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The Labour government is standing back and letting Reform UK “sell the lie” that net zero will harm working people, Carla Denyer, the Greens’ co-leader has said as she prepares to step back from the role she has held for four years.
Denyer, who will not contest this summer’s party leadership re-election process, told the Guardian that she wanted to focus on her Bristol Central constituency, and to campaign on particular issues, including a net zero policy shaped to the needs of workers.
Next week, she plans to table a private member’s bill setting out “just transition” to net zero. While it has no chance of getting the parliamentary time required to pass, Denyer said she wanted to try to seize the initiative back from Nigel Farage’s party.
“At a time like this, when Reform are unfortunately managing to sell the lie that tackling climate change is somehow going to be bad for ordinary people, it’s really important that we Greens challenge that – and I am worried the Labour government is backsliding on climate policy,” Denyer told the Guardian.
While Keir Starmer has publicly defended net zero targets, Denyer pointed to repeated speculation about the position of Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, and comments by Tony Blair that the strategy to phase out fossil fuels was “doomed to fail”.
“My worry at the moment is that the government are sort of lurching from crisis to crisis on this,” Denyer said.
“One of the real responsibilities and opportunities of having four Green MPs in parliament is that we can hold the government to account on climate and nature policies, and make the case really strongly that tackling the climate crisis absolutely can and should be done with people, not to people, and they need to plan their industrial strategy on that basis.”
Her bill will set out that net zero plans must be agreed with workers, and that every UK-listed company in the oil and gas industries must come up with a transition plan to meet emissions targets, which would include training or redeployment for staff.
Denyer’s decision not to stand again breaks up the Greens’ most electorally successful leadership duo. She and Adrian Ramsay, who is also now an MP, took over in 2021 with the stated aim of building up the party’s base of MPs and councillors. Two years later, they spelled out the four Westminster seats to be targeted – all of which were won.
“I definitely don’t claim sole credit, but yes, in mine and Adrian’s time as co-leaders, we’re very proud of our record,” Denyer said. “We stood for election on a platform of getting the Green party into a serious election-winning machine, and we’ve achieved that.”
Shortly before Denyer announced her intention not to stand again, Zack Polanski, the Greens’ deputy leader, said he was challenging her and Ramsay for the leadership of the party in England and Wales.
While Polanski praised their record, he implicitly criticised their approach as too cautious, saying the Greens should be more combative, and seek to become a mass membership “eco-populism” movement.
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Denyer, who argued her style had been less cautious than “relentlessly focused”, pushed back slightly against this argument, while accepting that the Greens had “been on a bit of a journey in terms of how we communicate our ideas effectively”.
Recent Green electoral success, she said, “shows people do appreciate that the Green party does politics differently – and broadly speaking I don’t think most Brits like the kind of politics where they’re just watching politicians taking chunks out of each other”.
As well as net zero, Denyer plans to campaign for more social housing and rent controls for private tenancies, and to help the party further build up its Westminster base.
While refusing to predict how many MPs the Greens could win at the next election, Denyer noted that the party had not just won four seats last July but came second in 40 more:
“Adrian and I are clear that it is absolutely possible for Greens to succeed in the system we’ve got. We’ve demonstrated that over the last four years, and I think that there is every possibility that we can make further significant gains at all levels of government over the next few years.”
