In Exeter, a big collapse in Labour votes is coming, and it’s a battle between the Green Party and Reform to replace the governing party. The Canary spoke to two Green candidates locally to find out more.

Labour has been managing decline in Exeter

One focus for the Exeter Greens is to:

Stop a council sell-off of community assets and put them into the hands of local people.

And Jack Reed, who’s standing as a candidate in St Thomas ward, told us of a local example where the council just sold off an old building “pretty cheaply”, rather than turning it into a community space or something similar. This selling-off of assets is “such a shame”, he stressed, and:

Ultimately, it comes all the way back to austerity.

He lamented that:

Unfortunately, it feels like the identity of Exeter has been lost in recent years. And I think that’s been driven by some of the Labour policies… There’s this deep frustration from local residents around fairly basic public services.

In St Thomas, a lot of the dog mess bins were removed and haven’t been replaced. So there’s dog mess all over the pavements, all over the park. The children can’t play their football because the football pitch is covered in dog mess.

And it’s those basic things that ultimately add up to our way of living and our way of feeling like we’re welcome in these places and that there is a sense of community and that St Thomas has an identity. And I think that has been eroded, unfortunately.

Also in St Thomas, there’s, unfortunately, instances of antisocial behaviour. And Labour haven’t really done very much to deal with those sorts of things. And so it feels like Labour have kind of just turned their back on communities. And I think people are beginning to see that and feel that and are seeking an alternative.

Bernadette Chelvanayagam is running as a candidate in the Newtown & St Leonard’s ward. And she added that a common issue for local people is:

Just mess generally – things just looking unkempt, rubbish everywhere, not enough bins, not just for dog mess, but just not enough bins generally. A lot of the recycling banks, like for bottles, were taken away so now you couldn’t access it very easily. So some people are having to travel quite far or you just get a build-up of bottles, for example.

And Newtown & St Leonard’s is probably typical of some other wards because it’s got a very, very mixed demographic of kind of high deprivation areas – a mix of social and council housing, as well as private tenants – but then we’ve also got kind of pockets with high affluence and big houses. So you really see like this contrast just on the roads. Some roads look really clean and other roads are narrow, a mess, not safe.

And issues around drugs and a lot of antisocial behaviour in a lot of the estates as well are not being addressed… When we go around in our area, people are saying they don’t always feel safe. There’s two quite big parks as well. So there’s been drug dealing there and there isn’t space for young people either. So that’s come up quite a lot.

People are sick of Labour, and they’ll show that in this election

A Green news pamphlet in Exeter recently reported that:

The Labour vote has collapsed, with less than 10% certain to back them. Many areas are a straight fight between Green and Reform. The data compiled from more than 14,000 Green volunteer doorstep conversations across Exeter comes one year after Reform narrowly came ahead of the Green Party in Exeter in the Devon County Council Elections, winning four seats to the Greens’ three.

Chelvanayagam said:

Labour have been haemorrhaging votes

With a lot of disengagement in politics around, she stressed that:

One of our goals definitely is to re-engage and give some kind of motivation that this is actually about your life and my life and our roads and everything else.

Many voters focus a lot on the national, which isn’t what the upcoming election is about. So she explained:

We always bring them back to: ‘locally, in your neighbourhood, is there something that’s concerning you?’

And she added:

We’re not naive to the challenges and that there isn’t a lot of money. But we really believe that it’s about political choice and what you’re choosing to prioritise and how you communicate that and then how you bring people on board with you. And that would be our focus.

As Reed asserted:

If you just watched the media and only listened to politicians, you’d think that you were living in a really terrible place. But it’s not like that on the ground, is it? You can have disagreements, but people are really kind and concerned about their own issues, and courteous.

In the Green Party, we want to build some kind of community cohesion and break down whatever barriers and fear are building up between people.

In his ward, meanwhile, he believes people’s preferences are clear:

I’ve been door knocking now for about six months or so. And we’re seeing a real split in the vote.

So most doorsteps you knock on will either be a Green voter or a Reform voter. And certainly in my ward, it could come down to just a handful of votes. It is that close.

But we’re also noticing that the Labour vote has completely crashed.

Hopeful community energy from the Greens, vs fear and division from Reform

Reed explained that some people have been swaying towards Reform in protest against Labour. However, he also said:

Sometimes, I’ve been able to engage with those people and show, actually, there’s a more hopeful kind of politics that is still going to really change things, but change things for the better.

I’ve had two or three people who have answered the door saying they’re voting Reform. And when they close the door, they’ll say that they’re going to vote Green. So the difference isn’t a million miles away.

Chelvanayagam added:

I think if people see that you’re genuinely listening, you’re not just in there to get a vote, they do start telling us stuff about what they actually care about.

And you get under there and then you get to the values, and then you think, ‘actually, you know what, if we didn’t have these labels, we probably would all agree on exactly how we’d like to see Exeter’.

Reed insisted that, despite local disillusionment with politics:

There’s a real green wave, which is exciting.

Part of this, Chelvanayagam argued, comes from the fact that Green councillors locally:

have got a good reputation for working hard and for holding Labour to account… People do actually say on the doorstep that, ‘your councillors are always like here, there and everywhere, and making a fuss about this and bringing up that and challenging this’.

Both candidates, meanwhile, highlighted that local people say things like: “We only ever see the Greens”; “I’ve never seen a Reform canvasser”; “You are the first person from a political party to knock on my door in 40 years”; “You’re the first person to ever knock on my door”.

Greens in Exeter have been out in the street for months. And they clearly have a strong presence in the city. As Reed asserted:

I joined the Green Party about 15 months ago. I’ve never been a member of a political party before… I had people knocking on the door and was chatting with them and, all of a sudden, it felt like it was only the Green Party that has a real, true presence in Exeter. And I felt like I wanted to be part of that.

Both candidates described a real sense of community. The diverse group of people in the local Green Party, they said, support each other, have socials, eat food, and enjoy spending time with each other. And that seems to have fuelled their energetic campaign to challenge both Labour and Reform.

Exeter Green Party plans and promises

Chelvanayagam told us that local Greens know full well what struggles people are facing:

We all have strong community links with Exeter, but also in our work and private lives. So we understand what’s going on in our community and on our doorstep. In my day job, I also work with households in fuel poverty and who are at risk of fuel poverty, also retrofitting. So I go into people’s houses every day, and lots of people are living in really dire conditions – damp, mouldy situations.

Because of their knowledge in the area, the Greens have a clear plan. And if they take charge of Exeter City Council, they have promised to:

• Build more “council, social, and community-led homes” and hold developers to account.
• Stop the sell-off of community assets, and “support meaningful use of empty shops and spaces for local startups, creatives and community use”.
• “Set up a community and council action group to help tackle the cost of living crisis”.
• Protect and invest in green spaces, and involve local people in adapting to the climate crisis.
• “Listen and consult better”, via processes like citizens’ assemblies.
• “Plan a new modern covered market in the city centre and champion local and independent businesses and social enterprises”.

You can see their full manifesto here, which includes pledges to “tackle antisocial behaviour and violence” and “strengthen public health approaches to alcohol and other drug addiction”.

Featured image via author

By Ed Sykes

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