So the day is finally here. The chance to vote to end 14 years of Tory misrule and see change. But is it really?

Two parties are saying they would provide change, but only one is offering REAL change and REAL hope – The Green Party.

The Labour Party slogan ‘Change’ is so reductive and self fulfilling it’s almost worthless as an electoral ambition. Will Labour provide change? Well yes, if they’re elected as the majority government we will see a change by definition. Where there was once Rishi Sunak, there will be Keir Starmer. A clear change of leader and administration, but is that all we want? Will we see REAL change? I rather doubt it.

Labour’s manifesto suggests otherwise with so many policies seemingly just a continuation of what we have with the Tories. Things like the Bedroom Tax, The Two Child Benefit cap, a continuation of the oil and gas drilling licences granted by the Conservatives, including the highly questionable Rosebank. None of that will change and neither will things like private provision in the NHS or a really progressive tax regime.

So what real change will we see with Labour, or any of the other parties for that matter? It looks like the only thing that will be changing will be the climate!

Even the Liberal Democrats haven’t really committed to change on important things like tax reform or tuition fees which of course they were instrumental in bringing in. Their candidate in Bicester & Woodstock is a well meaning guy, but he was also an adviser to the coalition government during the first period of austerity, as was the Conservative candidate, so not much change for the better there!

Can I win in Bicester and Woodstock? That depends on you, the voters. It’s a circular argument that Greens can’t win so we don’t get votes, but if we don’t get votes we can’t win. But even if I don’t win my purpose is still to raise more awareness of the Green Party and our values. A party I’ve supported for 12 years and voted for for even longer, back when they were even more unlikely to be elected. Since then there’s been a huge surge in support for Greens, something I’ve seen first hand after being elected to 5 different councils as a Green and re-elected to one of those since.

If the Green Party didn’t exist and people hadn’t voted for them, do you think the other parties would have taken any notice of climate change or other Green issues? I very much doubt it and that’s even more obvious now that parties like Labour and the Conservatives are backing away from their climate change commitments because to stick by them is electorally inconvenient.

So the Greens have brought about real change over the past decade and will continue to push for more in the coming years, especially as we are looking set to at least triple our representation in Westminster. Change on things like the NHS, social care, social security, justice, equal rights, animal welfare, nature recovery, climate change and so much more.

I’d of course love to be one of those parliamentarians helping to make those changes, as our new MPs will do through careful lobbying and internal pressure on whomever is in power by the end of this week. But I know that’s unlikely. But every vote for me and every other Green candidate still counts. It counts as part of the message the whole country needs to send to Westminster, even more so as the ruling party is likely to have a majority so large that they probably won’t be in the mood to listen to anyone else.

But I have faith that Greens will always find a way to move the needle and work for positive change. And I’ll continue to do that whatever happens in the polls on Thursday. I’m content to play a role, no matter how small in helping to make the future a brighter place for the next generation. Your vote can help me and every other Green candidate to do that, so I hope you’ll give that thought some serious consideration when you mark that cross on the ballot sheet.

The polls suggest that the outcome to this election is a foregone conclusion. Labour will comfortably win a huge majority and in Bicester & Woodstock the Lib Dems will romp home. If nothing else people will vote for them just to stop them sending any more leaflets! So you can safely vote Green, knowing it’s extremely unlikely to change that outcome.

So more than ever in this election you can vote with your heart to make real change happen. Change that means more than a different name on the House of Commons letterhead. Otherwise we’ll be right back here in 5 or 10 years time, probably with the Conservatives promising the change that we never really seem to get.

As someone else said during this election “If you want change you have to vote for it”. If you want REAL change you have to vote Green!