menu
menu
In a series of stunning victories, Bristol Green Party won 7 new seats on Bristol City Council in the local elections on Thursday! They also convincingly kept an 8th seat in Ashley which they already held. Together with the 6 seats they already hold, this means that the Greens now have 13 seats on the city council.
For the Greens, together with the Green Party’s fantastic second place with 27% of the vote in the general election in Bristol West, Thursday night’s local election results represent a sea change in Green Party support and representation in Bristol. With their 13 seats, the Greens have 3 seats more than the Liberal Democrats, and are now the third largest party on Bristol city council.
The Greens’ 17,227 votes in the general election in the Bristol West constituency means they are also now the main challenger to the Labour Party to win the parliamentary seat in the future, having beaten former Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams into third place by well over 5000 votes.
In Ashley, Gus Hoyt held his Green seat on the council with an amazing 4470 votes which was 51% of the total vote in the ward. This is possibly the largest number of votes ever received by any councillor for any party in Bristol in a city council election.
The Green Party won a landslide in new seat after new seat, as Cabot, Clifton, Clifton East, Cotham, Easton, Southville and Windmill Hill all fell like dominoes in the Green gale.
In Easton, Anna McMullen got a massive 47% of the vote in a 1000 vote victory over the Labour Party. It was a similar story in Cotham, where Dani Glazzard got a triumphant 43% of the vote, a clear majority of more than 1400 over the Liberal Democrats, and in Cabot, where Ani Stafford-Townsend won with a 1224 vote majority over Labour, a huge 38% of the vote. In Lawrence Hill, Jude English achieved a great result, coming second to Labour with 28% of the vote in a ward to which we had allocated less resources than others.
In South Bristol, the Greens’ Stephen Clarke took the second council seat in Southville, again with 45% of the vote, nearly 1200 votes more than Labour, while Deb Joffe also had a 1000 vote victory over Labour with 40% of the vote in Windmill Hill. Labour also nearly lost Bedminster to the Greens, where, in a great effort, the Green Party’s Alan Baker was only 260 votes away from winning with an excellent 2160 votes, a vote share of over 30%.
Although hoped for, more unexpected were the fantastic Green victories in Clifton and Clifton East. Jerome Ungoed-Thomas took Clifton for the Green Party with a 300 vote victory over the Conservatives and a 33% share of the vote. Last to declare was Clifton East, where our Carla Denyer won with a 260 vote majority over the Conservatives, also nearly a 33% vote share. The Clifton and Clifton East victories were especially sweet because they were victories over the Tories in seats which the Conservatives had expected to win, especially in view of the Liberal Democrats’ decline.
All of these excellent results, without exception, were very well deserved, but they were only won because the teams and their members and helpers in every single ward worked incredibly hard for weeks, but especially during the final month of the campaign. We give our heartfelt thanks to everyone who in any way gave of their time, energy and commitment in order to help us win these victories, not forgetting the teams in Bishopston and Redland where there were no council elections.
For the Green Party, all these incredible results are a vindication of all that the Greens stand for, of their faith and belief over a long time in Bristol as a city with a huge Green base, but most of all they are a victory and reward for all those Bristol people who went out and actively demonstrated their faith and belief by voting Green on Thursday. Thank you to each and every one of you!