Increased disenchantment with the Conservatives could result in the Greens taking two rural seats from the Tories in the general election, a Green co-leader has said, after internal polling showed they were ahead in both constituencies. Adrian Ramsay said the polling in the seats, including Waveney Valley, which he is contesting on 4 July, demonstrated how recent local election successes had helped the party move beyond its traditional strongholds in urban, Labour-facing seats. A lot of usually Tory voters “feel deeply left out by a Conservative party that’s torn up the rulebook on standards in public life, and also deeply care about the environment”, Ramsay, who co-leads the Greens in England and Wales with Carla Denyer, told the Guardian. “Voters in rural constituencies are very connected with the environment, and very angry about sewage in rivers,” he said. “Time after time I’ve spoken to Conservative voters who say they’re thinking about what the future is going to be like for their children or grandchildren and that they’re voting Green for the first time.” Ramsay said another major worry for wavering Tories was the decline in public services, including a lack of NHS dental services in areas such as Waveney Valley, which straddles Norfolk and Suffolk. Previous polling has shown that the Greens could win two urban seats: Brighton Pavilion, which the party has held since 2010 under the now departed Caroline Lucas; and Bristol Central, where Denyer could unseat Labour’s Thangam Debbonaire. Surveys for the party by the pollsters WeThink suggest the party is ahead in its two other major target seats, Waveney Valley and North Herefordshire.
While there are some caveats – the sample sizes are relatively small, at 500 and 501 people respectively, and more than a third of voters in each seat are still undecided – the polling appears to be a significant vindication of Ramsay and Denyer’s decision to run a highly focused campaign, with almost all resources devoted to the target seats. In Waveney Valley, a new seat made up of parts of strongly Tory former constituencies, if people unlikely to vote and don’t knows are excluded, Ramsay is on 37% support with the Tory candidate, Richard Rout, the former deputy leader of Suffolk county council, on 24%. In North Herefordshire, the Green former MEP Ellie Chowns, who is now a Herefordshire council councillor, has 39% support, against 28% for the long-term Tory incumbent, Bill Wiggin.
This polling gives a different picture to the recent multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) polls, which give seat-by-seat projections from national figures. Three such polls released on Wednesday predicted that the Greens would win between zero and two seats, not including those contested by Ramsay and Chowns. Ramsay said that while there remained much uncertainty, in Waveney Valley he had been campaigning for more than two years, while the Tory candidate was selected only recently. Additionally, the Greens have massively increased their number of local councillors in the last few local elections. “This is a constituency drawn around an area where the Green party has a long track record of support,” he said. “It includes a large part of Mid Suffolk district council, which was the first district council ever in the UK to gain a Green majority last year. And it also includes East Suffolk, where we’re the largest party, and South Norfolk, where we’ve won two byelections from the Conservatives in the last 12 months. So on the ground, the Greens have a strong track record of representing people, and people know what we stand for.” He said it was similar in North Herefordshire, where Chowns is among nine Green county councillors and stood for the seat in 2017 and 2019. Tactical voting would be key, he said. “People know that if they want to change in these constituencies then they need to vote Green, it’s either going to be Conservative or Green.” Any increase in seats at the election would be a direct product both of the tight focus – the four target seats were publicly announced 10 months ago – and a wider process of what those around Ramsay and Denyer call the “professionalisation” of the sometimes freewheeling party.