‘Enter parliament but never become part of it’: How have the Greens in the United Kingdom approached opposition?
| Author | Louise Thompson,Mitya Pearson |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211069791 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211069791
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2023, Vol. 25(2) 219 –236
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481211069791
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‘Enter parliament but never
become part of it’: How
have the Greens in the
United Kingdom approached
opposition?
Louise Thompson1 and Mitya Pearson2
Abstract
The Greens in the United Kingdom have benefitted from the fragmentation of the party system
and the creation of devolved institutions, achieving consistent representation at multiple
levels of British politics in recent years. However, we know little about what they have done
in these positions. This study uses interviews with Green legislators to investigate how they
have interpreted the task of opposition at Westminster, Holyrood and Stormont. We show that
Green legislators’ approaches to opposition have been influenced by their party identity, and that
differences in approach between the institutions have largely been determined by contrasting
political opportunity structures, rather than parliamentary rules. These findings highlight the
importance of party as a factor shaping opposition strategy and the varied roles which opposition
parties can play within the UK political system.
Keywords
devolution, green parties, legislatures, multi-party politics, opposition, political parties
Introduction
In 2010, Caroline Lucas described her election as Member of Parliament (MP) for
Brighton Pavilion as a moment ‘where a whole political party takes for the first time its
rightful place in our Parliament’ (Lucas, 2015: xx). Since the 1990s, the three UK green
parties have gradually emerged from the ‘political wilderness’ (Carter, 2008: 223) and
achieved consistent representation in the UK Parliament, Scottish Parliament and
Northern Ireland Assembly. We refer to these parties individually as the Green Party of
England and Wales (GPEW), the Scottish Green Party (SGP) and the Green Party
Northern Ireland (GPNI), and collectively as the Greens. The Greens were also repre-
sented in the European Parliament between 1999 and 2020, have been a fixture in the
London Assembly since its creation in 2000, and had elected over 360 local councillors
1Department of Politics, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
2Department of Political Economy, Kings College London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Louise Thompson, Department of Politics, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Email: louise.thompson-4@manchester.ac.uk
1069791BPI0010.1177/13691481211069791The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsThompson and Pearson
research-article2022
Original Article
220 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25(2)
by 2019. This research examines the period up to April 2021, by which point 20 Green
representatives had cumulatively served in the UK Parliament, Scottish Parliament and
Northern Ireland Assembly (Thompson and Pearson, 2020: 939).
Advances in the Greens’ fortunes reflect long-term trends towards a more fragmented
party system in the United Kingdom and, of particular relevance to this study, an increas-
ingly multi-party opposition politics. A recent study of executive-legislative relations at
Westminster concluded that, while past research in the area had ignored the minor parties,
this is no longer ‘an option’ (Russell and Cowley, 2018: 20–21). The shift towards multi-
party politics has been supported by the establishment of devolved institutions in Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland, with more proportional electoral systems than Westminster
(Dunleavy, 2005). This has created new arenas for opposition politics.
Opposition parties fulfil vital functions in democratic systems (Dahl, 1966), though
academic work considering opposition in UK politics has overwhelmingly focused on the
Official Opposition within the House of Commons (Fletcher, 2011; Turner, 1969), espe-
cially its leader (Alderman, 1992; Heppell, 2012). Research on small opposition parties
in the United Kingdom has tended to examine areas such as party membership and elec-
toral support (Bennie, 2004; Ford and Goodwin, 2014; Lynch, 1995) rather than parlia-
mentary work, with a few exceptions (e.g. Thompson, 2018). As such, we know little
about the opposition strategies of most British parties.
This gap includes the Greens in the United Kingdom as studies have examined topics
including their membership, organisational development, electoral performance and ide-
ology (Thompson and Pearson, 2020; Bennie, 2016; Bennie et al., 1995; Carter, 2008;
Dennison, 2016), rather than their roles within parliamentary institutions. The activities
of Green legislators have been considered as part of broader studies, such as examinations
of small parties in Scottish politics (Bennie, 2002; Bennie, 2004; Clark, 2020). Dedicated
accounts have, however, been confined to books produced by the representatives them-
selves (Harper, 2011; Lucas, 2015; Ward and Brady, 2019). We thus have a limited under-
standing of the work of the Greens within the United Kingdom’s legislatures.
The article begins by theorising Green parliamentary opposition. We develop two hypoth-
eses, based on the expectation that first, Green legislators’ distinctive party identity has influ-
enced their opposition strategies and second, that GPEW, SGP and GPNI legislators’
approaches have varied in response to the different institutional and political conditions they
have faced. Drawing primarily from interviews, we identify how party identity has driven
two specific aspects of their approach to opposition (credibility building and activism-oppo-
sition). We find that differences in the design of Westminster, Holyrood and Stormont have
generated only limited variation between the approaches of Green legislators. However, the
broader political opportunity structure in Scotland has at times allowed the SGP to take a
divergent approach to opposition from the GPEW and GPNI. By investigating Green legisla-
tors’ approaches to their opposition roles, and the factors which have shaped them, this article
demonstrates the diverse nature of opposition in contemporary British politics; individual
parties bring their own understanding of how to oppose executives and can perform disparate
roles across the different legislatures within the United Kingdom.
Theorising Green opposition in the United Kingdom
Party identity
There is evidence that the party which legislators represent can impact not just the policy
goals they pursue, but their approach to their roles. One study examining 14 European
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