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As the country braces for another general election, parliament will soon bid farewell to one of its most cherished members.
Caroline Lucas announced her intention to stand down as the MP for Brighton and Hove in June after more than 13 years in the House of Commons.
Speaking to The London Economic, the former Green Party leader explained the decision was a “very personal one”, adding that she wants to pursue the challenges that drive her day-to-day.
“It’s not saying we don’t need green voices in parliament, because we absolutely do. For me it’s feeling that as the sole MP, I’ve had 13 years of trying to be the front bench spokesperson on everything,” she said.
For Lucas, 62, who secured a majority of nearly 20,000 at the last election, the mounting pressure of constituency work certainly contributed to her decision.
With two days a week “if not more” solely dedicated to tackling her mounting caseload, the MP for Brighton and Hove warns nearly all representatives are battling with increased pressures.
“If you speak to any MP now, they will say their constituency workload has increased hugely even over the 13 years I’ve been an MP, and I think that’s a factor.
“Public services have been cut back and so many other community groups aren’t getting funding anymore. If you’ve got a problem in your constituency, there are few places you can go to try and get it sorted.
“It’s exhausting. And It’s a distraction from the thing that really gets me up in the morning. I’ve just got to the stage where I want to be able to focus more exclusively on nature and climate,” she added
As Lucas herself points out, the need for such focus is essential: the start of 2020 saw Australia consumed by its worst-ever bushfire season while Antarctic ice is at its lowest level on record.
And with Rishi Sunak having backstepped on a number of the government’s climate pledges, it’s clear the battle for the green agenda is far from over.
Just last week, during a hastily organised speech, the prime minister said he would delay a ban on new petrol and diesel cars by five years in a major u-turn.
He also confirmed households would “never” be forced to “rip out their existing boiler and replace it with a heat pump” in response to a leak of his net-zero plans.
The watering down prompted car giant Ford to call for “ambition, commitment and consistency” from the government over the transition to electric vehicles.
Lucas, who tweeted in support of the Society of Motor Manufacturers, said Sunak has managed to unite businesses, car manufacturers, environmental groups and the general public against him.
“It doesn’t happen very often, I have to admit. I think this is a really important point, and that is that the proposals we’re hearing are so bad for business as well as the environment,” she told TLE.
“For years and years, Greens have been saying that the case for a shift to a greener economy is an economic one, a business one as well as an environmental one.
“The longer we leave it, the more costly it gets. To have Ford and others making the case so strongly to a Tory government that seems to be intent on undermining jobs and turning away investment in our country really does feel as if the world has turned upside down.”
It’s perhaps unsurprising that Lucas, described by former staffer, Chris Venables, as the “official opposition on the environment”, has urged the government to stick to its climate pledges.
With her opposition to fracking and coal mining helping to establish important environmental precedents, the MP for Brighton and Hove has shifted focus on the climate over the last decade.
But while emphasis on the environment has altered dramatically, for the former Green Party leader politicians on both sides must go further and move much faster to save the planet.
And as the major political parties gear towards a general election, all eyes are very much on Labour and its plan to tackle the climate emergency.
“I think we’re also looking at Keir Starmer with a bit of amusement trying to work out what focus group has been telling him that he ought to be ditching Labour’s own green policies.
“He no longer talks about the Green New Deal which comes hot on the heels of many other u-turns. So right now, it’s a pretty grim time for voters.
“Quite seriously, unless you’ve got Greens in the next parliament who are going to be holding to account whoever forms the next government, I really worry about the amount of backsliding we might see.”
While Lucas has empowered the wider environmental movement, a decade in parliament has seen the former party leader champion essential causes.
From tearing up a copy of the Illegal Migration Bill to spearheading the campaign for proportional representation, the former Green Party leader has ploughed an extensive political furrow.
But for Lucas, it’s a voting system that translates more of the Green Party’s votes into seats that the country so desperately requires.
“Voters are right to feel betrayed. In the first general election after I was elected, over a million people voted Green. In most other proportional systems that could have given us 25 green MPs,” she said.
“That would have been transformational because suddenly people would have recognised that if you vote Green, you can see Green Party policies in action.
“We know that a hell of a lot more people believe in Green than vote because of our archaic, horrible, undemocratic voting system that sometimes leave people with no real choice at all.”
A change in the voting system in 1999 enabled Lucas to ultimately become the most influential figure the Green Party has ever had, serving as the south east’s Green MEP for more than 11 years.
Aptly, the MP for Brighton and Hove points out that electoral reform was a move once supported by Keir Starmer during the Labour leadership contest.
Calling for a “fairer, proportional voting system,” the Labour leader stressed the need to address the fact “millions of people vote in safe seats and feel their voice doesn’t count” at an event for the Electoral Reform Society in 2020.
But in an interview with the Observer in 2022, Starmer ruled out including any support for a change in the voting system despite mounting calls within his party.
“A huge amount of work went on in the Labour Party, the unions came on board and they managed to get to the point where there was a majority at conference to support proportional representation,” she told TLE.
“Then Keir Starmer just turns his back on it all and says it isn’t going in the manifesto. It makes no sense, because if he’s genuinely got a transformative agenda then he’s going to need more than one term.
“So why wouldn’t he actually recognise that this is in Labour’s own electoral interests as well as actually being good for the people of our democracy and making sure they feel they’ve got a stake in our system.”
From the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union to Covid contracts, the MP for Brighton and Hove has had a front-row seat to events that have reshaped the country.
And it’s without doubt her departure will leave a void in a Westminster that has grown so accustomed to her trademark questioning of ministers and dogged fight against social injustice.
From leading the charge on the addition of natural history to the GCSE curriculum, to debates on alternative ways to measure the economy, the sole Green MP departs having influenced tangible change.
So it’s perhaps no surprise, then, that Lucas, whose interventions on Brexit and welfare have changed national conversations, is concerned at the direction the country is headed.
“We’re running out of words to describe the situation we’re in. Political chaos sounds a little bit too kind, it’s just unprecedented.
“We’ve seen in terms of austerity, first of all, and the damage that did, and then Brexit and the way in which Covid was handled, and then the extraordinary deceit of Boris Johnson and prorogation.”
Lucas was among a number of MPs who assembled at Church House to agree the formation of an alternative parliament in the event the prime minister proceeded with shutting down the existing one.
Alongside Labour’s John McDonell, former Conservative MP Anna Soubry as well as then Liberal Democrat leader, Jo Swinson, the Brighton and Hove MP pledged to “block what is nothing less than a coup”.
“If you were writing a script, someone would just say it’s simply not credible. You can throw your hands up in horror and say it’s been a farce, but there are real people’s lives who have been wrecked.
“And this growth of populism and this shift ever to the right I think is deeply dangerous. It’s a really worrying time.”
But for Lucas, it’s not all doom and gloom – and the former Green Party leader takes comfort in the fact more people are waking up to the threats facing the planet.
“The fact that the majority of the British public gets this and environment regularly comes up in the top three issues that people say is on their list of concerns even during a time of a cost of living crisis,” she told TLE.
“I think there’s lots happening in terms of where the public mood is, where businesses, and young people are, which of course is hugely exciting because they care so much about this stuff.
“So for sure, there are reasons for hope – hope isn’t just a kind of a feeling of optimism – in recognising that there are possibilities for a different future out there and committing ourselves to trying to get those.”
Related: Watch: Caroline Lucas rips up Illegal Immigration Bill in Parliament
