When Adrian Ramsay confounded more than a century of Conservative hegemony in rural East Anglia to win Waveney Valley for the Greens on a wave of local enthusiasm, he might have expected to enjoy a pleasant political honeymoon.
Pledging to work constructively with the new government, Ramsay’s first significant parliamentary intervention at the inaugural PMQs 20 days into his new job was an innocuous inquiry about how Keir Starmer would show leadership at the forthcoming Cop16 conference on nature. It was met with the football-loving prime minister’s rhetorical equivalent of a two-footed tackle.
“He talks about leadership,” shot back Starmer. “I would ask him to show some, because it is extraordinary that having been elected to this house as a Green politician, he is opposing vital clean energy infrastructure in his own constituency.”
The attack shocked the courteous co-leader of the Green party but it came because pro-renewables Ramsay has asked for the economic case for an unpopular new pylon route across his constituency to be reconsidered. More recently, Ramsay has been sharply criticised by the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, as the pair clashed over Labour’s controversial plans for carbon capture and storage – “a fig-leaf for fossil fuel”, says Ramsay.
“I very much believe in working constructively with any other party or individual MP where I can agree and there’s lots of examples where Greens have worked with others,” he says from his still-spartan Westminster office. “That’s how I think the public wants politics to work. The prime minister has talked about restoring politics as a public service, and he has a lifetime of public service, so I believe that’s what he wants to do, but yes, it is disappointing when any politician resorts to individual attacks.”
Ramsay, 43, might be forgiven if his youthful positivity has diminished after a somewhat bruising first 100 days. Like each one of the record 335 new MPs, his work began the moment he was elected but he had none of the five or six staff required to run an MP’s office.
When he was allocated a room, it was situated at the far edge of the parliamentary “ring of steel”, accessed through puddle-filled courtyards and, to judge from the poison-bait stations everywhere, a rat-infested building site.
Speaking above the clang of scaffolding being erected, Ramsay is not complaining, but the biggest challenge was starting work without staff. “The job starts straight away and you’re given a budget for your staff team and you need them to do your job well and get back to constituents effectively but you can’t create that out of nowhere,” he says. “That’s been the most frustrating thing for every new MP.”
Deluged with emails, Ramsay has had to prioritise the most urgent constituency cases until finally assembling his full team (four in his Diss constituency office; two in Westminster) shortly before the 100-day mark. “I can talk about all the debates I’ve spoken in, the issues I’ve taken up locally, but I would’ve liked to have operated at fuller capacity earlier on.”
“Whirlwind” is his one-word descriptor for his first 100 days and he is delighted to share a Westminster corridor with his three fellow Green MPs. Although the Greens lack a party whip who (sometimes helpfully) tell new MPs what to do, the quartet have been taking advice from their former MP, Caroline Lucas. Some of her former staff, including Ramsay’s press officer, have stayed on to assist.
Lucas is a touchstone. “How did Caroline approach this?” Ramsay asks his press officer as they compose a tweet responding to Starmer highlighting a flood resilience taskforce in PMQs.
Lucas, as the lone Green MP, had to build cross-party alliances, and Ramsay is determined to do the same. On Ramsay’s 97th day – a typical Westminster Wednesday – he joins a 9am campaign for a Climate and Nature Act – now a private member’s bill introduced by the Lib Dem Roz Savage – before speaking at a Westminster hall debate celebrating 200 years of the RSPCA. Here he implores the Labour minister Daniel Zeichner to address the “proliferation of huge chicken sheds” that are a big cause of river pollution in his constituency, as well as raising animal welfare concerns.
After meetings with his staff and with the fuel poverty charity National Energy Action, he attends a private gathering of his fellow Norfolk MPs, including Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems, to discuss special educational needs provision – a big issue in his early caseload.
Unlike Lucas, who had to be the Green parliamentary spokesperson on everything, the Green quartet can share out portfolios. Ramsay is shadowing the Treasury, Department of Health and Social Care, and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). These encompass most of the main issues raised by his constituents, including river pollution, flooding, dental deserts, and the loss of health and bus services. “I’m trying to create as big a synergy as I can between the issues that affect the constituency and the ones I want to have an impact on nationally,” he says.
Apart from Lucas, Ramsay’s other inspiration is the former Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb, who defied electoral gravity to win and retain North Norfolk for 18 years from 2001. “Norman had a fantastic reputation as a strong local MP and as someone who had a big impact on parliament with his focus on mental health,” he says. “He was an example of how an MP not from the two big parties can have an impact both in your constituency and nationally.”
Ramsay is determined to show his constituents he is “Waveney Valley’s voice in Westminster, not Westminster’s voice in Waveney Valley”. On day 91 he visits Waveney food bank in the Suffolk town of Eye; Hey Girls, a vibrant social enterprise and charity dedicated to ending period poverty; and a natural flood management scheme provided by the River Waveney Trust charity in the Norfolk village of Gissing.
His biggest challenge is likely to be picking a path through the pylon and solar farm debate. Whose side is Ramsay on? “Certainly I want to see more renewables. My career background is leading national charities to accelerate the rollout of renewable energy. It is what will bring down prices and improve resilience. But you’ve still got to have a mature debate about how you do that,” he says.
He wants the government to ask more of solar farm applications – that they show how they will be combined with growing food or demonstrate how they will boost biodiversity. “There needs to be more solar farms in the mix but the government could be more clever rather than giving the impression they’ll just wave through anything that comes along. Yes, we need more solar of all sorts, first of all on rooftops. Why on earth are new houses and commercial buildings going up without solar? We could have far more solar on car parks, and grey sites.”
What does he hope to achieve after five years? “I would like my constituents to feel that I’ve stood up for them. And secondly to influence the debate on proper funding and support for restoring nature and restoring health services. If we can push the government in the right direction on those issues, that will be really critical.”
