IT would be easy for the left to beat ourselves up over last week’s election.

Labour won a landslide of seats on a dull, centrist manifesto with little ambition to radically change the power imbalances of this country, or to tackle the vast and widening inequality so many face.

Support for far-right policies surged and Reform took a sizeable chunk of the vote-share, winning five seats including one for Nigel Farage. And with our unfair, undemocratic first-past-the-post voting system, last week’s election produced one of the most unrepresentative parliaments ever, with a vast gap between vote-share and seat-share.

That said, last week’s election saw countless successes for the left, particularly in England, and I think there’s a real opportunity to learn from these and build on them in the run-up to the next Westminster election which will likely take place in 2029.

In particular, the success of left-wing pro-Palestine independents in a number of seats as well as the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) has resulted in at least nine MPs south of the Border who will hold the Labour government to account from the left.

Shadow Cabinet secretaries Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire lost their seats to independent Shockat Adam and GPEW co-leader Carla Denyer respectively, while Wes Streeting – often seen as a likely successor to Starmer – came just over 500 votes away from losing his seat in Ilford North to independent Leanne Mohamad.

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The GPEW ran a spectacular campaign this election, and I think there are lessons the Scottish Greens can learn from this. GPEW were exceptionally clear and disciplined in their targeting in this election – both to voters and to activists.

The party was unafraid to clearly lay out the scale of their ambition to voters, making clear at every opportunity that they were aiming for four MPs in Brighton Pavilion, Bristol Central, North Herefordshire, and Waveney Valley, and clearly explaining the impact that electing Greens in these four seats would have.

Simply put, no-one voting Green was expecting the party to be forming a majority government, but instead understood that having Greens in Westminster would guarantee that there would be MPs holding a Labour government to account from the left, and using the platform that comes with being an MP to put pressure on the Government to further the Green agenda.

GPEW’s clear and explicit targeting didn’t put off voters from voting for them in other seats that weren’t targets – quite the opposite in fact – and Greens took second place in dozens of constituencies, firmly placing the party as “the ones to beat” for incumbents wishing to keep their seats at the next election.

This means those incumbents will need to appeal to Green voters over the next five years, ensuring that the Green influence over policy decisions this government makes will be greater than just the four MPs in the House of Commons.

GPEW’s wins haven’t come from nowhere, and their record results in local elections in recent years have helped solidify a strong voter base across England.

That their co-leaders during this campaign – Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay – were not MPs themselves but rather a councillor and former councillor respectively is a strength, not a weakness, helping them clearly make the link to the electorate between the essential work of local democracy and how this translates to what’s happening in Westminster.

It helped them demonstrate the invaluable work their councillors are already doing, and use that to show the impact of electing Greens to Westminster.

I think there’s a lot the Scottish Greens and other Scottish leftists can learn from our comrades south of the Border.

Our political environment in Scotland is undeniably different, with the presence of devolution and the SNP both shaking things up compared to England, but the principles are the same.

The Scottish Greens have not historically fared well in first-past-the-post Westminster elections, I think in part because the dominance of the SNP and Labour throughout the years has resulted in most left-of-centre voters voting tactically for these two parties along constitutional lines; but particularly with many pro-independence and other left-wing voters growing increasingly disillusioned with the SNP, there is a clear opportunity for the Scottish Greens.

Our voting system is broken and undemocratic, but until it’s changed it’s what we have to work with.

Like the Greens south of the Border, the Scottish Greens can win first-past-the-post elections. In the 2022 local elections, Martha Wardrop of the Scottish Greens won Hillhead ward in Glasgow with 36.2% of the vote, beating the SNP and Labour candidates.

Subsequently, Seonad Hoy took the Scottish Greens’ first-ever by-election victory in that same ward, a result that she would’ve won on first preferences were it not for far-right spoiler candidate Independent Green Voice.

It’s no easy feat, especially for a party that is deprived of the media attention awarded to others and which unlike every other party doesn’t have millionaire donors to fund its campaign activity – but a people-powered movement like the Scottish Greens can absolutely get results.

Last week’s election saw the party more than double its vote share across Scotland, with a record number of candidates keeping their deposits, and with every single Green in Glasgow taking third place behind Labour and the SNP, securing the party’s position as Glasgow’s third party.

Niall Christie achieved a record result in Glasgow South, securing the Scottish Greens’ best-ever result in a Westminster election with 13.1% of the result, with Iris Duane in Glasgow North not far behind – both smashing previous record-holder and co-leader Patrick Harvie’s 2017 result in Glasgow North.

Neither of these Glasgow results, nor the party’s results in Edinburgh North and Leith, and Orkney and Shetland, are far off the GPEW’s 2019 results in Waveney and North Herefordshire, both of which GPEW achieved huge swings to win with more than 40% of the vote.

While the political environment is different in Scotland, it’s clear now that the prospect of a Scottish Greens MP in Westminster is not as unlikely as it perhaps once seemed – but we’ll need to work damn hard to make it happen.