come.