London mayor candidate: Labour voters will go Green over Starmer anger
Traditional Labour voters will back the Green Party in upcoming London local elections to send a message to Sir Keir Starmer, according to Green candidate Sian Berry.
Berry told City PM that “a lot of people are frustrated with the Labour party” under Starmer and that there is “a real chance to bring people over to us” in the 6 May elections for mayor of London and the London Assembly.
Many on Labour’s left are discontent with Starmer and his team, after they have tried to move the party further to the centre and to remove Corbynites from key positions.
The London Labour party is seen as a stronghold of Corbynite beliefs as evidenced by the last election.
London overwhelmingly backed former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his manifesto at the 2019 election, while the rest of the country largely rejected the party’s left-wing platform.
Berry thinks this could play to her advantage come 6 May and that it gives her a chance to outflank mayor of London Sadiq Khan from the left.
“I think people are beginning to see the Greens stand for some of their values of equality, reducing poverty, supporting workers, supporting people who live on council estates to get ballots, supporting renters who are the working class of today and genuinely lacking real security and rights,” she said.
“I know there are people who are telling me that they’re going to put me first and Sadiq Khan second to be clear that they stand for these values of proper interventionist policies of inequality.”
Last summer when Labour drew level with the Tories in polling at around 40 per cent the Green Party was notching around 3 to 4 per cent in Westminter voting intention polls.
Now the Green Party is consistently polling around 6 per cent, with one poll putting the party at 7 per cent.
This rise coincides with a slump in popularity for Starmer in the past four months as Labour has fallen to the mid-30s in the latest polling.
Khan also focused heavily on green issues in his manifesto launch on Tuesday, suggesting he is aware of losing votes from the left to the Green Party.
“I think the amount of time when the mayor said ‘green’ on Tuesday was a massive compliment to us and shows the huge influence we’ve had and Londoners shouldn’t believe he’s fixed everything, because these gaps still exist,” Berry said.
Berry’s manifesto launch came yesterday and saw the Green co-leader pledge to cancel the £2bn Silvertown Tunnel river crossing, set targets to make London carbon neutral before 2030 and to implement a Greater London-wide road pricing system to replace central London’s Congestion Charge.
She also told City PM that she wanted to see some of the changes brought on by Covid-19, such as home working, to become more permanent.
“I think we have to think about the centre of London a bit more as a place where you go to spend trime and money, but where there’s more to do that’s good value,” she said.
“Then your essentials – the work, the lunches, those businesses – maybe need to be more in local areas and more distributed around the city.”
Responding to Berry’s comments, a London Labour spokesperson said: “Sadiq is the only candidate who can be the green mayor London urgently needs. A vote for any other candidate just makes it more likely that the Conservatives will win.”