22 Mar 2024
Since Simon Grover first stood as the Greens’ Parliamentary candidate for St Albans back in 2019, the political landscape has undergone a seismic transformation, leaving the shape of local government in a very different state to how it was five years ago.
The Conservative Party has been annihilated in a series of district elections, leaving the once-powerful group with only four councillors, and the Greens on the ascendant with three.
Simon, who represents St Peter’s ward in SADC, has now been selected as the Greens’ would-be MP for the second time, but he certainly isn’t expecting a repeat performance.
“I think lots of things are very different as it was all about [former St Albans Conservative MP] Anne Main last time. She’d been in the national press over her expenses and Daisy Cooper was coming to the rescue as an outsider.
“A lot of people said to me, ‘What happens if I vote for you and Daisy Cooper doesn’t get in?’ Or they said, ‘I would vote for you but I want to make sure we get the Tories out’.
“There will still be a bit of it this time, but I think it’s hugely different because Daisy is very popular as the incumbent MP, and the Tories nationally are down the toilet, which they weren’t all that time ago. St Albans was a standout seat in the last election, and I think nationally was the only Tory seat that was lost to a Lib Dem.
“That’s how extraordinary it was, but this time there will be lots of Tory seats going to Lib Dems all over the place, and lots of Lib Dems who will retain their seats in the face of Tory opposition.
“I don’t think the Tory candidate here [James Spencer] has got a chance and that’s no reflection on him, that’s a reflection of the national party.”
So this time round, whose votes will he be seeking? Arguably neither the Conservatives or Reform, and perhaps not even Labour, so does that mean the Greens and Liberal Democrats will be targeting the same section of the electorate?
“It’s difficult. I mean, Reform will be interesting, because they will get some votes here, I’m sure. Even just canvassing on local elections, I’ve met people who say I’m voting Reform, and a lot of them are disgruntled Tories looking for a new home. In terms of whose votes are you after, it’s a tricky one.
“Both the Lib Dems and the Greens, as smaller parties, have to justify their existences, they can’t just be not like the others. I think a lot of people vote Green because they believe in an aspect of what the Green Party stands for, or they believe that climate change is the number one topic. Lib Dems talk a lot about climate change as well, but but no one’s going to look at the Lib Dem vote going up and say, oh well that’s because people believe in climate change and support
“So that’s the upside for us, is if you get a big Green vote, you know why. It’s because people believe in the stuff that we do about it.”
Simon cited the UKIP effect as an example of how a small party succeeded in forever changing British politics – and the major parties – by simply getting people to vote for them. Whereas it might not have been in enough in one place for them to win any MPs, it was enough overall for the whole political debate to transform, which ultimately led to us permanently leaving the EU.
“That shows you what a small party can achieve. UKIP’s an extreme example in more than one way, because they only stood for one thing. In the popular imagination, people don’t quite think that the Greens are a one-issue party, but they know that we stand for the environment, protecting against climate change and reforming the tax system. If millions of people voted Green, that message would come through, and the other parties would change, and suddenly you would have that UKIP effect. That’s one version of the future.
“XR – Extinction Rebellion – talk about how if they get a certain critical mass of people doing one thing, that’s enough. It doesn’t need to be 50 per cent or 100 per cent. Look at Covid and what the country and the world managed to do: turn on a sixpence, change the whole economy overnight. It’s incredible what we can do. We can do this stuff, we can fix this stuff, if we put our minds to it.”
He explained how so many changes are still easily within reach of most people, whether that’s travelling all over the place for work, flying in food and goods from across the world or sending our recycling to China, if there is no longer any demand for this then the system can change and we can all live in a more environmentally friendly way.
“People want their kids to walk to school, lots of people want to be able to cycle but are too scared to, people would love to leave their car at home, or not have a car because it’s so expensive to insure, but they feel that there’s no alternative.
“The reason there’s no alternative is because the national government has not set up the infrastructure to make an alternative. You know, they’re building HS2 instead of having free buses that run every ten minutes.
“Why don’t we do that? We can do anything we like. That’s not about personal sacrifice. That’s about setting up a system that works for everybody and that makes good choices easy.
“It’s the same with shopping for organic food or healthy food. Why do people buy crap food? Because it’s cheaper. Why is it cheaper? Because the tax system is set up that way.
“You have to make those choices easy for everybody. It’s got to be led by government. You can’t expect everyone to just do it through personal choices, it’s not going to happen that way.
“It’s the same on the local level, at the local council. There’s only so much that you can say, ‘oh, please do this, please do that, it’s better if you do that’. There’s no incentive other than goodwill. That will go so far, but it won’t change the system.”
Locally the Liberal Democrat administration at SADC have declared a climate emergency, putting it at the forefront of their policy agenda, but are they using that an excuse to increase charges and fees?
“I think one thing that stands out for me is getting rid of visitor car park vouchers, and saying it’s because the paper’s bad for the environment rather than because it’s cheaper to do them online and it’s easier to charge for them and all works automatically. So why don’t you just say that?
“Or, we’re desperate for money because of government cuts, and need to raise it somehow, and we’re really sorry, but parking and leisure are the two ways we can do that in this district. Don’t say it’s for environmental reasons, that’s ridiculous.
“The reason why the Greens on St Albans council opposed getting rid of those vouchers is because lots of people depend on them who are not computer literate, who can’t go online or find it very difficult.
“So you’ve got to think through these things and not just say, oh well, we’re doing it because of the environment, so everyone else has got to put up with it.
“Because then environmental legislation actually gets a bad name, and people say you’re putting up prices because of the environment, because of climate change, you know what I mean. You have to be careful about explaining what you’re doing and do it for the right reasons.”
He feels more could be done towards tackling the climate emergency, with the Local Plan testament to that.
“They are insisting on continuing with this crazy Local Plan – that even the Conservative government seems to be indicating that we don’t need – and building 15,000 houses mostly on Green Belt.
“How is that supporting the environment? If we think that climate change and biodiversity loss is the number one issue, then our number one campaign in St Albans should be can we please not build those houses on the Green Belt.
“Not because we don’t want houses, but because we need the Green Belt. It’s not just nice green fields to look at out of your window if you live in Chiswell Green, it’s about a whole existence, all those services that we get for free from the environment that are never included in the economy: we get free water, we get fresh air, the river that flows through our beautiful city, all these things that just come in from the Green Belt. You keep building houses and infrastructure on the Green Belt and that’s going to and you won’t be able to get it back again.”
Aside from the Lib Dem administration, he said the attitude of the planning department with regards to the Local Plan was also very strange: “Let’s not forget, they’ve got it wrong twice. We’ve had two disastrously failed Local Plans and we’re in danger of having a third one now.
“The planning situation here is disastrous, and we need to acknowledge that and say we need to find a way forward that is actually not dragging people, kicking and screaming into this Local Plan process.
“We need to look at what the government is saying and have a conversation which says: ‘Look, we’re a Green Belt district and you’ve said that we don’t need to build on the Green Belt, but you’ve also said we need to build houses. Can we please have a conversation about what is acceptable for you? Because we like what you’re saying, we like this idea, we know why they’re saying it.’
“But our council seems to be literally too scared to even pick up the phone. Last week the Greens asked if the council could at least speak to the government, and luckily that was an example of our small group making some progress as the council agreed. So great, step one.”
Aside from the Local Plan, many of the key issues of the Greens’ election campaign are focused on national and international issues, most obviously the impact of climate change around the world.
“Even though we are lucky enough to live in a part of the world that has the resources to have some resilience to climate change, other parts of the world can’t do that.
“So we need to fix that stuff right now before it gets so bad that it’s kind of unfeasible. One of the ways to put pressure on our government and international governments to do more is to vote and say, ‘Look, this is so important that when I’m given this opportunity to express my democratic opinion, I’m going to put it at the top of the list of issues that I think you should be dealing with’.
“It’s astonishing to me that with the current government, in budget after budget, the environment and the climate crisis doesn’t get a mention. It’s the subject that no one talks about, but we’re going to have to deal with it at some point.
“If you just keep pushing it away, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse, and more and more and more expensive to deal with. So it’s an investment in our future to deal with it now, rather than waiting.”
Simon has been joining his fellow SADC Green councillors – Matt Fisher and Juliey Voisey – in campaigning on doorsteps ahead of the forthcoming May district elections, where the focus has been on what sort of opposition people want to see in the local council.
“The conversation is really about how do you want your local council to be run? Are you happy with the idea that 85% of your councillors are all from the same party? Do you think it’s important to have an opposition voice there?
“I think when the General Election does kick in, people’s views widen and they start to think about those national issues and what’s important to the country.”
With the Conservatives on SADC largely ineffectual, the Greens have stepped in to take over as the main opposition to the Lib Dems, something which has really come about in the past 12 months with the elections of Matt and Juliet.
“It’s just been extraordinary. The Lib Dems got a big majority in sort of around the time that Daisy became an MP, and we had a few years of that, and then suddenly last year we were in a situation where people became aware that almost all the councillors and pretty much all the active councillors – except for me – were Lib Dems. We had a wave of support where we were campaigning in central St Albans, and we got two more councillors with very healthy majorities.
“So we are the opposition. That’s what we are. We’re now having people contact us saying, ‘I’d be quite interested in being a councillor for the Greens’ and we didn’t used to get calls like that.
“People see that we can win, and they see that we’re doing a good by holding the council to account.”
What Simon and his fellow Green councillors – plus independent David Mitchell – are determined to avoid is the party politics of old, in which the Tories and Lib Dems went head-to-head over every issue that came before council.
“Every Full Council meeting was just a political slanging match and was just a waste of everyone’s time. As a small group, that doesn’t do us any favours. We don’t get anywhere by slagging off the opposition. We need to win them round with our arguments and say, ‘Actually, have you thought about this?’ because they can still outvote us, and regularly do.
“We need to be nice, which we’re trying to be. We need to be constructive, practical, and yeah, doing that scrutiny role on our own.
“At a local government level, that has to be the way to do things because most people are motivated by the same thing, which is to make where we live a better place. Everyone has their little hobby horse that they’re interested in. We’ve obviously got our eye on a much bigger national and international picture in getting those environmental issues and those social justice issues up the political agenda, and we hope that the work that we do in St Albans reflects well on that agenda nationally as well.
“In terms of the day-to-day of being on the council, you’ve got to work constructively, and you’ve got to try and win people over because you can’t shout at them when there’s only three of you because they’ll shout louder.”
