Can Kettering's Green Party take their local successes into the general election?
Candidate Emily Fedorowycz and her team know how to mount a winning campaign
By Sarah Ward
Back in 2021, the surprise of the night in the Northamptonshire local elections was the triumph of the Green Party candidates in Kettering. On the back of a campaign propelled by the Save Weekley Hall Woods battle, front man Dez Dell and his two green colleagues Emily Fedorowycz and Sarah Tubbs were elected to the new unitary council, beating all of the Conservative candidates who had been favourites, including former deputy leader of Kettering Borough Council Lesley Thurland.
The party had been aiming to win one seat, but won all three, also winning five seats on the newly formed Kettering Town council, making them the second largest party on the parish council, ahead of Labour and behind the ruling Conservatives.
The party and its candidate Emily Fedorowycz are hoping they can replicate that winning formula in next month’s general election. A tall order, with Labour’s candidate Rosie Wrighting, the favourite to dethrone Conservative Phillip Hollobone, but the party and its supporters have been out in force since the election was called.
Since those days of first being elected to the council Emily, 30, has amassed a lot of political experience, first as leader of the Kettering Green Alliance on North Northamptonshire Council and more recently as mayor of Kettering.
Speaking to NN Journal at the recent book tour of Green Party peer Natalie Bennett, she told us:
“We are going for it. We have so many supporters - and the response we have had since the local campaign launch has been incredible.
“People are telling us they just really appreciate a more refreshing way of doing politics.
“They are looking for change and we can deliver that. A vote for me in this election is really not a wasted vote.”
Like many constituencies, Kettering and the surrounding villages have declined in recent years. The market town used to be the place for people in the North of the county to head to for big name stores such as Topshop, Marks and Spencer and WH Smith, but they have all long departed, with Rushden Lakes and Corby drawing in more shoppers than Kettering.
Within her campaign literature Fedorowyzc has pledged to bring the town centre back to life. Since 2021 she has been involved in organising community festivals in the town square and her ideas for moving the town centre forward include encouraging businesses to rent share, introducing penalties for vacant buildings and promote community investment.
Potholes, perhaps the number one issue on the lips of local voters, is also among the promises she is making, proposing that repairs to the existing road network are dealt with before any new roads are constructed in the area.
The myriad of NHS issues are also listed, saying her party would increase a one per cent tax on the wealthiest, which would raise £28bn for the NHS. (Kettering General Hospital was one of the now infamous Boris hospitals and while money has been given for a new energy centre ahead of the new build, the final sign off for the hundreds of millions needed to replace KGH has not been completed by the Conservatives).
Sara Coggins is a Green Party convert having voted for the Liberal Democrats in the past.
She said:
“Emily is out campaigning hard and has great support. The Green’s are talking about issues that others are not and the environment is hugely important to me.”
But it will be an uphill battle and one that may be nigh impossible. In 2019 the Green Party candidate in Kettering scored 3.1 per cent of the vote share and across the county in 2019 the green’s fared best in Daventry, with 4.1 per cent of votes going to greens. Nationally the party is polling at around 6 per cent, but with an established profile Fedorowycz may well do much better than that.
Green manifesto
At her Kettering book event Natalie Bennett, who is a former leader of the Green Party and became a peer in 2019, talked about the party being one of ‘hope’ in contrast with the far right’s politics of ‘fear’ and said the current system is broken. She said:
“We have got to stop electing the wrong people and hoping they will do the right things, because we have been doing that for too long.”
The party has the seemingly most radical of the manifestos that have been put up by the various national parties in the past week.
Unlike the other political parties it has said it will raise taxes, aiming to bring in an extra £151bn per year by 2029. This will be done by a further tax on the wealthiest and by introducing higher national insurance rates for those on salaries above £50,270.
It has also taken up the famously dropped pledge of the Liberal Democrats to scrap university tuition fees and would put in an extra £8bn into education in England, with £2bn of that for staff pay.
They are proposing to scrap VAT on cultural institutions and would tighten media ownership rules so that no individual or company owns more than 20 per cent of a media market. They would also give grants to local news publishers.
Other pledges are nuclear disarmament and rejoining the European Union.
Other Green Party candidates in Northants
The party is putting up candidates in each of the seven Northamptonshire constituencies. In the most recent 2019 election the party, which was founded in the early 1970s, did best in Daventry and the 2019 candidate Clare Slater is standing again - the only one of the 2019 Green Party candidates to do so.
Clare said the response on the doorsteps is completely different to 2019 when all people wanted to talk about was Brexit. Since then the political environment has changed beyond recognition and now the Conservatives, if polls are to be believed, could be handed their worst defeat in history.
She said:
“People are a lot more concerned about the environment. A lot more people understand that we cannot have new oil and gas licences. They want to see real action on climate change. There is lots we can do, from better insulation in homes, which would help lower bills, to creating more active travel routes.”
She said on the doorsteps during this campaign, litter in the verges, potholes and rural transport is what people have wanted to talk about.
She is realistic about her chances of securing the constituency - which has been one of the safest Tory seats in the country and was held by former MP Chris Heaton-Harris since 2010 - but would be pleased to ‘not come last’ and get her deposit back.
She said:
“People say it is a wasted vote to vote green, but it absolutely is not. People should not feel pressured by a tactical vote. If people vote with their hearts and their gut, it would make a difference.”
She said the amount of votes the green party receives translates into more money.
Short money is the term for the amount of money given to each opposition party by central government, depending on how many MPs they return to parliament. Caroline Lucas ( former MP for Brighton Pavillion) was the only Green in the commons in the most recent parliament for which the party received £192,000 in short money for this financial year, compared to £7m to the Labour Party and £953,000 for Liberal Democrats. The party hopes to get at least four MPs elected this general election.
All candidates in the Kettering and Daventry constituencies are:
Kettering constituency
Jehad Aburamadan, Alliance for Democracy and Freedom
Crispin Besley, Reform UK
Emily Fedorowycz, The Green Party
Jim Hakewill, Independent
Philip Hollobone, The Conservative Party
Matthew Murphy, Social Democratic Party
Sarah Ryan, Liberal Democrats
Rosie Whiting, The Labour Party
Daventry constituency
Stuart Andrew, The Conservative Party
Scott Cameron, Reform UK
Jonathan Harris, Liberal Democrats
Marian Kimani, Labour Party
Clare Slater, The Green Party
Read the full list of candidates in the seven voting areas across Northants here.
We’ll be reporting on election night from the two vote counting halls in Northampton and Kettering. If you’d like to donate to our fund, and help pay for the extra reporters, you can do so here. Any donations will be match funded by the Public Interest News Foundation.
I support many of the Green’s policies/ambitions but the only way to get rid of this dreadful Conservative government is to vote Labour.
Unfortunately I find their lack of knowledge and experience in some ways more dangerous than our current non seen MP. Nobody would disagree with the environmental policies but what about our starving kids, run ragged mums, poverty etc. It’s all quite unrealistic. I’ve heard some crazy things Emily has said in council meetings. It’s like a Eutopia land but kids with rickets can’t get to community events in town.