Green victories in Essex

Votes don't get counted in Kent until later this morning but in other places it looks like we are doing well. Rochford West in Essex has been won by Michael Hoy for the Greens and it seems there is a second new Green councillor there too. Looks like we held our seat in Gloucestershire.

We've worked hard in Maidstone getting 15,000 leaflets out across the town and along with the usual electioneering, I spent a couple of hours on the Big Green Battle Bike with a megaphone strapped to the handlebars which had a recorded message to 'Vote Green today'. Got plenty of thumbs up as I cycled round.

I'll post results on here later.

+3 so far

The BBC has the Greens increasing seats by two so far and I understand that we may have one an extra one in Bristol. Most results have yet to be counted, but the really good news is that our existing seats seem to be holding.

Early congratulations to Medway Greens on their first real test at the polls. They trounced the Lib Dems where we stood against them and we got 10% in Rochester West. Fantastic base upon which to build. Well done.

Maidstone and most of Kent seem to be counting this morning. Fingers, toes and eyes crossed.

Good Green and a quick update

Just returned from campaign from 7am to 7:30pm and looking forward to the 15 hour day tomorrow. The day started well with leafleting round Kingfisher Meadow without the security guard calling the police about me again, however having blagged my way in to Wallis Place next door, I managed to get lost in the maze of corridors and appartments.

Two pieces of great news I want to highlight:

• Canada has its first Green MP, Elizabeth May was elected yesterday. They suffer with FPTP too.
• Pink News has the Greens more popular than the Lib Dems, 18% compared to 11%. The Lib Dems have dropped from 57%.

Only the Greens can beat the Tories here...

No blog posts for a while. Out almost every night knocking on doors and delivering leaflets with little time for niceties.

Good to see an attack on us by the Lib Dems in Fant. This bodes well and suggests that they see us as a threat, which we clearly are given the catastrophic collapse in support for them.

The real trouble is that we get tarred with their brushes ("you are all the same"). Of course we are not, but if the ability of Lib Dems (and Labs) to say one thing and do something else is shamefully staggering.

I gather that Labour are targetting Fant. They have come last in most of the recent local elections (7% in both of the 2009 elections). They are wasting their time.

Only the Greens can beat the Tories in Fant... I gather that the Lib Dems hit the roof when they saw the bar chart on my leaflet.

Apparently there's gonna be an election

GB is due to ask QE to dissolve parliament (which may bring cheer to many disgruntled voters, depending on what she decides to dissolve it in) and we are to elect the next one on 6th May.

The charade of democracy begins with the incumbant prime minister deciding when going to the polls would be best for his party.

The charade continues with a voting system that should have been consigned to a Victorian midden 150 years ago. First past the post will strengthen the discredited hegemony and ensure that the majority of voters are represented by someone they didn't vote for.

The only way forward is through true representation, real political debate and openness and transparency in parliament. When people are given the chance to vote for policies that they think will benefit the country, there is a very different outcome.

Time for people to start voting for policies and a party that they believe in:

Cranbrook debate

Lively and enjoyable debate last night at the "Election Question Time" at Cranbrook School. About 250 people turned out to question the four candidates and Paul Seigert, the BBC's South East Today's Political Correspondant chaired it.

There were early pointed questions from the audience about my opposition to selective education - it was good to see that people had done some homework on me! I suspect that I didn't change their minds but I made it clear that selective education has no place in a fair society and that the overall outcomes for kids are worse than in comprehensive systems.

The question which raised the most heckles was the one on second jobs. After Chris Garland (who was standing in for Helen Grant the Tory PPC) had defended the right of MPs to have a second job, I made it absolutely clear that being an MP was full time.

A big thanks to Ben Carpenter for organising such a great event and bring on the next one!

Greens ahead in every area of policy

More interesting stuff from Vote for Policies:

7,600 now taken the survey and the Greens are leading in every category of policy!

Greens in lead on 30%!!!

Ok not quite, but this wonderful site has had over 5000 people select the policies that they want and it then tells them which party represents their views most closely. The Greens seem to be way out in front with over 30%. Coupled with the news from Suffolk were we achieved a 33% swing from the Tories to win with 61% of the vote in a local by-election this week, it is set to be a good weekend!

Debate at Cranbrook School

Disappointingly, Helen Grant has pulled out of the debate on 29th March at Cranbrook School citing a busy schedule. The date, venue and chair have been carefully negotiated over the past couple of months and I was really looking forward to challenging her so it really is frustrating not to have her there. I suppose we will have to just guess her views!

The other three candidates are still in and Chris Garland (leader of the council) will be standing in for Helen.

Date/Time: 29th March 7.30pm
Chair: BBC's Paul Sigert (SE Politics Show)
Venue: Cranbrook School, Cranbrook
Tickets: Free from electionquestiontime@cranbrook.kent.sch.uk

Why Maidstone should vote Green!

Greens on 5% in new poll

New Comres poll puts Greens on 5%!!!!

This is excellent news - lets hope that it translates into votes.

An insidious disease

The Lib Dems seem to have put out what I think is their 6th leaflet in the ward (apologies if I have lost count...). Yet again the headline is focussed on not letting the Tories win, stating that anyone not voting Lib Dem is voting Tory by default, etc. - you know the script! Fortunately fewer and fewer people are believing that in this election as the Greens are very much in the running and have a good chance of winning. Of course they are also doing themselves no favours by putting out the mountain of paper - people are complaining!

The arguement that people should not vote for the party that represents their views is a dreadful function of our un-democratic electoral system, but the argument is worse than that. It is insidious disease in modern elections that enforces the appalling first past the post system, disillusions millions into voting for parties they don't support and that takes the policy debate out of politics.

Ian Dunt puts it well in his commentary on Caroline Lucas speaking at the Labour conference after a labour councillor launched an attack on her:

"At the end, he told her that by running she would merely allow the Tories in. Barring the practical realities of that argument, it is a pernicious and nasty piece of reasoning. It is the intellectual equivalent of threatening your wife with divorce every time you have an argument. If someone believes in something, they should vote for it, not have the eventuality of a Tory government waved in their face for daring to consider their options. Labour's been using this argument for about a decade now and to say it's grating is an understatement. It's logical conclusion leads us to a one party state – an eventuality entirely compatible with the police state the party has tried to create n modern Britain"

Megaliths in power

I wonder how many people have spent the day pouring over the published expenses? I haven't even glanced at them and I doubt many people outside of the media have either. What the media and the government seem to have forgotten is that the imperative now must be for constitutional reform.

With less than a year to go before the Tories get into power, Labour (and Gordon Brown in particular) seem to be doing nothing to seize the only opportunity for a long time to come to make real improvements to democracy. Brown is going to go down as the worst prime minister in history unless he makes quick bold moves.

Not only will he go down as the worst PM ever, but he will take democracy with him. With the Tories in power the status quo will be maintained. They will make some fluffy changes and spin them as reform but under the surface, greed will rule.

There are so many important changes that must be made to parliament and how we elect it that missing this opportunity is the biggest ever crime against democracy in this country that I can think of. (n.b. I await comments!)

Either Brown must move quickly or Labour must oust him and put a short term reformer in his place. Labour must show that it has got what it takes to make changes when it needs to and it needs to show that NOW!

I don't want Labour in power any more than the Tories. I want Greens in power, but all the time that the UK political system supports two megalithic parties there will be no progress.

Letter to KM on 2009 elections

Dear Editor,

While the KM was right to point out the massive rise in the Green vote, for which we thank the public, however the KM did get some of the numbers wrong. The Green Party vote rose by 5500 across Kent in the County elections, despite the far lower turnout. In Maidstone our County Council vote rose from 4.5% in 2005 to 8.5% where we stood.

We did even better in the European elections, polling over 4000 votes across Maidstone (10% of the vote) and we came first in both Brighton and Oxford. We were just 2.5% behind the Lib Dems across the South East and are in line to win seats in the next General Election. I would suggest that the KM's description of us a minor party is no longer true, we are the rapidly growing force in British politics.

Stuart Jeffery
Green Party General Election candidate for Maidstone and the Weald

Maidstone Green Party results 2009

An amazing result for us in last Thursday's election. We almost doubled our share of the vote compared to the previous county election in 2005, going from 4.5% of the vote to 8.5% this year. We also came in ahead of Labour and the National Front. Of course UKIP got a higher percentage where they stood, but then they are a single issue party and their issue was the EU vote on the same day.

Across the country we made good gains with the Norwich election machine returning an extra 5 county councillors there plus other breakthroughs elsewhere. One day very soon...

Results below... remember there were two seats in central and there are a few ways of calculating the percentages for multi-member divisions!

	Voters	Green	Lab	Con	LibDem	UKIP	NF	Ind	Votes	Green%	Turn Out
Central	26652	908	603	2507	4465	1274			17292	10.5%	32.4%
Central		761	568	2457	3749					8.8%
North East	12379	260		1159	2306	656			4381	5.9%	35.4%
Rural East	13058		479	3963	925				5367		41.1%
Rural North	14044	352	397	3078	668	818			5313	6.6%	37.8%
Rural South	10661	554		2595	1027				4176	13.3%	39.2%
Rural West	13411	397	300	2559	1467	825			5548	7.2%	41.4%
South	12325	305	341	1897	1222		231	282	4278	7.1%	34.7%
South East	8418	159	452	1297	422			90	2420	6.6%	27.7%

Vote Green Today!!!

This is it, time to vote Green!

The polls have swung towards us, people on the street are supporting us, let's hope we get plenty of MEPs and local councillors elected today. The polls have been excellent, a ComRes poll that was commission by the party and published yesterday, showed support as follows: CON 24%: LAB 22%: LDEM 14%, UKIP 17%: Green 15%: BNP 2%. The fight is for 3rd place!

Maidstone Greens have delivered more leaflets that we care to think about, knocked on more doors than ever as well as campaigning on Week St. The coverage in yesterday's 'Your Maidstone' was a real boost too.

The results for Kent County Council elections will be known on Friday and the Euros are counted on Sunday.

All round support

This is from Cllr Brian Wood, Independent, and former Labour, County Councillor for Maidstone South East: "As a retiring councillor, I am asking people to vote Green next week. I left the Labour party because they turned their back on people but I believe the Greens now fill that gap. Local Greens have shown that they don't just care about the environment, but that they care about people, jobs and communities. Please give them your vote."

Cheers Brian!

Also today from the Daily Mail: "Ab Fab star Joanna Lumley comes out for the Green Party after her Gurkha victory". And again in the Evening Standard:"Lumley: The Green Party is the obvious choice in poll"

Canvassing in Fant yesterday was excellent too! The number of Green voters there seems to be much higher than last year, so fingers crossed. I even got chastised for not having delivered a "Vote Green" garden board to one house... I'll have to knock one up tonight as it's raining.

Bizarre Lib Dem leaflet

While being very used to the LibDem tactic of claiming that only they can beat the Tories, this latest leaflet from Maidstone Lib Dems is just plain bizarre.

The leaflet refers to the councillors on Maidstone Borough Council and claims that "only the Lib Dems can beat the Conservatives here".

I hope they have realised that neither election next week is for Maidstone Borough Council...

They also reference the parliamentary constituency, again quite bizarrely. I'm sure the borough councillors in Maidstone and the Weald are of a different make up from the MBC area.

It's all extremely misleading and sad. Mind you I think we have Lib Dem tactic lite compared to other places in the UK!

For the record, the last poll that I saw had the Greens ahead of the Lib Dems in the South East by 4 points and of course we are electable, Maidstone has had a Green MEP for the past 10 years.

Lobby for proportional representation

Copy of letters to: Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman, David Miliband and James Purnell in response to recent constitutional crises. See 'Make Votes Count' for more info and please email them if you can! Address letters to Harriet Harman, David Miliband and James Purnell c/o House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. You can also email them: harmanh@parliament.uk , milibandd@parliament.uk and purnellj@parliament.uk

Stuart

Dear Ministers,

There is currently an unprecedented opportunity to bring in positive reforms to parliament in the wake of the expenses problem and I understand that you have been asked to consider these.

Can I urge you to bring in proportional representation for general (and local) elections. The majority of people in this country are not represented by a MP or party that they voted for, a situation that PR would drastically reduce. Furthermore, and in Labour's own self interest, the best way to prevent an overwhelming Tory majority following the next election would be if they only had 40% of MPs!

PR has been shown to work in London, Scotland, Wales, and especially Germany where the rainbow coalition produced one of the most stable governments in Europe for over 20 years.

Concerns about letting extremists in are reasonable, but I ask what price democracy? Extremists will not last long - the public are not stupid and will see through them quickly.

You have an unique opportunity to bring in a modern electoral system which will save Labour's face and Labour MPs. This could be done quickly with or without a referendum and be pushed through in the next six months!

And while you're at it, an elected upper chamber wouldn't go a miss!

Stuart

Mood on the doorstep

I just love door knocking: listening to people's views and ideas is great, but the mood on the street is very strange...

Green support is rising and the anger towards the big three is incredible.

Today's poll in the Guardian shows us 50% higher than 2004, with UKIP support dropping by about 40%. Good news all round.