Firstly how pleasing that one of the new Green MPs (Adrian Ramsay, who has long worked for it) represents Eye in Suffolk - the constituency, now called Waveney Valley, were Teddy Goldsmith was one of the first six green parliamentary candidates (or PEOPLE, as the Greens were then called) fifty years ago this year.

Adrian didn't make use of a tame Camel and a bunch of hippie friends dressed as Arabs to campaign for "No Deserts n Suffolk". But he did win convincingly with 42% of a 76% turnout and 5,600 ahead of the blue Tory second. Admittedly Reform's 7,000 votes could have swung it the other way, The red and yellow tories came in 4th and 5th.

I have the impression that across the board the greens saw more saved deposits then every before (always a poor consolation prize) and even came second in several constituencies.

Over in North Herefordshire, Ellie Chowns did slightly better with 43% and a 5,900 majority although again Reform votes could have pushed it the other way. I remember when I left the GP in 2016 the West Midlands region had a very dedicated and hard working Election Coordinator and I guess this success is building on his hard work and some good targeting of resources. In the four surrounding English constituencies the greens were pretty much in last place, although 3 of them did save their deposits.

Likewise in Waveney - the surrounding greens did nowhere near as well as the target one. "Target to Win" is obviously still in play and works. When I was in the GP Norwich was always held up as a beacon and the likely second seat - the only got a poor second place with 18% in Norwich South, and fourth with 10% in Norwich North. How interesting that moving to a rural target worked.

Interestingly also of the four seats they won, two (Waveney and North Herefordshire) are large rural constituencies, and the other two (Bristol Central and Brighton Pavillion) are city centres. Brighton, of course, has had the only Green MP for a while (thanks Caroline) and good to see Sian Berry taking it over. Sian, like Adrian, was a prominent green when I was there. I wonder how she feels about the capture of the Guardian (she used to work for a Guardian spin-off) by the deep-state. Will she make a stand for reintroducing proper journalism and reporting in the dinosaur media? Greens came second in adjacent Hove and third in Kemptown on the other side, but nowhere in the more rural mid-Sussex or Lewes which wrap around the north of Brighton.

So here their version of the green message is resonating with the hipster townies but not with the comfortable rural classes. It would be fascinating to know how the perception of Green Politics varies between the Sussex rural areas and the Herefordshire and East Anglian ones. My simple guess is that Sussex is basically wealthy comfortable middle class outside the back end of the towns, whereas the other two are less wealthy and more traditionally rural farming areas. Is there a traditional small'c' conservative element in the green vote there?

Over in Bristol that too has been a long time cooking. Carla's 56% is a thumping victory against an incompetent incumbent labour MP. Although the surrounding consitituencies all remain red Tory, Greens came a good second (25%) in Bristol South (I briefly lived there) and Bristol East (30%), and Bristol North East (19%), and North West (17%). Only in North Somerset (which just touches Central) did they fail with a consolation deposit back prize. But that was a labour gain from tory, whereas the others were all labour holds. Nrth Somerset is also not really city, being more rural and commuter areas with perhaps a bit of money sloshing around - interesting win by labour. I guess Portishead is more working class, and Clevedon is a bit seedy

So a nest of greens positioned as the alternative to the red tories in Bristol city. They should be able to profit next time when Starmer reveals his right-of-Blair establishment credentials so long as they remain true to their radical green principles (if they still have them)

Thus we have a Parliamentary Green Party neatly split between town and country. One side representing areas where being green means being woke, better recycling, fair trade coffee, streets for people, social facilities, greener technology, and not so much of the systems ecology stuff. And the other side representing areas where being green means allowing small farms to prosper, caring about ecology at all levels, understanding that everything is connected and that there are limits to growth and technology that doesn't work withing its ecosystem will not save the day.

Could be interesting.

On the wider issues are they (the Parliamentary Greens) going to make a stand against Keir Starmer's trenchantly pro-Zionist position (a lot of Zionist money flowed into labour coffers during this campaign - and I imagine they expect payback - search for details if you find it hard to believe). And the bigger ask has to be about Russia - Ms Lucas appeared to have bought into the establishment narrative that Russia was an aggressor and that NATO is doing a good job. WTF did that come from. Is this the same Green Party whose founding principles involved peace between nations, and who were very active in the anti-nuclear peace movement of the 70s and  area. 80s cold war era. At least they haven't completely lost the plot like the German Greens (who are a disgrace to their name), but they really need to open their eyes to what is going on in Ukraine and campaign vigorously for a stop to arming the regime there, and moving to withdrawing from the NATO war machine and shutting down the terrible arms industry.  A big ask to go up against the MIMAC but someone has got to do it and you don't want to rely on Farage and Trump to lead the charge (although they are saying some of the right things).

And at the same time they need to consolidate their position so as not to be one-term-wonders and built support in all the places where greens came second. Good luck to them.