Green vote rising

Green Party campaigners will be be pulling out all the stops this week, encouraged by today's Sunday Telegraph/ICM poll which puts the Greens on 11% - ahead of UKIP nationally for the first time this campaign (1).

With 11%, the Greens would expect to return two or three new MEPs, as well as holding their existing seats in London and the South East.

In the county elections, the Greens remain confident of gains in Norfolk and Lancashire, capitalising on the strength of city council Green groups in Norwich and Lancaster. But in the South West, Devon Greens may be about to bring off a surprise result, a party spokesperson said today.

Poll shows Greens "least likely to put self-interest first"

The Greens have been further encouraged by a YouGov poll last Friday which indicated that Green politicians were by far the most highly trusted to put their country before their own financial interests (2) This, say the Greens, suggests that a significant proportion of any anti-sleaze protest vote would go to the Green Party.

"Vote for a million Green jobs"

With a UN think-tank this week warning that climate change is already killing 300,000 people a year, and costing the world $125bn a year (4), the Greens will be reinforcing the main message of their 2009 campaign - Vote Green for a million UK jobs, to tackle the recession and the climate crisis at the same time.

Green Party battlebus in North West, South East this week

The party's campaign bus began its tour of the North West target region today. On Wednesday, the final day of the campaign, it will take party leader Caroline Lucas MEP on the last leg of her South East constituency tour.

Stopping the BNP leader - one of the historic results of the 2009 campaign

Despite much media speculation - not least by the BBC - that disillusioned voters may vote for the racist BNP, the Greens have consistently oupolled the racist party. With Respect having withdrawn from the North West election and endorsed the Greens against the BNP, and Libertas' top North West candidate having done the same, the anti-racist coalition built by the North West Greens (3) appears to have been successful. Green Party candidate Peter Cranie looks set to deny BNP leader Nick Griffin the eighth and last seat in the North West.

The Greens say that the election of Nick Griffin would constitute the biggest step forward for the far right in British history - and preventing this would be one of the most historically significant outcomes of the 2009 campaign.

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Notes to editors

1. See: [www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/5412679/Disaster-for-Gordon-Brown-as-Labour-falls-below-Lib-Dems-in-new-poll.html][1]. A poll published in the Daily Express two weeks ago, commissioned by UKIP and conducted by ComRes, put the Greens on 16% in the South East (including Eastern region) - in third place ahead of both UKIP and the LibDems - but today's Sunday Telegraph/ICM poll is the first of this campaign to put the Greens ahead of UKIP nationally.

2. See: [www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2009-05-27-green-politicians-most-trusted-to-put-britain-before-self.html][2]

3. See: [www.stopnickgriffin.org.uk][3]

4. See: [www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/29/1][4]



[1]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/5412679/Disaster-for-Gordon-Brown-as-Labour-falls-below-Lib-Dems-in-new-poll.html
[2]: http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2009-05-27-green-politicians-most-trusted-to-put-britain-before-self.html
[3]: http://www.stopnickgriffin.org.uk
[4]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/29/1

URL: http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/31-05-2009-Greens-ahead-of-UKIP.html


Published and promoted by Tracy Dighton-Brown for the Green Party of England & Wales, both at 1a Waterlow Road, London N19 5NJ.