Why haven't the Greens cut through more?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2025
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Green Party leadership election is underway, pitting new MPs Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns against London Assembly Member Zack Polanski. The Greens achieved their best ever result at the 2024 general election, but they’ve remained static in opinion polls ever since. Lucy Dunn and Luke Tryl of More in Common join Patrick Gibbons to try to make sense of this. As Luke says, the dynamics within the leadership election are symptomatic of a wider divide over party strategy – two of the seats they won last year come from more liberal, traditionally left-wing seats, while two others come from traditionally conservative-leaning, rural shires. Plus, does Corbyn’s new party complicate any attempt to make them the anti-system party of the left?
But first, what does the High Court migrant hotel ruling mean for the government? And will it help anti-system parties like the Greens and Reform?
Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics podcast. I'm Patrick Gibbons and today I'm joined by Lucy Dunn and Luke Trill of More In Common. |
| 0:13.9 | We thought we'd spend some time today looking at the Green Party leadership election. But first, |
| 0:17.9 | we've had the news that the government's lost a High Court ruling over migrant hotels. |
| 0:22.4 | Lucy, what's been going on? |
| 0:23.6 | So, yes, yesterday afternoon we heard that asylum seekers will be removed from the Bell Hotel in Essex |
| 0:28.7 | after Epping Forest District Council was granted a temporary injunction by the High Court. |
| 0:34.1 | So this action comes after a series of protesters have been gathered outside the venue |
| 0:38.5 | over a number of weeks after a resident inside was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old |
| 0:43.9 | girl. So it's a bit of an interesting situation actually. This injunction was granted on |
| 0:50.0 | a technicality, which ultimately is down to the fact that the hotel is not being used as a |
| 0:56.6 | hotel. It's not being used for its designated purpose. The council's lawyers claimed that the |
| 1:02.1 | hotel group had breached planning rules. The lawyers argued that the situation outside with |
| 1:06.9 | the protests could not be much worse. And so this is where we've got to just now. |
| 1:15.8 | But it's quite an interesting set of events because it does set a precedent, I suppose, |
| 1:20.1 | for other hotels around the country that also house migrants. |
| 1:23.4 | The Home Office did stage this 11th hour intervention. |
| 1:28.1 | It was unsuccessful with their lawyers insisting that the injunction runs the risk of actings and impetus for further violent protests. This morning we heard on BBC Radio |
| 1:34.0 | 4's today programme that security minister Dan Jarvis was talking about this situation. |
| 1:39.1 | He says for a while neither the Labour government nor the Conservative government |
| 1:43.5 | before that wanted to be in the situation of housing asylum seekers in hotels. But when he was quizzed further |
| 1:49.5 | about what the next step would be, he just seemed quite unable to actually answer that question. |
| 1:54.7 | And I suppose, as is the crux of the matters, find no one wants to see hotels being used for |
... |
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