1 February 2015
Green Party members from South East Dorset rose to the challenge when their national party leader Natalie Bennett had to cancel a Question Time appearance before Bournemouth students. Local elections coordinator and prospective candidate for Poole Adrian Oliver took her seat on a panel which included two MPs and one MEP.
The student conference, titled ‘Election 2015: Does your vote count?’ was to have seen the Green Party leader debate with local Conservative MPs Conor Burns and Tobias Ellwood, along with Ukip’s candidate for Bournemouth East, David Hughes. But, in a sign of the Greens’ dramatic growth in membership - doubled in size since the 1st of January - Ms Bennett was in Brighton, for a Channel 4 TV interview.
Local Greens were well prepared, with three of their five prospective candidates attending the conference. Adrian was chosen to represent the Party because of his experience at public speaking as a former Camden councillor.
Sitting between the Conservative’s Tobias Ellwood MP and Labour’s South West MEP Claire Moody, Adrian spoke of the Green’s “increasing critical mass.” He said that there was “now an opportunity to get Green candidates elected.” Citing the example of Molly Scott Cato, the first Green MEP or the South West, Adrian added “You can now vote for what you want. While the four other parties support a neoliberal agenda, the Green Party would put people and the planet before profit.”
As the debate became a little more heated, notably in a confrontation between Tobias Ellwood and the Liberal Democrat candidate Vikki Slade, Adrian remained calm, saying later that there was “an issue about the Punch and Judy nature of politics.” During his time as a councillor, he had “never believed in shouting over each other.”
Natalie Bennett was not entirely absent from the conference. She closed it with an exclusive, 25-minute question and answer session, via Skype.
Other participants on the panel were David Ross (Independent Alliance), prospective candidate for Bournemouth East, and Patrick Canavan (Labour), prospective candidate for Mid Dorset and North Poole.
For more details of Natalie's question and answer session, see
http://southwest.greenparty.org.uk/news.html/2015/01/31/natalie-in-bournemouth-student-q-and-a/
