Greens hopeful of Norwich North victory

Green party members will meet tonight to outline the timetable for selecting a candidate to fight the forthcoming Norwich North by-election.

The party is in buoyant mood after the local and European election result where they topped the poll in Norwich - stoking a belief they may be in a position to snatch the seat from Labour when the by-election is called.

While the Conservative candidate Chloe Smith should, on paper, win the seat, the Greens believe they might be able to pull off a surprise.

While Labour's nightmare scenario is that the Greens will beat them in to second place - giving them a platform to argue that they are the main challengers to the Tories at the next general election.

The Green's MEP candidate Rupert Read, who narrowly missed out on winning a seat in Brussels on Sunday, has already suggested he might put his name forward to contest the seat.

Other names to watch out for are Claire Stephenson, who chairs the city council's scrutiny committee, and Andrew Boswell the leader of the Greens at Norfolk County Council.

Adrian Ramsay, Green Party deputy leader, said the party will meet tonight to draw up its election strategy and confirmed that Adrian Holmes, who was the party's candidate at the last two general elections and had already been selected, did not want to contest the by-election.

“Adrian has decided he doesn't want to stand,” he said. “He told me that he didn't want to stand before we knew the European election result because of work and family reasons.

“We need to select a new candidate and we have got a party meeting to talk about our strategy for the campaign and we need to talk about the selection process,” he said. “A few people are considering it but no-one has definitely said they are going to put themselves forward. Everybody is excited by the prospect because of how well we did in the Mile Cross and Sewell seats. We won more votes than any other party across the city area, and we think we can put on a strong showing.”

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