(Updated 28/3/10): Green Party general election candidate Gina Dowding will launch her campaign to win the Lancaster and Fleetwood Constituency next week with a screening of her new campaign video.
Gina will introduce the first public showing of her campaign film at the Borough in Dalton Square on Monday 22nd March from 11.00 am, highlighting how the Greens hope this seat will make history and see Gina Dowding elected as Green Party MP for the new Lancaster and Fleetwood constituency.
Alongside Gina will be Chris Coates, Green Party candidate for Morecambe and Lunesdale, who says he is giving voters in a Labour stronghold, which has been held for many years by Geraldine Smith, a real alternative to the status quo.
Also in attendance will be a selection of the 14 Green Party City and County councillors, as well as representatives from Fleetwood Green Party and Alan Schofield, candidate for Wyreside in 2009. After the film showing, Gina, Chris and councillors will be taking questions about the campaign and how the citizens of Lancaster and Fleetwood can make political history.
The Greens feel the Lancaster and Fleetwood constituency has the potential to present a real surprise at the forthcoming general election. Because Conservative Ben Wallace is moving on, not only is there no standing MP, but they say it is difficult to predict a winner in a seat spanning three separate council districts and made up of a politically diverse electorate.
“There are a great many disillusioned voters who are both fed up of mainstream politics and who want a real alternative to the increasingly narrow policies of the three main parties,” says a Green spokesperson. “Only the Green Party has the radical agenda for change, and the ability to shake up our grey and entrenched political system.
Previously a local councillor, Gina courted controversy after she leaked private information about plans to tax exempt Heysham nuclear power station. She was subsequently suspended but came back to win her council seat with a massively increased majority. Well known locally and with huge grassroots support, the Greens feel she has the potential to make political history at the upcoming general election, and, potentially, join other Green Party candidates Adrian Ramsay and Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas in Parliament.
“I’m so impressed with the support I’ve had from so many local people,” says Gina of her campaign so far “There’s a real buzz out there and I believe people will see our potential to win the seat.”
Previous election results suggest Lancaster and Fleetwood could conceivably lead the way and elect the first Green MP to Westminster. The Greens claim figures taken from the total number of votes cast in the 2007 local elections for Lancaster City Council in the wards relevant to the Lancaster and Fleetwood Constituency show that the Green Party received 37% of the vote in the constituency wards, ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives on 26% (the Lib Dems receiving just 11%). Throughout the constituency, the Greens hold the highest number of local council seats and two county council seats.
At the constituency wide county elections last year, the Green Party gained 22%, again ahead of the Labour Party.
However, this may be wishful thinking on the part of the Party. Information we’ve received since first posting this story indicates that if you add up the actual votes cast in 2007, for all the parties, in all 17 wards that now make up the Lancaster and Fleetwood constituency, then divide by the overall total, the voting preferences indicate stronger support for both Conservatives (38%) and Labour (28%), with the Greens gaining 19% of the vote. The Liberal Democrats trailed with 12% and UKIP 3% – giving a very different perspective.
• Gina Dowding’s web site: http://www.ginadowding.org.uk/; she is also on Facebook and Twitter
• Chris Coates web site: http://www.lancastergreenparty.org.uk/chris_coates/
• Lancaster and District Green Party
The information you've received since posting this story appears to be the 'wishful thinking' of the Conservative Party. To clarify then, counting all 17 wards of this new constituency, the Tories received 38% of the vote, Labour 32%, and the Green's 22%. But what is remarkable is that the Green's gained this result despite fielding candidates in just 9 of the 17 wards. What the Green's are saying, therefore, is that where they stood they won 37% of the total vote in those combined wards, well ahead of the Conservative's and Labour who both trailed with only 26% where they stood against a Green candidate, while the Lib Dem's gained just 11% of the vote in those wards.
Unlike local elections, May 6th offers people throughout the whole of the constituency the chance to vote Green. And the above result suggests that at last we could see real change, and history made, with Gina Dowding the country's first ever Green MP.
Thanks Mark. The info added actually came from another source, not the Tories and was based on the same kind of research you folk have done.
Thanks John. There is an important difference though, and it's one that the other parties – whoever they are – would wish to hide. This election is very much a three horse race.
The Green's offer a clear alternative to the Thatcherist fusion of Labour and Conservative policies – banking extravagance, school acadamies and the increasing privatisation of the NHS are just some of the more destructive outcomes of this Lab/Con 'let the market decide' mentality.
But I'm getting into the deeper debate here, and one that I hope will get plenty of public discussion as the election gathers momentum.
For now, I'm sure we can all agree, the vote that matters most is yet to come.