‘It’s within reach’: Carla Denyer is battling to overturn a huge Labour majority in Bristol to be the second Green MP Bristol West is a key target for the ambitious Green Party and candidate, councillor Carla Denyer, is not fighting for just second place

It’s been the year of climate strikes, Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and the first net zero emissions law. If the country was ever going to elect a second Green Party MP, now would be the time.

Carla Denyer, Bristol West candidate for the Greens, is hoping so. A former engineer specialising in renewable energy, she was the first council member in Europe to force a climate emergency declaration on her local authority after being elected to represent Clifton Down in 2015.

Within weeks, others copied and she had kick-started a wave of climate emergencies being declared across the country which culminated in a unanimous Commons motion. She is now hoping to ride this green wave into Westminster to join her veteran college Caroline Lucas.

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Labour majority

But it is not without challenge, Labour swept to victory in Bristol West in 2017, with Thangam Debbonaire winning 65.9 per cent of the vote. Conservative candidate Annabel Tall came second at 13.8 per cent and the Green candidate Molly Scott Cato – now an MEP – came a close third with 12.9 per cent.

Recent polls suggest Labour will win a huge share of the vote again. Realistically, is the best Ms Denyer can hope for a healthy second place?

“No, absolutely not,” she said “We are aiming to win. In the EU elections, the Green won by a massive margin here. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, it’s going to be close. Our canvassing results show we could win, it’s within reach.”

Bristol West is one of the seats where the Remain Alliance has kicked in, with the electoral pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens meaning the former won’t be standing a candidate.

Ms Denyer is adamant that the recent polls, which predict Labour will win 60 per cent of the vote, don’t take this into account. But even if you add up the 2017 vote share of the Lib Dems and Greens, it doesn’t amount to a third of the Labour vote. What’s changed since then?

‘People were scared in 2017’

“2017 was an aberration and I’m not just saying that because it interests me, experts have said it too,” she said. “There has been a long-running trend away from the two-party system towards the multi-party system. Then 2017 was a blip where the huge majority of votes went back to one of the two parties, because people were were scared into thinking they had to do that.”

Are they not still scared? “I do think some are,” she said. “But the vibe we’re getting on the doorstep is so different to 2017. In 2015, the seat had been Lib Dem, Labour took it but the Greens were only a few thousand behind – it was much closer. And the political atmosphere – at least in Bristol – is much closer to 2015 than 2017.

“The [poll] also doesn’t seem to adjust for the amount Remain counts for in this election, especially in this constituency which voted nearly 80 per cent to Remain,” she added. “We’re getting longtime Labour Party supporters saying that they’re voting for us and supporters from other parties as well.”

It’s true that, while out canvassing with Ms Denyer and party co-leader Sian Berry, we met a few people changing their vote this year to back the Greens.

One resident, a Labour voter who chatted at the front door with his wife, a Lib Dem supporter, said he would be voting Green this time around because he finds Jeremy Corbyn “intellectually wanting” and believes his manifesto is “frankly impossible to deliver”.

Switching to Green

“I know we are in dark and desperate times but you can’t promise a manifesto you can’t fund,” he said. “It’s just not fair on people.”

Another local said she is normally a Lib Dem but, even if they were fielding a candidate, she “would probably have voted Green anyway because I should probably have voted Green in the past and I feel guilty for not doing so”.

But there were also those backing Labour to prevent a Conservative majority in Westminster.

A man, who recently moved to Bristol from London with his partner and their young son, said he was not against the Greens but would back Labour because “my only concern would be trying to stop Boris”.

“We don’t really get any significant kickback on our policies – people love them,” Ms Denyer said. “The only negative interactions we have on the doorstep is people saying, ‘I love the Green Party but I feel like I have to vote Labour to keep the Tories out’, but that’s categorically not true in this constituency’. It is only the Greens and Labour that can win.”

‘Labour can’t be trusted’

She said Labour was “clearly” trying to eat into the Green vote with its 2019 manifesto, which has been ranked the second most climate-friendly after, of course, the Green manifesto.

But Ms Denyer said anyone who has “looked into it in any detail have realised Labour’s pledges are have only been adopted at the very last minute, and they might might wonder how much they can trust Labour to deliver on them”.

When politicians bail out banks but not the climate you have to ask yourself: who are they really fighting for? It’s time to win back our future; fight climate chaos; and save our position in Europe.#VoteGreen in #BristolWest on 12 Dec. It’s time to #TurnBristolGreen pic.twitter.com/fa7Lz7WI26 — Carla Denyer (@carla_denyer) December 5, 2019

“It’s positive that other parties are starting to pick up environmental concerns now. But honestly, I’m worried they won’t hold on to them after the election. Already Labour passed a motion at their conference in September saying they were bringing their carbon neutral target to 2030, and then a month or two later their target is ‘sometime in the 2030s’ which could be 31 of December 2039. And, you know, according to the science, that’s too late.

“So it’s really clear to anyone that that is paying attention that the Labour Party and not taking climate crisis seriously enough.”

“It would be disappointing if we didn’t win more seats because having another Green MP would make a huge difference in terms of being able to influence other parties and pull them in the right direction,” she added. “Caroline has already punched well above her weight in Parliament.”

Bristol West may be a particularly Green-friendly constituency but the party still has a huge challenge on its hands if it wants to overturn the 37,000 Labour majority from two years ago.

If they don’t succeed, is it a sign that the “green wave” is not translating into politics? Ms Denyer said her party “is not going to give up” or go away, regardless of what happens on Thursday.