In an interview with Left Foot Forward, Womack said, "I will never shy away from ensuring that I'm putting my experience in to do the best thing for the party"

The Green Party of England and Wales’ outgoing deputy leader Amelia Womack has refused to rule out another bid to be the party’s leader, Left Foot Forward can exclusively reveal. Womack confirmed she hadn’t shut the door on her leadership ambitions in an interview with Left Foot Forward.

Speaking to Womack at the Green Party’s biannual conference in Harrogate this weekend, she said of her future plans within the party, “I’m always going to want to use my knowledge to ensure that we are building the Green movement and we’re getting Greens elected, and that we are putting those policies in elected Council chambers, in parliament, in all of the areas where we have influence to ensure that we are building towards a greener and more just future for everyone. What that looks like in the future – time will tell. But I will never shy away from ensuring that I’m putting my experience in to do the best thing for the party”.

Pressed on whether that meant she would be interested in running for the party’s leadership in the future, Womack said, “I’m not ruling it out.”

Womack stood for the party leadership in 2021. She stood on a joint-ticket with the climate activist Tamsin Omond. Womack and Omond received 30 per cent of the first preference vote in that election, but came second to Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay. The next leadership election is due to take place in 2024.

In the immediate future, Womack is planning on taking her platform within the party to an international level. Standing for the party’s international committee, she is also going to be a delegate at the COP27 climate conference on behalf of the Global Greens. Presently, she’s crowdfunding to send a “diverse delegation” to the talks and fund Green delegates from India and Rwanda. She says she wants to use the event to push “issues around loss and damage – as that was such a barrier to what was possible at COP26. But also [to hold] to account UK leaders for the things they say, the warm words that they say. I think it’s really telling that the climate emergency wasn’t mentioned at all in Boris Johnson’s resignation speech.”

Given Womack has just come to the end of eight years as the party’s deputy leader – a time over which the Green Party has more than tripled its membership and seen unprecedented electoral success – she also gave some of her key reflections of her time in office. She said, “It’s been an incredible eight years. It’s been four prime ministers, three general elections, two referendums, countless council elections. And what we’ve seen in that time is the party go from strength to strength.”

These comments built on what she said in her keynote speech at the party’s conference, which will be her final as outgoing deputy leader. She told the conference that the party had “gone from a small party with a few thousand members to a mass movement of tens of thousands – from being ignored by the establishment to becoming a voice of authority not just on climate change but on social justice too, to almost quadrupling our councillors to the powerful team of 558 councillors representing their communities across the country.”

Alongside the electoral gains the Greens have made and the party’s internal growth, Womack also speaks with pride about the specific issues the she has campaigned on under her tenure. She specifically cites the campaign to make misogyny a hate crime, which she says, “saw me work cross-party on women’s rights and I have really enjoyed trying to change the narrative on such an important issue, but also enjoyed working with women on those priorities from different political parties.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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