It’s a sultry afternoon in rural Essex and Carla Denyer, the co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, is hip-high in a field of wild grass. There’s the mellow hum of insects, the scold of a blue tit, the earthy balm of nearby woodland. We pause to admire the flowers – meadowsweet, cow parsley, yarrow.
I ask what a tall purple flower is called. “Don’t know,” says the 39-year-old. Actually, she doesn’t know the names of any of them.
“Except that one. That’s an oxeye daisy.” Just because she is a Green, she says, don’t assume she can name all the plants.
Or the trees. Or the birds. Don’t assume that she was the sort of kid to make ant farms or raise money for rhinos, either.
She didn’t even have pets (“Oh, except fish. My dad had a fish tank”). She describes herself less as a conservationist, more as a scientist.
She was an engineer in renewable energy before “sidestepping” into politics. What’s more, “Mine is not an uncommon route. There are a lot of scientists and engineers in the Green Party.
” With that, she’s happy to admit to being a hay fever sufferer. And she didn’t hesitate to reveal that it was a bumblebee, of all things, that landed her in A&E the day before the state opening of Parliament in July. Her message is this: the Green Party in 2024 is not just about cycling and recycling, beards and badges, protests and plant-based everything.
“We’ve never only been about the environment. Or only been a pressure group.