Motion #03
The Green Party Executive is responsible for the overall and day-to-day direction of the Party. The two guiding principles are to ensure the delivery of the Political Strategy agreed by members through Party Conference and to manage risks which have the potential to prevent us from achieving the goals set out in the democratically agreed strategy.
Responsibilities include ensuring the proper oversight of raising and expenditure of funds; acting as the Green Party’s employer of staff; implementing the decisions of the Annual Conference; and being liable for the governance and smooth functioning of the organisation.
The Executive fulfils many of its responsibilities through the Chief Executive Officer and the staff team. Executive members are expected to be ready and able – and are encouraged to – challenge and test proposals and plans put forward by the CEO, and to provide independent oversight and scrutiny of the party’s operations.
In addition to their collective governance responsibilities, Executive members also have role-specific responsibilities – often related to either a sub-committee of the Executive or a committee elected by conference. These committees allow for more detailed oversight of key issues between meetings, and report regularly to meetings of the Executive. These committees each have their own reports to the AGM, so this report focuses on the overall governance responsibilities of the Executive.
At the first meeting of this term of office, the Executive elected Rosie Rawle (Local Party Support Co-ordinator) and Matthew Hull (Trade Union Liaison Co-ordinator) as a job-share for the role of deputy Chair. In November, two co-options were made to fill vacancies: Richard Bearman as Finance Co-ordinator, and Elise Benjamin and Frank Sheridan as a job-share for the role of International Co-ordinator. Both co-options were confirmed by Spring Conference and they become voting members of the Executive. In June, Julia Lagoutte resigned from her role as Publications Co-ordinator – a co-option process was not started as nominations had already opened for the Annual Ballot and the position will be filled by election before a co-option process could be completed.
Priority One: Get Greens Elected – We stood 3,335 candidates, 41% of the total seats available; this is the highest number of candidates we have ever fielded in a round of local elections.
We held 276 seats and had a net gain of 207, taking our total in England and Wales to 745; this takes us to 83% of our strategic target of 900 council seats by 2025. This is a record number of Green gains for a round of local elections.
We won majority control of a local authority for the first time in Mid Suffolk and are the largest party on a further eight Councils.
Preparations are well underway for the London Assembly elections in 2024, the Senedd Cymru elections in 2026 and the General Election expected to be held in 2024.
Priority Two: Build Credibility – Our average vote share in General Election opinion polls has been 5% or higher for all but two months since March 2023. This is the longest period in the Party’s history where support has been sustained at this level. Public recognition and media coverage of our leaders, elected Greens, spokespeople, and candidates is growing.
Priority Three: Build Our Organisation – Despite the cost-of-living crisis, membership numbers have held up.
Priority Four: Build A Movement – The Environment / Climate Change has consistently been in the top three or four “most important issues facing the country” for the past 12 months, with between a quarter and a third of respondents saying it was one of the top three.
The Executive has agreed that for 2024 our focus must be to balance two priorities: a) aligning the maximum possible resources to achieving our goal of electing more Green MPs at the next General Election, and b) managing our limited resources to ensure that the Party is financially sustainable and in a position to build on the General Election result (this includes managing risks which might distract resources or attention from our primary objective getting more Greens elected).
In addition to the general governance role of being a GPEx member, I usually chair the following groups, normally meeting on a monthly basis:
The General Election Strategy Group – this has a particular focus on our target constituencies, and representatives from those constituencies attend. It also covers wider general election matters, such as keeping track of candidate numbers, messaging etc.
Manifesto group – the aim of this group is to oversee the production of the general election manifesto, so there is key input from the Policy Coordinator, Committee and wider policy community, from the External Comms people and from GPRC and Caroline Lucas’ Office. The complexity of the number of bodies involved is a challenge, as is the need to appeal to very different demographics across our target and development constituencies. We now have a full time Policy Communication Manager working on the manifesto.
I meet with the relevant GPRC members and others on an approximately 6-monthly basis to review progress on the elections elements of the political strategy.
We stood 3,335 candidates, 41% of the total seats available; this is the highest number of candidates we have ever fielded in a round of local elections.
We held 276 seats and had a net gain of 207, taking our total in England and Wales to 745; this takes us to 83% of our strategic target of 900 council seats by 2025. This is by far the largest number of gains for us in a round of local elections.
We gained majority control of a principal authority council for the first time ever in Mid Suffolk; we now hold 24 of the 36 seats there; also we are now the largest party on a further 8 councils which are in ‘No Overall Control’, thereby holding the leadership.
However we suffered the loss of two thirds of our councillors in Brighton and Hove to Labour; detailed investigation has been taking place as to the reasons this happened.
Massive thanks is due to the Field Team and support services in delivering what is overall a highly impressive local election result!
We are focussing attention on the 4 seats identified as Primary and Secondary targets (Brighton Pavilion, Bristol Central, North Herefordshire and Waveney Valley), with professional teams in place to run the campaigns; there is particular emphasis at the moment on Brighton following Caroline Lucas’ decision not to re-stand, after a brilliant Parliamentary career.
At the time of writing an intention to stand has been stated in 471 of the 575 England and Wales constituencies, now that we can be confident the election will be on the new boundaries, all local parties are strongly encouraged to select for all seats.
I am required to report on gender balance specifically:
All three of our Parliamentarians are women as are 2 out of 3 London Assembly members.
Across our Principal Authority councillors, approximately 45% are women. Unfortunately I do not have corresponding figures for candidates.
Whilst I am not required to report and do not have precise figures available we do need to do better particularly in terms of BAME and working class representation amongst elected members.
Last updated on 2023-10-21 at 11:41