SMALLER PARTIES:Predictions that smaller groupings would put in an unprecedented showing did not pan out, writes MARY FITZGERALD
BRITAIN’S GREEN Party made history in Thursday’s ballot when its candidate in Brighton was elected Westminster’s first Green MP.
Caroline Lucas’s win brings to an end Britain’s status as the only major European country not to have a Green Party member in its parliament.
Ms Lucas, who overturned Labour’s hold on the Brighton seat after she secured 16,238 votes, said her party had finally taken its “rightful place” in Westminster. “After the recession, after people’s faith in politics has been trampled into the mud after the expenses scandal, it was not the best time to ask people to take a risk and put their faith in politics, but that is what the people of Brighton have done. The word historic fits the bill,” she added.
Ms Lucas, a former MEP and Oxfam worker, was the odds-on favourite for the seat. She was considered to have performed well in debates and in media appearances, and her party also benefited from celebrity endorsement from the likes of actors Joanna Lumley and Greta Scacchi, author Philip Pullman and comedian Alistair McGowan.
The Greens ran a record 335 candidates in the general election. Ms Lucas said her victory had proved that the party could overcome the “extraordinarily undemocratic” first-past-the-post electoral system in Westminster. “Once you get the first foot in the door you are through the credibility barrier and more Green MPs will follow,” she said.
Despite predictions that smaller parties would put in an unprecedented showing, given that this election witnessed a record number of candidates from fringe parties, the others did not perform well.
The Eurosceptic Ukip and the far-right BNP did not make much of an impression on voters. The latter, despite fielding more than 300 candidates, failed to secure a seat.
BNP leader and MEP Nick Griffin came third in Barking, with 18,000 fewer votes than Labour’s winning candidate Margaret Hodge. In the party’s other key target seat in Stoke Central, deputy leader Simon Darby came fourth behind Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories, with 2,502 votes. The BNP did, however, increase by 1.83 per cent its share of the overall national vote, pulling in a total of 514,819 votes.