Why jaded rural Tories are voting Green
The Green Party is surging in the shires due to anger over new homes, solar farms and the state of our rivers. Rural politics has never been so unpredictable
Rural areas that would usually be Tory strongholds are changing political allegiance
The Sunday Times
Julie Wearing is worried. “People want to preserve the countryside and common land,” says the 64-year-old, from the village of Stowupland near Stowmarket. That is why, after a lifetime of voting Conservative, Wearing decided to give her vote to the Green Party at the local elections this month.
It was the first time she’d voted for them and she wasn’t the only one switching allegiances. In the vote on May 4, the Greens won Mid Suffolk district council from the Conservatives, taking 24 of the 34 seats and securing their first ever majority-held council in the UK.
It was the biggest wave in a national tidal surge of rural support for the party. The Greens doubled their councillors nationally from 240 to 481 — and
