11th June 2009

Ricky Knight writes to Green Euro voters summarising the results. 

May I thank your readers who voted for the Green Party in the recent elections. In the Europeans, our vote increased by 44% compared with 2004. In the South West we were the only main party to increase our percentage share of the vote. This would have been enough to have won a seat last time when there were 7 seats, yet, disappointingly, we only returned 2 UK Green MEPs to Brussels.

Despite beating the party of government into fifth place by 25,000 votes with our 144,000 share, this is only slight compensation for just losing out on the final seat to the Conservatives by a mere 12,000 votes – not a lot in terms of a total SW electorate of 4,000,000.

However, there is much good news. Greens broke through onto four more county councils where we hadn't previously been represented including Devon and Gloucestershire. We've gone ahead of Labour in the South West and ahead of the Tories in two of England's biggest cities and ahead of everybody in Brighton and Norwich. This bodes well for the forthcoming General Election.

The European Green Party had some excellent results and has now moved to be the fifth largest block in the European parliament, with a gain of 10 seats to 54 - mainly thanks to a surge in support for 'Les Verts' in France. Greens are a major political force to be reckoned with and are gaining the trust of more and more voters, not only in our traditional areas of strength, the environment, transparency and human rights, but also in economics and social policy.

Cllr Ricky Knight - South West Green Party Lead Candidate for 2009 European Elections,

http://southwest.greenparty.org.uk/euro09