North Herefordshire is election priority for Green Party

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Monday, 9 October 2023 17:30

By Gavin McEwan - Local Democracy Reporter

North Herefordshire will be one of the Greens’ four target seats nationally in the general election expected next year, the party has announced.

Ellie Chowns, a former MEP for the region and currently head of the Greens at Herefordshire Council, will stand against sitting Conservative MP Sir Bill Wiggin, who was elected with a majority of nearly 25,000.

Ahead of its party conference now underway in Brighton, the Greens put out a party political broadcast, shown last night (October 6) on BBC1 and ITV1, which featured all four candidates.

“Voters in north Herefordshire tell me they’re tired of being taken for granted by the government,” Ms Chowns says in it.

“I am proud to give them the choice of a genuine and hard-working alternative. I will take the issues that matter to residents, like the blight of river pollution, straight to Parliament.”

In Brighton & Hove meanwhile, currently the party’s only UK seat, Caroline Lucas MP is stepping down and the Greens’ former candidate for mayor of London Siân Berry standing in her stead.

The party’s co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay are standing respectively in Bristol West and in the new constituency of Waveney Valley on the Norfolk/Suffolk border.

The Greens’ campaign is focussing on the twin issues of affordable housing and heating.

“Only by having more Green MPs will we have people in Parliament advocating the solutions to the country’s housing crisis,” Mr Ramsay said.

In recent election literature distributed to thousands of North Herefordshire homes, the Greens say their own polling shows Ms Chowns is within 4 points of Sir Bill, making her the only candidate who can realistically unseat him – a claim contested by Labour and the Liberal Democrats.