The climate is a huge topic – can Greens’ capitalise?

Founded 33 years ago, the Green Party have just one MP in Parliament out of a total of 650 electoral constituencies across the UK.

With climate change on the news agenda for many years now - and unlikely to ever go away either - it is perhaps surprising to some that Caroline Lucas is her party’s sole representative in Westminster.

It is a similar story at grassroots level, with the Greens’ recent victory in the Mid-Suffolk local elections their first ever success. In all, the party gained 200 seats across 230 councils as the Tories lost 957 with Labour gaining 643 and the Lib Dems 415.

Of those 200, one was here in the Portsmouth region - Grainne Rason winning the Emsworth seat to become the first Green candidate ever to take a seat on Havant Borough Council.

It was a momentous occasion. As our report in today’s paper reveals, Grainne’s win ‘produced an audible gasp by counting hall attendants as the village has historically been a safe Conservative stronghold’. Even Grainne said she was ‘somewhat shellshocked’.

Cllr Rason says pollution in the Solent - a hugely important topic over the course of many years now - is one of her priorities. Another is ‘inappropriate’ housing developments which have ‘really impacted’ on green spaces in Emsworth.

Those might be issues of importance to Emsworth residents, but they also affect many communities up and down the country, both coastal and inland.

So could other councils ever end up - like Mid-Suffolk - being run by the Green party? Is that a realistic prospect in the British political landscape in the 21st century, when the likes of David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg have a huge platform whenever they speak about climate change?

Or is it just a pipedream, with the Greens forever destined to play just a bit-part role?