As the clock ticks down until the ballot for the Green Party’s leadership election closes tomorrow, speculation is rife about who will step into the gap created when co-leader Jonathan Bartley quit.
Following Bartley’s resignation in July, co-leader Sian Berry announced that she would not run again, leaving three co-leader teams and two individuals in the race when nominations closed last month.
To have “such a wide and credible field of candidates” is “a sign of a maturing political party”, said The New Statesman’s Anoosh Chakelian. As party members gear up to find out who has won the leadership vote, which began on 2 September, here is an overview of the contenders.
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Shahrar Ali
Ali became the first ethnic minority deputy leader of a party with representation in the UK parliament when he was appointed the Greens’ deputy leader, a role that he held from 2014 to 2016.
But he has faced criticism for his views on trans rights, which has become a key issue in what Politics.co.uk has described as “the most intriguing leadership contest in the party’s history”.
In July 2020, Ali tweeted a statement saying that women were commonly defined as “an adult human female and, genetically, typified by two XX chromosomes”.
According to The Guardian, Berry’s choice not stand again as leader of the Greens in England and Wales “was understood to be based on the party’s decision in June to make him spokesperson for policing and domestic safety”.
Ashley Gunstock
Gunstock is a former actor who appeared in stage productions and TV shows including The Bill.
In 2008, he ran unsuccessfully against Caroline Lucas to become the Greens’ first leader, after the party dropped its previous system of two “principal speakers”. Lucas won the election by 2,559 votes to Gunstock’s 210.
Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay
Denyer and Ramsay are standing on a joint ticket with the slogan “Build, win, transform”.
Denyer is a Bristol councillor who proposed the first Climate Emergency declaration in Europe, committing her city to go carbon neutral by 2030. Ramsay was part of the team that helped Lucas get elected as the first Green MP, in Brighton Pavilion in 2010.
Tina Rothery and Martin Hemingway
Rothery is running on a joint ticket with Hemingway but first came to prominence as an anti-fracking campaigner in Lancashire. She has twice stood for Parliament. Hemingway switched to the Greens from Labour in protest at the Iraq War and is now a member of the party’s Standing Orders Committee.
The duo have focused on the importance of party unity.
Amelia Womack and Tamsin Omond
Womack and her co-leadership candidate Omond are the “best-known pair” in the race, said The New Statesman’s Chakelian.
Womack has served as the party’s deputy leader for seven years, while Omond has played a leading role in campaigns against Heathrow’s third runway, London City Airport and the sale of England’s public forest estate.
