“Let me give you the story,” laughs Jonathan Bartley, seemingly enjoying the novelty of the fact that the records – well, Wikipedia – show that the current co-leader of the Green Party worked for the leadership campaign of former Conservative Prime Minister John Major.

“I wanted to apply [my degree] somehow, so I went to work in parliament on an internship for a bunch of different MPs. I happened to share an office with Sir Graham Bright’s secretary and when the leadership election broke out, he said ‘do you fancy the experience?’” But Bartley is quickto defend himself: “I made the tea, honest: I’m so far from the Tories, you wouldn’t believe.” 

Or perhaps I would. After all, Bartley’s party remains further to the left than Jeremy Corbyn, a man many would consider the epitome of ‘non-Tory’. 

“The Greens aren’t about 1970s socialism; we’re looking at the 21st century.”

“There’s a reason why Jeremy Corbyn is in the Labour Pary and not in the Green Party,”  Bartley explains when I offer this comparison. “He buys into this idea of growing and growing the economy, but not making the difficult choices I think we need to make [to facilitate the] transitioning of the economy.”  

He cites the debate surrounding the Hinckley Point C power station as an example. “I can see why [the trade unions] want to defend those 800 jobs. But we’re saying not only can you preserve them, but transition them and create thousands of new ones in renewable technology.” Of the Labour leader, he says: “Corbyn is different: we’re not on the same page in terms of transitioning the economy. The Greens aren’t about 1970s socialism; we’re looking at the 21st century.” 

Eloquent, intelligent and (dare I say it) handsome, à la George Clooney, Bartley possesses elements of the ‘polished’ and charismatic leader more often associated with the country’s mainstream parties. Yet, where the Blairs and Camerons of the world might be described as style over substance, a level of depth and genuineness shines through with Bartley – particularly as he explains the reasons behind his leadership role job-share with the Green Party’s only MP, Caroline Lucas.

“One of the reasons is because I have a disabled son to support [and] I’m busy fighting the battles against the local authority for direct payments for my son, battles for inclusive education and accessibility of buses. It’s an eye-opener to me, showing me how many battles disabled people have to face every day.” He adds: “Having roots into the real world brings something to politics.” 

As does being a drummer, he claims. His band, The Mustangs, have released nine albums and appeared on a number of major radio shows, while Bartley himself was nominated in 2010 for ‘Blues Drummer of the Year’ at the British Blues Awards. This is an experience, he feels, that has provided him with a real insight into the thoughts and feelings of the electorate.

“For the last 20 years, I’ve toured the UK playing in pubs and clubs and beer festivals and you get chatting to a lot of people. You see the country and where they are.” What do these people him? “They might not think about elections, but they do care passionately about their communities, their lives, and the future of their children. I think it’s really healthy to have people with outside passions,” he tells me. “It makes politics more accessible.” 

Indeed, Bartley can understand the increasing disillusionment with Westminster politics. He notes that, during his time working as a parliamentary intern, he found Westminster a “very, very dark, very, very tribal and quite oppressive place,” leading him to “step right out of politics for a long, long time” and “campaign from the outside”.

Only in 2010 did Bartley return to politics, after a notorious confrontation at the Evelina Children’s Hospital with David Cameron over the care of his son, Samuel. This event caused him to take “a long look at the party manifestos”, through which he discovered “the Greens were where my values are”.

So, having been elected co-leader alongside Lucas in September 2016, what are his ambitions for the party that dragged him back into the cut-throat world of politics?

“Ultimately we think Britain would be better with more Greens in the House of Commons – absolutely. We will be targeting seats to win and gain more MPs. But there’s a dual strategy – a pragmatic response to talk about progressive alliances and what that might look like, with the red-line being a commitment to proportional representation.”

This, he explains, involves “throwing what we have at council elections and by-elections. After all, the better we do in those elections, the more we have to bargain with.”

Clearly, then, Bartley is very much open to the idea of an electoral pact with other left-wing parties to try and end what has already proved to be 10 years of Conservative political domination. But this comes at a price, because “of course, an electoral alliance is an alliance: it’s not just about standing a candidate aside, it’s about agreement. Of the upcoming Copeland by-election, which the Greens will contest, he says: “we are not standing aside for a very clear reason – there’s no other anti-nuclear candidate and those voters need somewhere to go.

“But our door is open – we said very, very clearly to Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron ‘come and talk to us.’ We stood aside in Richmond and that was the difference between Zac [Goldsmith] losing and Zac winning.” So, he tells me, “we think it was the right decision.”

“First of all, they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you and then they take on your ideas”

But for all this talk of alliances, the Green Party remains an autonomous force. Indeed, there are times where they have faced accusations that they are taking away votes from the bigger left-wing parties, facilitating right-wing victories. Bartley is quick to respond to this, waving away my observations about the anger directed towards Jill Stein in America.

“That’s always the problem of our current electoral system and that’s why we want to change it. But it’s clear that the long-term trend from the 1950s to now [is the development of] a multi-party system with five parties at least contesting the vote share and people want those options.” In 2017, he says: “it would be wrong to deny voters that option to vote for something that’s different to the other parties.”

I enquire as to the extent to which he genuinely believes the Green Party offers ‘something different’. Surely the Green Party is – like UKIP in many ways – simply a one-issue party through which the electorate can use their votes to highlight their concerns about the environment. But Bartley remains resolute that “those days are gone.”

Mayoral race heats up as Green Party co-leader helps candidate launch campaign

“The huge Green surge we experienced in 2015 when our membership and vote share quadrupled was primarily an anti-austerity thing. Now, a lot of people join us because of our commitment to freedom of movement: people are seeing we have a very broad agenda.”

Indeed, he later points out that Jeremy Corbyn, in the most recent Labour leadership election, “lifted 10 of our policies into his manifesto that [as leader] he simply cannot deliver”. To Bartley, that is a sign of the Green Party’s growing relevance in British politics. “First of all, they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you and then they take on your ideas,” he says philosophically.

“The trajectory is very good and I think we need to keep doing what we’re doing. Brexit is going to dominate the next two years and it’s going to be quite hard to cut into the economic transition issues. But we’ll be taking a very hard anti-Brexit line, so I’d say: watch this space”