Our political landscape is dominated by the big two parties. This hugely restricts and twists our political landscape and discussion. It fails to fairly represent the wide range of people and views in our society.

The big two parties regularly try and fool people that voting for anyone other than them is ‘wasted’ – but this is total nonsense.

Specifically, here in Hunslet and Riverside, it’s a close contest between the Greens and Labour – and in fact, we won in 2022. The other parties are far behind. So a Green vote really here could determine the overall result. And local elections have almost zero bearing on national politics: they are all about our community.

But more than that, we need to tenaciously work at building a better more diverse political landscape. This area was previously dominated for decades by Labour – and the same is largely true for Leeds City Council.

There are some great people in Labour (many of them vote for us, locally!) – and there are some great Labour councillors, who we work with. But single-party domination and so-called ‘safe seats’ are a problem: it can easily create a lazy entitled politics, with communities taken for granted.

We (the Green Party) are proud to have offered a positive alternative to the same-old – here in Hunslet and Riverside, and in communities across the UK. Many people are turning away from the big parties, so the Greens are growing fast – especially on local councils.

We broke through here last year (2022) – and it wouldn’t have happened if a growing number of people hadn’t kindly ‘wasted’ their votes on us in previous years. Many thanks again! If you like Green, vote Green, and in time, we will together change politics for good.

Finally, if you’ve a few minutes, click here for a long post I wrote about so-called ‘wasted votes’ and ‘tactical voting’. No vote is ever ‘wasted’ – and in fact, votes for smaller parties are arguably more useful to them than the bigger parties in any election.

(Image: Ed and other Greens helped organise a community clear-up in Beeston Hill – and are here pictured with community members, and (shock!) some folk from Labour. There are some good ‘uns in Labour, we very happily work with them – but we’re fed up of councillors who live faraway, and are utterly failing to deliver.)