“The party’s going from strength to strength”
Ellie Chowns is one of the four current Green MPs, having been elected in North Herefordshire. Left Foot Forward caught up with her at the Green Party’s autumn conference in Bournemouth to discuss this year’s Green Party leadership election, the mood in the party and how well the Greens are likely to do in next year’s local and Senedd elections.
Chowns was a candidate in the leadership election earlier this year, standing on a joint ticket with her fellow MP Adrian Ramsay. She was ultimately unsuccessful in her bid for the top job, losing out to Zack Polanski.
The leadership campaign was often described by outside observers and party members as being at times tense and acrimonious. Chowns doesn’t agree. She told Left Foot Forward: “Literally the definition of politics is contestation over ideas. In politics, you win some, you lose some. So it’s done and dusted now. It’s fine. And from my perspective it really wasn’t an acrimonious campaign. From my perspective, I get on really well with Zack. It’s kind of frustrating – there’s always going to be people in the media, people are doing it this weekend as well, they’re trying to sort of position people against each other. But that’s really not my experience of politics at all, it’s not my experience of the Green Party. Occasionally, you get individuals who don’t behave with the basic human decency that you expect everybody to behave with but that’s just life.”
Reflecting on the results of that election, Chowns said: “Zack ran a great campaign and people are really enthused. So, yeah, fantastic! And the party’s going from strength to strength: it’s brilliant – all these new members, all this energy, fantastic conference – [the] biggest ever, so yeah – really great.”
Chowns is the party’s spokesperson on international issues in the House of Commons, and these issues sometimes bubbled into the centre of the leadership contest. During that election, Polanski said that “the age of NATO is now fully over” as a result of Donald Trump’s re-election as US president, and indicated that he thought the UK should leave the military alliance. Chowns and Ramsay, however, stood by the Green Party’s relatively new position that calls for the UK to remain a member of NATO while pushing for it to be reformed – including through abolishing its commitment to nuclear weapons.
At the Green Party’s conference, Chowns told Left Foot Forward: “I just think now is not the time to be having a conversation about leaving NATO. We’re perfectly able to be very outspoken on nuclear disarmament, and indeed I have been in parliament very very clearly outspoken on that issue. Having our current policy on NATO does not commit us at all to thinking nuclear weapons are a great idea or anything like that.”
Looking forward, rather than back at the leadership contest, Chowns told Left Foot Forward that there were “huge opportunities” in the upcoming elections to the Senedd in Wales and in local elections in England.
She said: “Clearly we’ve got huge opportunities. I would really hope that we continue that eight years of steadily increasing numbers. Obviously, we want to keep that going with a ninth year and have really strong growth in councillor numbers.
“We’ve also got this fantastic opportunity to break through on the Senedd. We’ve also got fantastic opportunities in terms of mayoral elections.”
Chowns went on to conclude that on the Senedd, she was “really confident” that the Greens will win its first seats in the devolved parliament next May. Watch this space…
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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