Green Party co-leader Sian Berry says efforts to meet with Sir Keir Starmer have been ignored - despite the fact they live so close they sometimes see each other at the shops.
As well as leading the Greens, Sian is the party’s mayoral candidate to take on Sadiq Khan once again next year, a London Assembly member and a councillor for Highgate - living in the Labour leader’s constituency.
On this week’s Ham&High Podcast, Sian speaks about adapting to life during lockdown, the benefits for everybody of schemes such as the low-traffic neighbourhoods, how Glee provides the soundtrack to some of her work and the importance of parties working together.
She said she and Green co-leader Jonathan Bartley have been unable to arrange a meeting with Keir Starmer since his election in April.
“I sometimes bump into him at the shops ‘cause we live very close together,” she said.
“And obviously I see him - I used to when we had physical events - I’d see him at a lot of public events around Camden and say ‘hello’ but, I’ll be honest, since he took over the Labour Party, I have not been able to meet him. Me and Jonathan wrote a letter to all three of the candidates for leader. We thought we’d write just before the results came out and said we want to meet you. We want to talk about how we work together through the crisis. You know, what sorts of ways we can jointly put proposals to the to the government. There are ways in which having the Green Party and the Labour Party both saying something gives it more weight than if just one of us does.”
READ MORE: Ham&High Podcast: Catherine West MP on Labour’s challenge, housing and her Netflix tip
READ MORE: Sian Berry: ‘Half a billion pounds waiting to be spent on housing’
She said she wants to discuss with Labour changing the voting system, citing the success Labour and the Green Party have had working together in New Zealand, where there is proportional representation.
“We’ve not heard not had a response and we’ve been chasing up so I’m quite aggrieved by that because I think new ways of doing politics are much needed,” she said.
“You’d think a new broom would at least want to talk to other party leaders and it has not happened.”
The Labour leadership was approached for comment.
For the full audio interview, and others in our podcast series, simply go to https://podfollow.com/hamhigh/.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here