Senior Labour Official: We Need Policies To Win Back Green Voters

Exclusive: Senior Labour Party official David Evans has suggested the party will need policies to win back Green voters in the wake of this month’s local elections, rather than relying on tactical voting to bring them back into the fold.

The Green Party added 74 councillors across England at the local elections, including winning all 14 seats in central Bristol – where the party hopes to oust Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire – and becoming the largest party in Hastings, a key Labour target at the general election.

Evans, whose role as Labour’s general secretary effectively makes him the party’s most senior member of staff, was speaking to a meeting at the Progressive Britain conference in London on Saturday.

Asked by a Labour member from Hastings what the party planned to do about the “Green threat”, Evans said: "We shouldn’t take that for granted, that [voters for] smaller parties, more progressive parties will switch – we need to give them a reason to do it politically, and then we need to find them organisationally so we can have those conversations one-to-one and get them over the line.

“And I think we need to go beyond the simple ‘squeeze’ message, and actually make sure we are nourishing them with the kind of policies that have caused them to vote Green, or in some cases Lib Dem or something else. We need to just have an adult-to-adult relationship. But we will be focusing on that."

However, he warned in response to a different question that the party would not make announcements that could jeopardise its poll lead.

“We are ahead of the Conservatives on every single issue that is polled,” he said, “but our narrowest lead is on the economy. So no apologies for not being too flamboyant in terms of the other offers, which are