Green Party of England and Wales

Green Party of England and Wales
Plaid Werdd Lloegr a Chymru
AbbreviationGPEW
LeaderZack Polanski
Deputy LeadersRachel Millward
Mothin Ali
ChairJon Nott
House of Commons LeaderEllie Chowns
FoundedJuly 1990 (1990-07)
Preceded byGreen Party (UK)
HeadquartersPO Box 78066, London SE16 9GQ
Youth wingYoung Greens of England and Wales
LGBT wingLGBTIQA+ Greens
Membership (March 2026)216,000
IdeologyGreen politics
Progressivism
Factions:
Eco-socialism
Anti-capitalism
Political positionLeft-wing
European affiliationEuropean Green Party
International affiliationGlobal Greens
Colours
  •   Green
Devolved branchesWales Green Party
London Green Party
House of Commons
5 / 575
(England and Wales)
House of Lords
2 / 842
Senedd
0 / 60
London Assembly
3 / 25
Directly elected strategic authority mayors in England
0 / 14
Directly elected single authority mayors in England
0 / 13
Councillors
903 / 17,403
(England and Wales)
Councils led
12 / 338
(England and Wales)
PCCs and PFCCs
0 / 37
Election symbol
Website
greenparty.org.uk

The Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW; Welsh: Plaid Werdd Lloegr a Chymru), often known simply as the Green Party or the Greens, is a green and left-wing political party in England and Wales. Since September 2025, Zack Polanski has served as the party's leader. The party has five representatives in the House of Commons and two in the House of Lords, in addition to more than 900 councillors at the local government level and three members of the London Assembly.

The party's ideology combines environmentalism with left-wing economic policies, including well-funded and locally controlled public services. It supports proportional representation, LGBTQ rights, drug policy reform, and is pro-immigration. It is split into various regional divisions, including the semi-autonomous Wales Green Party and is internationally affiliated with the Global Greens and the European Green Party.

In 1990, what was then the UK-wide Green Party – which had initially been established as the PEOPLE Party in 1973 – divided into the Green Party of England and Wales, the Scottish Greens and the Green Party Northern Ireland. Since 1990, they have been three completely separate and unique political parties, with their own separate leaders, memberships and policies. The Green Party of England and Wales went through centralising reforms spearheaded by the Green 2000 group in early 1991; they also sought to emphasise growth in local governance, doing so throughout 1990. In 2010, the party gained its first member of Parliament in its then-leader Caroline Lucas, although Plaid Cymru's Cynog Dafis was elected as a joint Plaid Cymru-Green Party candidate in the 1990s. As the party's support is spread out across England and Wales and has rarely been found in electorally significant clusters, the party held only one seat in the House of Commons from 2010 to 2019, before reaching four seats in 2024. The Green Party supports replacing the UK's first-past-the-post voting system with proportional representation, which would grant all parties a share of seats in Parliament based on their national vote share.

Since 2025, and in particular since Polanski's election as leader, the party's membership has more than tripled; it has seen a significant increase of support in polling, notably from voters dissatisfied with the abandonment of policies and changes in direction by the Labour Party. Their Youth Wing, the Young Greens of England and Wales, has risen in membership to 40,000, becoming Europe's largest youth wing. Since November 2025, the Greens have surpassed both Labour and the Conservatives in varying polls for the first time, gaining a significant lead on them by March 2026.