“A Green tidal wave is coming at the next general election,” declared Hannah Spencer, as she became the first ever Green Party MP to be elected in the north of England last week. She and a growing cohort of women are at its crest.
Spencer is not the typical face of green politics. A plumber who left school at 16 and was still completing her plastering training during the campaign, she represents the kind of voter the Green Party – with its middle-class, southern UK heartland – has long struggled to reach.
Promising in her speech to “make lives better for people like us – to bring down the cost of living, introduce rent controls, and get the litter and fly tipping off our streets,” now she seeks to represent them.
That kind of commitment comes at a personal cost. Even before Spencer had taken her seat, her professional and working-class credentials were being questioned, while false rumours of a multimillionaire husband circulated.
