Local elections 2022: Greens winning hearts in North East as party eyes ‘tectonic shift’ among voters

Stood on his doorstep in the former mining town of South Shields, Paul Ahmed, a retired firefighter and lifelong Labour voter, explained why he would be going Green at this year’s local elections.

“They’re the only party you ever see round here,” he said. “Labour’s taken [this town] for granted for years, and I’d sooner kill mesen than vote Tory.”

He liked the Greens’ founding commitment to the environment. “The planet’s dying on its arse, man,” the 62-year-old declared. “They were saying that before anyone.”

His next-door neighbour was of a similar mind. The party had made themselves part of the community, Margaret Roxby said – always there on litter picks or supporting local campaigns. She’d been voting for them for a couple of years now and the 64-year-old’s only regret was not doing so sooner. They were once dismissed as tree-huggers, she mused, “but, aye, I’ve nothing against tree hugging”.

The Greens are, by any measure, a party on the rise – both in the North East and across the country.

In a series of remarkable election results last year, they won 155 English and Welsh council seats helping take their total to a record high of 467. They now lead two authorities, in Brighton and Hove, and Lancaster, are in a ruling coalition in another 13, including Oxfordshire, York and Sheffield, and make up the official opposition in eight more including Bristol, Norwich and Solihull.

Now, it is all but certain this growth will continue on 5 May: a realistic good night would see them smash the 500-seat barrier, party bosses suggest. In particular, they are hoping to move beyond their traditional metropolitan powerbases and establish a greater presence in the north’s old industrial heartlands.

Burnley, Bradford and Trafford are among the once-unlikely places that already have at least one Green councillor and are being targeted for bigger breakthroughs. Barnsley, Sunderland and Chorley could all see their first Green elected if internal polling is to be believed.

“What they are looking to do is nothing less than force a tectonic shift in British politics,” says Matthew Flinders, professor in politics at the University of Sheffield. “There’s some way to go until we can say they are close to that but the speed of travel is impressive.”

Which brings us back South Shields – an old colliery and ship-building town that perhaps typifies the Green efforts to make northern inroads.

The local council – South Tyneside – has been Labour since its inception in 1974. Forty five of its 54 councillors are currently red.

By contrast, when local Green leader David Francis joined the party here in 2014, it was so small that meetings were “four or five of us gathering in someone’s front room”.

Eight years on, he is one of three councillors. Now, the hope is for that number to be doubled on 5 May, turning the group into the official opposition. And, certainly, on the doorstep on a sunny Friday afternoon, such an aspiration appeared entirely plausible.

Resident after resident in the inner-town ward of Beacon and Bents opened their doors to say they would be voting for the party’s candidate Sarah McKeown.

“I’m down the club tonight,” noted one ex-miner. “They’re all saying they’re Green this year.”

Would he have a poster for his window in that case? “Aye, why not?”

A big one? A little one? “Give me both and I’ll see what the wife says.”

The hearty response is down to a variety of overlapping factors, according to Francis.

The increasing acceptance that the planet is, er, dying on its arse – that’s the climate crisis – has attracted plenty of voters in an area that will pretty quickly find itself under water if global temperatures continue rising.

Xural.com