‘Relentless, almost ruthless focus’: Green party co-leaders grow into their double act

For some viewers it might have been the first time they noticed the Greens this general election, but it was quite the impression. Midway through the first seven-way TV debate there was a brief pause after Angela Rayner and Penny Mordaunt had bickered noisily on tax, and another participant stepped in.

“Well, that was dignified, wasn’t it?” began Carla Denyer, winning laughter and applause from the audience. Leading a smaller party in an election tends to be a balancing act between strategy and simply getting attention. Thus far, it appears, the Greens have done both fairly well.

Denyer and her fellow leader, Adrian Ramsay, have one advantage in helming the party they have co-led since autumn 2021: they can be in two places at once.

The third in a sequence of co-leadership teams for the Greens in England and Wales since 2016, Denyer has tended to take part in the cut-and-thrust of debates, while Ramsay generally gets the longer interviews, such as this week’s BBC inquisition with Nick Robinson.

In what is perhaps the most eloquent sign of how carefully they have prepared for the election campaign, on 5 July it is possible that both could also be MPs, with the Greens forecast by at least some polls to increase their parliamentary tally of one to anything between two and four.

Denyer is the more likely of the pair to win, taking on Labour in Bristol Central. If Ramsay succeeded, however, it may be more politically notable, given he is battling the Conservatives in the newly created rural seat of Waveney Valley, which straddles Norfolk and Suffolk.

When the duo took over the leadership they did so with two self-imposed missions. The first was to further professionalise the operations of a party that remains intensely democratic and often quite freewheeling. The other was to focus relentlessly on electoral success, locally and nationally.

In the three sets of local elections under the new leadership, the Greens have gained more than 400 council seats across England. Then, in autumn last year, the four target parliamentary seats were announced: Denyer’s and Ramsay’s, plus Brighton Pavilion, first won for the Greens in 2010 by Caroline Lucas, and North Herefordshire. They are part of a full slate of candidates across every seat in England and Wales in the election, the first time the party has done this.

“The party had been doing well in local elections before Carla and Adrian took over, so it’s not like this is totally new,” one Green official who has worked with the pair said. “But they have brought this relentless, almost ruthless focus on electoral victories.”

Changing direction can be tricky in a party where the leaders have, in constitutional terms, no more say than any of the other 15 members of its ruling executive – in fact less in some ways, given Denyer and Ramsay share a single vote between them.

This requires leaders to try to “steer” decisions as much as possible, insiders say. “We don’t generally try to make decisions by votes very often,” one party source said. “The whole idea is consensus, to talk it through as long as we need. Obviously, that can lead to some really long meetings, and sometimes you just want to get things done.”

Every Green policy has to be approved by the party at large. And Denyer and Ramsay have focused on highlighting the more retail-offer ideas: a massive push on housebuilding and a programme to insulate homes and public buildings, paid for in part by a wealth tax.

Both co-leaders bring authority and experience. Ramsay was still in his early 20s when he first won a Norwich council seat in 2003, and was co-leader from 2008-12, when the party first started to pick up more councillors.

Denyer became a councillor in Bristol in 2015, and contested Bristol West in the 2019 election, much of which has been absorbed into the new Bristol Central seat.

They also have relevant outside experience. A mechanical engineer, Denyer was formerly a project manager for a wind turbine company, while Ramsay is chief executive of a standards body for renewable energy, taking six weeks of unpaid leave for the election.

They are not without their critics in the party. In winning the 2021 leadership election, the pair were viewed by some as the more safe and managerial option compared with their main opponents, Amelia Womack, another former deputy leader, and Tamsin Omond, a founding member of Extinction Rebellion.

“They can feel a bit technocratic and hard to relate to,” one activist said. “I still see them as spokespeople rather than actual leaders.”

But any criticism, at least in public, has been notably muted during the campaign, especially as polling has suggested more seats could be won.

The pair have also grown into their electoral double act. While Green officials say it is a caricature to see Ramsay as the sensible details man and Denyer as the one to think on her feet in a noisy debate, their split has seemed to work for them.

“They’re both passionate and forthright, but with Carla I don’t think she’s scared of anything,” one insider said. “I remember her being sent into a spin room at a TV debate in 2019. She was a new figure in the national party and it was a big ask. But she smashed it.

“So maybe those big debates do work better for her. Carla might be less willing to get drowned out, whereas Adrian would probably be a bit more polite.”