Description
The Green Party of England and Wales is a green, left-wing political party in England and Wales. Since October 2021, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay have served as the party's co-leaders. The party currently has one representative in the House of Commons and two in the House of Lords, in addition to hundreds of councillors at the local government level and three members of the London Assembly.
The party's ideology combines environmentalism with left-wing economic policies, including well-funded and locally controlled public services. It advocates a steady-state economy with the regulation of capitalism, and supports proportional representation. It takes a progressive approach to social policies such as civil liberties, animal rights, LGBT rights, and drug policy reform. The party also believes strongly in non-violence, universal basic income, a living wage, and democratic participation. It is split into various regional divisions, including the semi-autonomous Wales Green Party, and is internationally affiliated with the Global Greens and the European Green Party.
Alongside the Scottish Greens and the Green Party Northern Ireland, the party was established in 1990 through the division of the pre-existing Green Party, which had initially been established as the PEOPLE Party in 1973. The party went through centralising reforms spearheaded by the Green 2000 group in early 1990, and also sought to emphasise growth in local governance, doing so throughout 1990. In 2010, the party gained its first Member of Parliament in its then-leader Caroline Lucas. As the party's support is spread out across the UK, and is rarely found in electorally significant clusters, the party holds only one seat in the House of Commons. The Green Party supports an abolition of the UK's first-past-the-post voting system, and instead supports proportional representation, which would grant it more seats in Parliament.
