Can the Greens eclipse the Lib Dems to become Westminster’s third party?

The Greens are claiming they are on their way to becoming “one of the big parties” after more than doubling their number of councillors in the local elections.

Co-leader Jonathan Bartley pointed to the party’s success in places such as Bristol, where it took 12 seats from Labour to become the joint biggest party in the city council. It also beat the Tories to come second in Bristol’s mayoral election.

Bartley notes that his party polled higher than the Liberal Democrats, long seen as England’s third party, in “virtually every mayoral election”, including in London where fellow co-leader Sian Berry came third, with 7.8% of the first-round vote, ahead of the Liberal Democrats’ Luisa Porritt on 4.4%,

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Overall, in England’s local elections, the Green Party increased its number of councillors by 88 to 151.

But Chris Mason, political correspondent for BBC News, says: “We should be clear: that’s a rise from a very small number, to a slightly bigger small number.”

While the Greens have gained councillors, they have not gained any councils, whereas the Lib Dems came out of last week’s election with 586 councillors and seven councils. The Green Party also failed to win any seats in the Welsh Senedd, although the Scottish Greens, a separate organisation from its English and Welsh counterpart, won eight seats in Holyrood, double the Lib Dems’ total, helping the SNP secure a majority for Scottish independence in parliament.

Mason concedes that politics “is also about building momentum, and fighting for attention”, and that there is evidence that the Green Party is “growing in confidence”.

Bartley exhibited that as he told The Guardian: “We’re moving from being the biggest small party to being one of the big parties.”

Speaking to The Independent, he said the Greens were experiencing a “watershed moment” where voters are starting to see that the party can get elected.

In Westminster, the Lib Dems have 11 times as many MPs, with there being just one Green MP in the Commons: Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion. The Guardian says the Green Party is eyeing up Bristol West, currently held by Labour, for the next general election and predicts that other “breakthrough seats could include Bury St Edmunds and Sheffield Central”.

Meanwhile, Matthew Goodwin in The Sunday Times describes the party’s performance as “quietly impressive” and “a big hint that we may well be heading in the same direction as our European neighbours, such as Germany, where cosmopolitan parties are eclipsing the old centre-left”.

He adds: “Fast-forward ten years and I’d not be surprised to see the Greens or Lib Dems as a much bigger force, rallying zoomer graduates, middle-class professionals and city-dwellers in the face of a Labour Party that looks bewildered and lost.”