The Green Surge is on!

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When Caroline Lucas was elected at the last General Election the Green Party in England & Wales had around 12,000 members today it passed 53,000 members. Membership had been rising significantly over the last few years but a combination of factors have made it go through the roof over the last few months. The Green Party's Members Website has a feature on it which shows the current membership for the national, your regional and your local party. A month ago I'd start a train journey and measure the rate of growth from the beginning to the end of the trip and check out the mph (members per hour). On a trip back home from London once we picked up around 700 members over a couple of hours. In terms of membership we passed the Lib Dems and UKIP weeks ago now and are the 3rd largest party in England and Wales.

Today it was a Yorkshire and Humber Regional Green Party meeting. Now I've been to a number of these over the years and attendance has varied a bit. Sometimes a few folks round the table but if say 30 turned up it would be regarded as bit of a success. We had around 200 today in Leeds. It was a good job we were doing online booking so we were forewarned and changed the venue and built a programme geared more to a mass audience. We now have over 4400 members in Yorkshire  and the Humber.

So we are now measuring the run up to the General and Local Elections in days and time for steady nerves. We have strong experienced candidates who are challenging for parliamentary seats based on robust community campaigning and now backed up with a stronger national profile. Steady as we go!