Natalie Bennett announces candidate expected to be the first Green Assembly Member
Green Party Leader, Natalie Bennett, has today announced the lead list candidate for the Mid & West Wales National Assembly for Wales elections. Speaking at an anti-austerity event in Aberystwyth, Bennett revealed Alice Hooker-Stroud as the candidate who will be leading a prominent campaign for the Green Party in Mid & West Wales.
Bennett said: “Next year's Welsh elections are a great chance to elect our first Assembly members. Wales needs Greens to offer a fresh approach to the stale old politics that is failing to deliver for the common good. Our combined economic, social and economic crises need green solutions such as warm, comfortable, affordable to heat homes that end fuel poverty and reduce illness, create jobs and cut carbon emissions. We need an energy supply built on community-owned renewables, not the 20th-century dinosaur of expensive, foreign-owned nuclear. And we want affordable, reliable, convenient public transport serving rural and urban areas - publicly owned trains and publicly controlled buses, run for the good of passengers not shareholders."
Hooker-Stroud, lead candidate for Mid & West Wales, works for the campaigning organisation Global Justice Now, and previously co-ordinated the Zero Carbon Britain project Centre for Alternative Technology, campaigning for a radical zero-emissions economy for the UK.
Hooker-Stroud said: “The Green Party is a voice for a better future. I think people are tired of unnecessary cuts and of politicians not taking environmental issues seriously. We stand a very real chance of winning Assembly seats and I think voters are ready to hear people speaking out with fair and real solutions.”
"The Green Party has answers to many of the problems faced by Mid and West Wales. We can create secure jobs, and can build affordable sustainable homes. We can save the NHS and local schools. These are all things I will fight for in the Assembly."
Wales Green Party Leader, Pippa Bartolotti said: “We hope to win three seats in next year’s election, to give Greens the voice in the Assembly that Wales so desperately needs. Now that Alice will be leading our campaign in Mid & West, I have no doubt that our hope will be fulfilled there.”
The three other list candidates in Mid & West Wales are: Grenville Ham, Pippa Pemberton and Frances Bryant. The Green Party has also announced Lisa Rapado as lead list candidate for South Wales West. South Wales Central, South Wales East and North Wales lists will be announced shortly. It also aims to stand a full slate across constituencies. The Green Party will be campaigning on its core messages of protecting the environment and fighting inequality, using the strapline ‘For People, For Planet, For Wales’.
The Green Party has launched a Crowdfunder campaign to raise funds to support its activities: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/greens-for-wales