Invitation to Reflect post General Election

With the United Kingdom's General Election over and the start of a new political environment, now is the moment to reflect as Greens on the decisions made in the run up to the General Election. With record election result in Scotland and 4 Green MPs elected in England the 4^th July 2024 was a good night for greens. As the celebrations fade the hard work ahead comes into focus. For the Green Party of England and Wales, going from 1 MP to 4 MPs is a big step, and with membership increasing too any organisational growing pains could be more significant than ever.

Looking more broadly it’s also important to reflect at all levels. Even after a successful campaign there will still be lessons to learn and tensions to address. There will be good practice to highlight, and replicate. Perhaps more significantly there will be questions to ask about whether, on balance, the priorities, messaging and tactics deployed were optimal. Strategy and campaigning need a mix of bold ideas and iterative refinement that only comes through reflection. Perhaps there are also questions to ask about how well party governance mechanisms, organising structures and digital infrastructure coped with the strains of a general election period and whether they are fit for purpose going forward.

Green House Think Tank is currently compiling feedback from across the Green movement and will collate this into a review to be published at the start of September 2024 using Chatham House rules. We invite contributions via this survey which asks 5 open questions. All responses will be kept confidential. The final report will list the names/roles of those whose contributions we include, but quotes will not be attributed to individuals. This is an opportunity for everyone who volunteered or observed to contribute their thoughts and perspective.

Green parties tend set themselves apart from other political parties as not winning political power for power’s sake, but setting the ultimate goal as delivering it’s policy programme. Getting greens elected at all levels is one way of achieving this but so is non-electoral campaigning and shaping public discourse through external comms. In the case of the Green Party of England and Wales the policy changes it is striving to bring about are its democratically agreed ‘Policies for a Sustainable Society’. For the sake of those who can’t access this link, it must be noted that this was taken offline for the election and controversially not put back in the public domain afterwards. As well as  more general reflection, the Green Party of England and Wales also has to work out how it is to coordinate its 4 MPs, 800 Councillors and 2 members of House of Lords to pressure government to deliver some of its ‘Policies for a Sustainable Society’. 4 MPs seems a lot compared to 1, but out of 650 and with the Labour government having a comfortable majority it doesn’t necessarily give the party much more influence.  Therefore, coordination is essential in order for the voice of Greens to be clear, coherent and as loud as possible. More MPs does however make strategy and coordination within the Party more complicated.

This new challenge for the Green Party of England and Wales combined with its still outstanding decisions to make about how to reform its governance processes make it a particularly critical moment to take stock.

This survey will run till early August 2024.