Yes.
Realistically in this election, there were no winners, but considering everything, us Greens still did reasonably. We saw two party politics grow, fuelled by tactical voting and campaigns of fear, but the Green Party ran a big, bold campaign and pioneered a new kind of politics: alliances, more disabled candidates than ever before, co-leadership, and we've tackled hate with hope.
Caroline Lucas increased her majority in Brighton Pavilion with a 10.4% increase in vote share on 2015, winning 52.3% of the vote. We stood in 80 percent of seats this snap election, and whilst our vote share went down in most seats, we retained our position (usually 4th or 5th) in 192 seats and moved up a place in 125 seats. We achieved our second highest ever vote share in a general election. Under a fair system of proportional representation, we would have won 11 seats.
With Corbyn leading Labour, many people have said the Greens should just join Labour and be done with it, but there are a lot of things that prevent that, first of all, the PLP's persistant lack of support for Corbyn tells us that if Corbyn stops being the leader of the Labour Party, that the progressive policies we saw him present this election (many of which Greens have been advocating for, for many years) would be reversed. Labour's platform is also lacking in a number of areas; Welfare, Proportional Representation, Migration, Climate Change, and defence.
Despite Jeremy Corbyn's ardent CND / Stop the War stances, Labour's manifesto pledged to keep Trident, doing so at a cost of at least £110 billion over the next 30 years. Their manifesto also joined in with the right-wing's game of attacking migration, talking not of a migration system that meets the needs of people - one that saves lives, but of one that meets business needs.
So yes, the Greens are still relevant and are a worthy progressive force in British politics, we're holding people and parties to account whether it's by calling out the government for bringing the NHS to its knees or fighting an extreme Brexit., we're supporting our allies in other parties when we agree, and we'll always stand up for what matters and fight for an inclusive, tolerant society with a positive vision for a sustainable future.
Come with us to make our impact even bigger and together we can change politics for good.