The Green Party has long fought against the stereotype that it is nothing more than environment-obsessed and operating on the periphery of the political stage, with little to offer to the mainstream electorate.
But with disillusionment at the main three parties high, the Greens sense a unique opportunity to make a real mark and show they can, and do, represent the populace far beyond the limits of environmental issues. The party is led by charismatic Australian Natalie Bennett, an agricultural scientist who underlined her passion for horticulture by attending the recent Fruit Focus trade show.
When I meet her in a café at St Pancras station, she is full of energy and enthusiasm for the subject of fresh produce, despite a packed day of commitments and media work ahead. It is clear that she feels the Greens are on the verge of making significant headway and she is up for the challenge.
“I usually find myself as one person versus the rest of the room,” jokes Bennett, who was due to take part in a debate on fracking later that day. “There are huge political opportunities at the moment. Politics is going to break wide open. The past is no guide to the future when it comes to the state of British politics today. It’s patently clear our current political system and the three main parties simply aren’t representing people any more.”
So what are the Greens’ ambitions? Can they really make a dent in the long-entrenched three-party stronghold in the UK? Bennett believes they can: “We have the European elections coming up next – the proportional representation elections where your vote is guaranteed to count – so we would only need to swing 1.6 per cent to go from two MEPs to six. There was a YouGov poll last week which put us on 12 per cent for the Europeans, and the Lib Dems on 10 per cent.”
The Greens’ breakthrough moment came in 2010 when Caroline Lucas was elected MP for Brighton Pavilion, proving the party has the clout to compete in certain geographical areas, and now Bennett believes its appeal has extended
to cover vast swathes of the country and it can become a national party.
No longer is voting Green a “wasted vote”, insists Bennett. Policies include making the minimum wage a “living wage”, bringing the railways back into public hands and keeping the NHS public, but the battle is ensuring Britons are aware the party is about more than just the environment. Bennett still recalls with a wry smile her early days in the role when she would tend to appear on BBC News with a picture of either a polar bear or a wind farm as the backdrop.
There are not many political leaders who can boast an agricultural background, but Bennett holds a degree in agricultural science from the University of Sydney, where she specialised in animal husbandry. She later became a journalist, editing the Guardian Weekly, a background which perhaps explains her ease with the media. “I was out only yesterday visiting the Wye Community Farm,” she points out, keen to underline her links to producers. “Food and farming is one of my key interests, and I don’t think you could say that about any other political leader. That should be the case because the government ensuring the food security of the nation is absolutely one of their fundamental responsibilities.”
Bennett doesn’t mince her words in her belief that the government is pursuing the wrong line when it comes to food production: “They are grounded on hi-tech, industrial farming with most of the work done by, and profits going to, large multinational companies. And that’s entirely the wrong foundation. It’s not rooted in the soil. We desperately need to invest in a heap of research and extension work and support for farmers, but that needs to be very much at a level of ‘how do we farm this land?’”
Pressure on producers has been high for some time, and Bennett argues that comes down to supermarkets and their vice-like grip on the supply chain. “We’ve got great hopes for the new Groceries Code Adjudicator and we’d like to have seen her [adjudicator Christine Tacon] get much more power. She seems very impressive and that’s encouraging, but ultimately I don’t think a handful of giant supermarkets is going to be a system that ever works for farmers.”
Bennett cites the People’s Supermarket – where she is a member and proudly points out she does her four hours a month on the till – as an example of a successful local-sourcing retail model. “At a very small, basic level, that’s an example of what our food chain needs to look like. Farmers need to be able to work with either small shops like that, or companies like food box operators.
“We’re never going to feed all of Britain like that, but we need tens of thousands more similar schemes, and restore that ring of market gardens around cities. We’ve got to relocalise the whole food chain,” she says.
But isn’t it impractical for this to make more than the smallest dent in the nation’s food supply structure, I ask? “It requires a massive change, but it’s worth thinking that over the last 20-30 years we’ve also seen a massive change, so big changes can happen quite fast. We also need to look a lot more at people growing a bit of their own. Seventy-five per cent of French people grow at least some of their own food, and we need to restore that.”
Bennett believes food prices are too low, but also recognises that poverty is an issue and many people are struggling to afford the cost of living. As you would expect, she advocates eating in season and the pleasure of looking forward to seeing your favourite produce coming onto shelves.
I offer Bennett the chance to make her pitch directly to growers – what support would they get for commercial production if they elected a Green MP? “We have to recognise that food production is really important,” she stresses. “You’d find support for doing the right thing. We’d ask why something can’t be built on a brownfield site, not a greenfield site, but we’d also be saying we want to find ways of helping you to do that. We understand this huge squeeze on cost pressure on farmers and realise it’s not sustainable to switch everything over to organics. We have to fight for the policies that will make things work much better.”
The Greens haven’t been without their battles with the industry, specifically raising concerns over certain aspects of Thanet Earth and backing a full ban on neonicotinoids, but Bennett insists the party is pragmatic about the needs of commercial food production.
The political spectrum has never been more interesting, with smaller parties sensing their opportunity to grow and challenge the established order. And there’s little doubt that, at the Greens, optimism could not be higher that this is their moment to step into the spotlight. —
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