“A Green tidal wave is coming at the next general election,” declared Hannah Spencer, as she became the first ever Green Party MP to be elected in the north of England last week. She and a growing cohort of women are at its crest.
Spencer is not the typical face of green politics. A plumber who left school at 16 and was still completing her plastering training during the campaign, she represents the kind of voter the Green Party – with its middle-class, southern UK heartland – has long struggled to reach.
