Greens announce Greater Manchester mayor candidate



Green Party Greater Manchester mayor candidate Geraldine Coggins

The Green Party has announced that its candidate in the Greater Manchester mayor by-election will be Geraldine Coggins:

Geraldine Coggins

Coggins is a veteran Green Party politician, having served on Trafford Council since 2018. She was actually one of the Greens’ first councillors in the area, and serves as the Leader of the Green Party group on the council.

It was no secret that Coggins was running to be the Greens’ candidate:

She’s also attracted numerous recommendations from her local colleagues, which can be read on her Instagram page:

Coggins is a signatory of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s ‘Councillor Pledge for Palestine’, which reads:

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is asking all councillors across Britain to take all appropriate steps to (1) uphold the rights of the Palestinian people, (2) stand up to Israel for its crimes of genocide and apartheid, and (3) ensure their councils are not complicit, including through divestment of pension funds from complicit companies.

Coggins has also used her position to speak out on behalf of sick and disabled people. In a video posted to her Instagram, Coggins said:

Two things that we don’t see in this budget. One is we hear a lot about SEND [Special Educational Needs and Disabilities] costs, but there are some sSENDnd costs that are never acknowledged. In too many cases, families – and let’s face it, mostly mothers – have to give up their jobs or reduce their hours in order to support children who’ve been let down by our broken system.

And the lost pension contributions and lost earnings are never acknowledged in any public budget. So I thought it was important to bring it here today.

No pause

We’re just one day gone from the results of the Makerfield by-election. As we reported, the Greens functionally sat this by-election out, although they did run a candidate. The result was that the Greens got well below 5% of the vote, meaning they failed to win their deposit back:

As Megan Kenyon of New Statesman reported:

Party insiders suggest that the performance in Makerfield was down to a pared-back campaign. One told me: “We’ve basically spent this entire period prepping for the mayoral race.” They explained that even if “you suspect Burnham might disappoint people, you’re blocking everyone’s idealised version of Burnham that never has the chance to disappoint anyone”.

The Greens are optimistic about their odds in Greater Manchester, with the party’s Elfrede Brambley-Crawshaw telling the Canary:

Greens always fare well under more proportional systems, even though [Green Party of England and Wales] led the way to now winning under FPTP too

Speaking on the voting system in question, the BBC reported:

The way metropolitan mayors are elected has been subject to change twice in the time the roles have existed.

The 2017 vote used the traditional first-past-the-post system used for parliamentary elections, while the 2021 election used the supplementary vote (SV) system.

The SV system means that all voters are given the chance to pick a first and second choice candidate.

If no candidate wins over 50% of the initial vote, all but the two highest-polling candidates are knocked out of the race and all the second choices of the people who voted for the other candidates are then allocated.

Whichever of the top two candidates ends up with the most votes after this “run-off” round is then declared the winner.

The Tories dropped SV in 2021, but Labour has since reinstated it. Brambley-Crawshaw is right to describe it as “more proportional”, anyway, because it’s far from the most proportional system. The Electoral Reform Society rank it as follows:

It’s worth being aware of this, because when Andy Burnham talks about introducing proportional representation, he references SV. And although he’s not committed to it, if that is his choice, it’s the wrong one (see here for the other options).

Green Party — In it to win it

As we reported, holding back in the Makerfield by-election damaged the Greens’ polling. Thankfully, they’re showing no signs of restraint in Greater Manchester. In their own words:

Featured image via Cameron Baillie

By Willem Moore





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