General Election

Sunday, 13 December 2009

Ricky Knight to stand for Greens in Bristol West

The Green Party has chosen Barnstaple town councillor Ricky Knight to compete for the Bristol West seat in the upcoming general election.

Retired languages teacher Knight, 59, stood for the Greens in North Devon in the 2005 General Election and was their leading South West candidate for the European Election last June, where they won 144,000 votes, well ahead of Labour and were only 0.8% short of making an historic political breakthrough.

"Bristol West is a very exciting seat for the Greens and shows a real potential of breaking the mould of our deeply-flawed 'first-past-the-post' electoral system.

"I am proud and privileged to have been chosen to represent them," Knight said.

Knight pointed out that at the local elections in June 2009, the Greens came second overall as a party in the wards that make up Bristol West.

"This means that the fight for this Westminster seat has to be seen as a four-party race", he said.

"The fall-out from the expenses revelations prior to the European Elections is still reverberating with the electorate - and there is a very real feeling that nothing has fundamentally changed.

"The Bristol West electorate is pretty sophisticated and is quite capable of seeing through the reality of Westminster politics, where the whipping system guarantees that MPs rarely step out of line and where all three major parties have merged to the centre-right.

"The Green Party increasingly represents a clean, fresh, fair and credible alternative to 'politics as usual'."

Changes in the make-up of the constituency should also favour the Greens.

Following a review by the Boundary Commission, Easton and Lawrence Hill wards have been included in Bristol West (from Bristol East) and the traditionally Conservative Stoke Bishop, Westbury-on-Trym and Henleaze have been moved to Bristol North West.

The changes mean that Bristol West's nine wards now include seven of Bristol's top ten Green voting wards after Southville.

Note:  For information on Bristol East, see "Glenn Vowles to contest Bristol East seat for the Greens"