Subscriptions
Read our Monthly Magazine
And support our mission to provide fearless stories about and outside the media system
The Green Party of England & Wales does not have any binding rules in place nationally to determine how candidates are selected, Byline Times can reveal.
It comes as the full slate of candidates running for the local elections in England is announced on Friday (10th April). The Greens, currently experiencing a polling surge under Zack Polanski, expect to make significant gains, particularly in London. The party is running more candidates in England than the Liberal Democrats, according to analysis by Election Maps.
At the party’s elections launch in the capital on Thursday, leader Zack Polanski admitted vetting candidates had been a “real challenge.” The highly decentralised nature of the party may be part of the reason.
The lack of national rules for candidate selections – non-binding guidance is issued instead – emerged as this outlet found a local Green Party has been accused of “serious procedural failures” in a candidate selection process.
The controversy exposes problems for the party nationally following its rapid surge in the past year.
ENJOYING THIS ARTICLE? HELP US TO PRODUCE MORE
Receive the monthly Byline Times newspaper and help to support fearless, independent journalism that breaks stories, shapes the agenda and holds power to account.
We’re not funded by a billionaire oligarch or an offshore hedge-fund. We rely on our readers to fund our journalism. If you like what we do, please subscribe.
Wembley Park Selection Row
A selection meeting for Wembley Park (Brent, London) held on 1 April is now the subject of a formal complaint from a would-be candidate who lost out amid claims of voting chaos.
In their response, the local Green coordinator admitted there were many flaws with the process, a position the national party agreed with.
More people voted in the first vote for selecting the local candidate – conducted using a Google Form – than were actually attending the meeting. That method was then abandoned.
Then the organisers took a virtual show of hands instead. That saw some members again vote twice. A third vote was then conducted using the online Chat facility.
In response to a complaint, the local party’s coordinator wrote: “We recognise that the process was compromised due to members voting twice which led to the chair taking action.”
No Binding Process
The coordinator added: “The Green Party does not have a constitutionally binding process for holding elections. The suggested process is long and could not be used this time as the deadline to submit paperwork to the council so that candidates could be on the ballot paper for May was one week away. The party has used in meeting votes (usually by show of hands) for most of our selections because of the time pressure.”
He added: “We will be reviewing our method for voting in situations where a decision is needed quickly going forward and would happily invite you to be a part of this process.”
There doesn’t appear to be a clear-cut selection process that local Green parties must follow.
A Green Party spokesperson said they backed the coordinator, telling Byline Times: “The London Party is aware of the complaint and how difficult it can be for everyone involved when we have fantastic members put themselves forward and not enough resources to run them all as candidates.”
Polanski told his party’s local election launch in Deptford in South East London on Thursday that vetting so many candidates was a “real challenge, and I think it’s important to be honest about that the Green Party is growing at such an immense pace, and whether it’s our systems around our conference, whether it’s about membership packs, and indeed, whether it’s about finding candidates and making sure they’re appropriate for their local communities, we’re having to upscale everything that we do.”
He added: “I also recognise that we’re dealing with an immense amount of people very quickly, and so I won’t be surprised if we have the odd candidate where we have to distance themselves from them.”
Don’t miss a story
Labour Defections and Fallout
The Brent selections row follows five Labour councillors defecting to the Greens there in December 2025.
Local member Hussain Sharifi, who missed out on selection, said: “The local party has now responded in writing admitting every procedural failure. They confirmed they have no constitutionally binding election process. They confirmed they have never used a secret ballot…They upheld the result anyway.”
Sharifi, who identifies as neurodivergent, told this outlet: “This is not a local party dispute. This is a case study in how machine politics migrates between parties and how disabled people get crushed in the process.”
The Green Party of England and Wales’ constitution states: “all Local Party constitutions…shall lay down a democratic procedure for the selection of candidates to all levels of government.”
The party delegates the design of that democratic procedure to each local party. Across hundreds of local parties, that can end up looking quite messy.
Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com
holding farage to account #reformUNCOVERED
While most the rest of the media seems to happy to give the handful of Reform MPs undue prominence, Byline Times is committed to tracking the activities of Nigel Farage’s party when actually in power
Contribute to our #ReformUncovered crowdfunder
Subscribers Get More from JOSIAH
Subscribers Get More from JOSIAHJosiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.
So for more from him…
