Jonathan Bartley, the recently elected Co-Leader of the Green Party, visited Cambridge on Tuesday for a discussion and Q&A session with local activists and Revd Jeremy Caddick, the Dean of Emmanuel College.

The session was hosted by the Cambridge Young Greens in Clare College, where Bartley emphasised the Green Party’s relevance to current politics and condemned the government’s response to the crisis at Calais: “It’s absolutely shocking, it’s disgraceful, it’s a national shame, that less than 50 miles from the British coast, there is a refugee crisis”.

“And the best that we did was, in the tabloid press, have a debate about whether some of those children were over eighteen or not. That is absolutely scandalous. Someone has to stand up and say it,” said Bartley, “and that has come down to the Greens.”

He celebrated how “the Greens have managed to shift the economic debate” on points such as universal basic income. Bartley stated that many of Jeremy Corbyn’s policies from the Labour leadership election “were just lifted from the 2015 Green Party manifesto”, adding that “those policies have become mainstream. And that’s a big win.”

Bartley argued that only the Greens are adequately responding to “a future where we have to deliver on climate change,” saying “you can’t, as Jeremy Corbyn wants, support Hinkley C and give it a £30 billion subsidy, and at the same time support the renewable energy revolution.”

Citing Labour’s supportive stances on Heathrow expansion and Trident, Bartley questioned “which party is preparing Britain for its place in the world in the 21st century, and which party is looking backwards to the 20th century, and 20th-century solutions?”

Bartley voiced support for energy divestment campaigns, but warned that “quite often as Greens we’re seen as what we’re against, rather than what we are for. And divestment implies withdrawal, and we’ve also got to make the case for reinvestment”.

He also criticised the first-past-the-post electoral system, advocating for a proportional system. “I don’t want to just represent the 48 per cent that voted Remain – I want to represent the 99 per cent” he said, referencing areas “neglected by both Labour and the Conservatives” due to electoral complacency.

Bartley argued that for many, the EU Referendum was a “your vote counts whichever way you cast it” decision for the first time. “There’s this feeling that people really want their vote to count, and we’ve got to give that to people.”

While he praised “authentic, grassroots campaigning” from communities on issues like housing and library closure, he cautioned against putting too much faith in social media activism, as “a lot of it is happening in a social media bubble” and “echo chambers”.

He also condemned current government “narratives” – “turning the working poor against the non-working poor, the disabled against the non-disabled”, and spoke angrily of the government’s failure to challenge the fact that wealth is “being held very, very tightly by one per cent of the population who are super rich”.

“Until someone comes along and challenges that and changes the story, things aren’t going to change,” Bartley stressed. “Labour has not been dogmatic in their messaging. The Greens have been but we haven’t been heard. We need to get that progressive alliance on the Left, to start telling that story”.