WE'RE SEEING RED AFTER GOING GREEN

Since taking minority control of Bristol Council last year, the city has become a Petri dish of the radical Left-wing party's policies. And budget cuts, threats to services and a controversial traffic scheme have left voters feeling less than environmentally friendly

- By Adam Toms

WHO’D have thought governing might be more difficult than poking criticism from the opposition benches? No, not Sir Keir Starmer and Labour, but the Green Party, the perennial party of protest now running one of southern England’s largest cities.

Last year’s local elections were the seventh year in a row of Green gains with a record high of 809 councillors on 174 councils. That included winning the most seats on Bristol Council, making it the first major authority the Green Party has led since losing minority control of Brighton and Hove in 2015.

A recent YouGov poll revealed that 20% of voters in the UK would consider the Greens but 50% of those say they worry it would be a wasted vote and this holds them back — but this wasn’t the case in Bristol.

The South-West city has a Green MP in Carla Denyer but has become the frontline in Green politics — a Petri dish, if you like, of what the radical Left-wing party would try to do if elected elsewhere — and not everyone is happy.

The council has just approved a 4.9% council tax hike while looking at making £43million of cuts to close an urgent budget gap — with locals worried about the loss of libraries and museums.

Labour, now in opposition, claimed there were likely to be cuts to domestic abuse services, archives and waste collections — Bristol may soon become the first English council to collect bins only every four weeks — even though they claim the Greens have “bailed out of doing most of the unpalatable things”.

Indeed, among others the council has U-turned on slashing the city’s libraries budget by half, getting rid of crossing patrols to save £314,000 and closing three museums to save £132,000. At least for now.