Marios Richards

I'm skeptical about this, because I don't see much evidence that people became more aware of the Greens in this period - nor much evidence that the people who flipped Green when Labour got less popular post 2024 also flipped Green when it happened (to a smaller degree) in 2019.

A Knight on Bone Spurs.

Jeremy Corbyn was an *unusually poor* party leader for - what was then - the major Opposition party.

And you can't see a specific "Corbyn Effect" until somewhere mid 2018 at best, early 2019 at worst.

What the Governing party is doing is just an order of magnitude more important/covered/care about

> Are you saying with another leader they would be 2nd in
> polls, 200,000 members and off the back of a historic by
> election win?

Yes, exactly that.

I'm saying all of those things are primarily about what is happening with the governing Labour Party, not the Greens - that's just Opposition.

Their heroic ability to absorb attention out of all proportion to their numbers/lability.

Which is no more 'exceptional' than the beach "appearing" when the tide goes out.

By-elections that go for "insurgents" aren't some special exception to normal voting - they are "what happens when you have a vote (possibly with a slightly diff electorate) when the governing party is less popular than it was".

Votes don't "go against the midterm incumbent" because it's a law of nature - but because governing parties normally govern around Doing Unpopular Things Early which are intended to payoff in 4-5 years.

The issue here is that major party politicians & the commentariat build or sorts of explanations and excuses for why It's Actually More Complicated Than That, frequently inventing concepts that don't exist.

There is no "protest vote" any more than there is a "tactical vote". It's just a vote!

Public data (British Election Study) always captured likeCon/Lab/LD etc on a scale of 1-10 and - lo and behold - the people who, say, flip CON -> REF are generally the people are 7 for CON and 6 for UKIP 10 years before.

FWIW, this has *always* been true for *all voters*.

For at least the last century, the UK - even England - was never a two party system.

Voters *always* had a list of parties ordered by preference (and generally more than one they preferred over not voting).

Reminscent of Trump declaring war on Iran to destroy nuclear weapons that his White House website still claims to have successfully and permanently destroyed last year.

This is why I don't actually think much would change if they'd chosen the other leaders - the dynamics have next to nothing to do with the Green Party - but obviously they *were* wrong about what was (already) happening.

Those people who flip LAB to GP ... act exactly as you'd expect people to act from that movement on the simplest of models.

But July 2024-May 2025, LAB's perceived position for the first time ever jumps in between GP and LD (and starkly reduce their perceived competence/valence).

Neither the LD nor the GP move in this period - it's all Labour.

Slightly worse than that - the position across the bottom of the political compass has always been LAB - GP - LD (around and up -CON).

Greens and LD have a good brand, but they were stuck between larger parties and had to build local stronghold to be competitive option.

> running in the space Labour had vacated

In practice, the Greens do not appear to have moved in voter perception - which is something politicians/commentators don't want to acknowledge (boring as ****/can't fill an article) - but there is an art to standing still while projecting motion.

... but I didn't follow the Green leadership election when it happened and now I look at it (with benefit of hindsight), Polanski was obviously the better choice / one who was going to win (one single candidate +running in the space Labour had vacated vs two candidates +running in the space LDs in).

I don't think Polanski has much to do with the Green's performance (per normal rules of Opposition agency vs Government agency) ...

I think the Green rise in voteshare is the same thing as the beach appearing at low (high??) tide - the beach hasn't appreciably moved, it's all the ocean going out.

(Similar with Reform and Conservatives)

"Green Party membership more focussed on concerns of the electorate than Green Party leader" is a weird dynamic!

... but it's even weirder that the new leader then decided to reverse that again and return to the prior policy *2 years after that*.

It's not particularly impressive that the Green Party membership took until *2022-2023* to modify their parties least popular policy, during a time when it had become highly salient *due to the (repeat) invasion of Ukraine*, in line with the position of their own voters ...

This is particularly rough because the *members* did realise this in 2022-2023 and did a (clumsy two party) policy u-turn ...

... and then Polanski ran explicitly against the new Green policy in 2025 and stuck with that position after the context (without the party having changed position!).

^ pro forma whine about not including non-voters/WNVers, very much not randomly distributed by economics/circs.

Reform + Con is pretty stable (tough to control for lifecycle / subjectivity of self-centered sorts/education - I think if you do it gets even flatter), but the share of that taken by Con vs Reform is super economics/circs dependent.

Was going to whine about the question ... but your plot/note here covers the main issue with how misleading it can be to just plot Reform % vs income/conditions.

I'm not particularly curious about his internal state, but his stated position is a very low level of actual commitment to European collective security given the context (superior to Corbyn on this is ~"taller than an ant").

Or why, having won, he'd make a point of repeating it.

Hard to understand in any terms other than "the Green Party isn't particularly serious / still reflexively expects to be treated with the privilege of a 3% max voteshare party to do as it pleases with no real world consequences".

Why he's done any of that ... I find genuinely puzzling.

I mean, he won the leadership 85% vs 15% - can't imagine he saw a real *need* to contradict resolved Green policy and reopen the party's least popular position to win that.