We spoke to 21 year old Ria to find out more about their journey into politics, tactical voting v conscience-led voting and what the alternatives to the major political parties could be.
The Green Party is having a bit of a moment. They look set to keep Brighton, and have their eye on winning Bristol Central, a typically Labour voting constituency. The Greens look likely to end up with at least two MPs and polling amongst 18-24 year olds shows support for them is at around 15%, the second highest after Labour (who still hold the majority of projected younger votes). In an election where the Labour party looks set to win a resounding majority, more voters might be tempted to vote less tactically and vote with their conscience instead.
Standing in the constituency of Croydon West is Ria Patel. They’ve been a councillor in the ward of Fairfield, becoming Croydon’s youngest and first non-binary councillor and is the party’s Equalities & Diversity Spokesperson. We spoke to Ria to find out more about their journey into politics, tactical v conscience-led voting and what the alternatives to the major political parties could be.
What’s been your personal journey into the Green Party?
I was quite inspired by the different things that the Greens were doing nationally, especially in terms of LGBTQAI rights. I think it was just COVID that really, like, spun me into dedicating more time towards social justice and campaigning for different rights across the board.
I received an email from LGBTQAI+ Greens about issues that I'm really passionate about: domestic violence and also queer homelessness. It's something that I've experienced in terms of partner violence, but also I’ve had friends who’ve experienced homelessness.
It kind of just got me thinking that I need to get involved, and I need to take action. I got involved nationally through different liberation groups, Greens of Colour, and then more locally as well in Croydon where I'm from. I ran as a councillor for the ward of Fairfield in Croydon eventually and got elected.
A fair amount of young people seem to like Green Party policies, but they might ask, what’s the point in voting for you? Under the first past the post they won’t win the vast majority of seats. What do you say to those voters?
Tactical voting has been something that’s been all over social media recently. The line that the Labour party has been pushing is that “if you want change, you gotta vote for them.” But what are they really offering? They're not really offering a massive amount of change.
Their policies are to continue more of what the Tories have already implemented: austerity. The Greens are offering actual change, real change and we're providing hope along the way. For example, we're investing in our public services like our NHS, we're committing to renationalising and bringing into public ownership, energy and cleaning up the water as well. We're offering investment on fighting climate change, but also social justice, because the two things are so combined, you can't separate them if we want to, like, save the planet, we've got to save people.
So I think for young people, it's really important to think about what your values are and how you want to vote because. We know that like in a lot of places, Labour is going to win and if you vote for them, you're giving them a mandate to kind of do whatever they want. Do you really want more of the same or do you want a real shift in perspective in society? Do we want to be happier? Do we want to be a society which welcomes everybody, regardless of who they are or where they come from? We're offering that different perspective to the other major parties.
After the election is over, what do you think young people should be doing to push for the policies and the political change that they would like to see? Does democratic action just end at the ballot box?
Yeah, there's an election happening on Thursday. But then what you're gonna do after that? And I think young people, and people generally need to be getting involved in their communities and kind of signing up for the things they care about because the people with money are being heard currently in both the Labour party and the Tory party. We have to act if we really want a shift in policies, an investment in climate change, an investment in making our public services actually work, making our local councils be able to provide social care, even like you know, the simple day-to-day things that we we don't think like about like getting our bins collected and making sure our streets are clean and safe.
There is conversation about younger people potentially being enticed by more radical or hard right politics. What do you make of this?
I'm not sure it's so enticing. But, what I think parties like Reform UK are offering is fear and division. They're stoking hate within people and what we really need is a society where we care about one another, and we are all invested in living sustainably, making sure everyone is safe and free to be who they want to be or feel safe.
What they're offering is also more austerity, cuts and individualistic ideology, whereas we need to be thinking about the collective. We need to be thinking about those who are most vulnerable and how we can support them and make sure that everyone is able to thrive.
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