What about the climate? How the Green party’s messaging has changed in 2026
Eco-populism is the Green’s new approach – but is the eco missing?
The Green Party of England and Wales are riding high in the polls. It’s just over a week since they won the Gorton and Denton by-election, with an unprecedented result for a party that has never held a seat in Northern England.
Newly elected MP Hannah Spencer has been widely praised as an excellent candidate, with her much-touted credentials as a ‘local plumber’. But her election was also the test case for the Green’s new narrative strategy under Zack Polanski.
Coined ‘Green populism’, this is a new position for the Greens, whereby their pro-environmental advocacy plays second fiddle to ‘populist’ economic ideas that acknowledge the precarious financial situation so many people find themselves in.
But in embracing the political dynamics of the moment, the Green party has been accused by some of ‘hardly talking’ about climate and the environment.
Does this charge stick? How do voters feel about it if it does? And what does it mean for climate advocates and communicators?
Last week, Climate Outreach teamed up with Climate Barometer to do some quick analysis of what the Greens have said on climate and the environment in recent elections. We looked at a wide sample of their election leaflets as well as what Hannah Spencer said in debates and media appearances in the run up to the Gorton and Denton by-election.
We wanted to understand if the Green Party really has stopped talking about environmental issues, and what their new approach might mean for public engagement strategies if climate and nature becomes ‘implicit’ to a political party’s appeal, rather than foregrounded.
What the Green Party is (and isn’t) talking about
We conducted a rapid analysis of the language used in 21 Green Party leaflets since Zack Polanki’s first conference speech as leader last year (most of which had been uploaded to www.electionleaflets.org). Across 10,026 words covered in over 40 pages, we found that there was only one mention of ‘climate change’ and no mentions of ‘net zero’. ‘Environment’ was mentioned seven times and ‘nature’ just once.
Zack Polanki’s party conference speech in October contained five mentions of ‘climate’ and two of ‘nature’.
In the available leaflets from the Gorton & Denton by-election specifically, we found no mentions of climate change at all.
But this isn’t the full picture. Climate, nature and the environment did emerge as key talking points in the Green’s media interviews and debates during the campaign. For instance, during the BBC’s candidates debate, Spencer linked the cost of living with energy prices, highlighting how the Greens would nationalise energy industries and insulate our homes, while challenging the other parties on donations from fossil fuel companies.
In other media appearances, Spencer talked about a range of local and national environmental issues, from poor air quality in Manchester, to insulation and fuel poverty – framing nature and environment as ‘every day parts of life’. She emphasised how she will be ‘really firm’ on the climate emergency, particularly on climate impacts like flooding and impact on green spaces.
In the leaflets we analysed, there was a clear focus on local-level green policy issues, like waste and water, including fly tipping, recycling and water companies (52 mentions); local transport and planning issues – such as bus services (19); as well as the need to protect the local environment, green spaces and wildlife (18).
And what the Greens have consistently talked about are themes of local community action, collective agency, building hope, and standing up for people’s concerns and worries. Across the same 21 leaflets, the word “local” was used 74 times, “residents” 65 times, “people” 59 times, “services” 28 times, “community” 27 times, and “hope” 17 times. Connecting climate and nature to people’s lives, communities and priorities is absolutely crucial, as many pieces of research, including our Britain Talks Climate and Nature shows. The Greens are leaning into what they know people want to hear about. The challenge for them – and for anyone communicating about climate and nature – is to keep on showing that climate change doesn’t drop down the political priority list, or signal to voters that climate change isn’t an urgent challenge.
Rebuilding climate salience – getting the balance right
The Green Party’s communication strategy could be viewed as both a cause and a consequence of the dwindling ‘issue salience’ of climate change in the public mind.
In the period spanning 2019-2021, nearly a third of people selected climate change as one of the top three most important issues facing the country. Today, that number is closer to one-in-ten.
But what does this mean? Have people stopped caring about climate change? Or does caring about climate change manifest in different ways?
The evidence here is not difficult to decode. Britain Talks Climate & Nature shows unequivocally that people care about nature, green spaces, wildlife and preserving a healthy environment for future generations.
Framing messages using these kinds of issues – alongside saving money on energy bills, or building energy security through homegrown renewable power – are all well-established ways of linking the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ on net zero policies, and are also crucial to rebuilding climate salience.
It isn’t a binary choice between turning up the volume on climate change as an issue, and doing the work needed to improve the fairness of the transition. What the Greens’ success tells us is that right now effective public engagement involves doing both, and doing both together.
It’s not the economy vs the environment
It is unrealistic to think the country’s net zero goals will consistently be front of mind for people in the 25 years between now and the deadline for achieving them. But there are real risks in vacating the pitch on the benefits that climate & nature policies can bring: it becomes too easy to paint it as an unnecessary political project, or something that is in competition with fixing the economy.
And for the Green Party, there’s no political gain in this trade-off.
In Climate Barometer’s tracker data from October 2025, potential Green and Labour voters were the most likely groups to disagree with the idea that fixing the climate or economy is a binary choice (“we can either fix the climate or fix the economy”), when they have heard this message being said. These groups view the economy and the environment as having shared importance, and as interconnected. Now is the moment for climate and nature communicators to really seize this in their communications.
The question isn’t ‘whether’ to communicate about risks of climate impacts and the benefits of climate policies but ‘how’.
Amidst a prolonged cost of living crisis, a deep loss of institutional trust, and the rise of the Reform party, keeping decarbonisation targets on track is going to involve a lot of hard work on issues that aren’t always explicitly badged as ‘climate’ (as well as a renewed focus on climate, nature and net zero policies where there is the opportunity to do so).
The Greens didn’t say much explicitly about climate and nature in their recent by-election success, especially on their leaflets. But they did bring in far more messages on why we need to address climate change and protect nature in debates and long form interviews.
We think they’d do even better to nudge it slightly up the implicit – explicit spectrum. Because while the climate is down in salience, voters care and want reassurance that politicians are on the case. All parties, especially the Greens, need to find and hone their voice on these issues.
And for others communicating on climate, we think the success of the Greens tells us we should stop setting success metrics on ‘climate salience’. Instead, we need to pay far more attention to narratives that are cutting through and how we can more intentionally insert climate frames and policy solutions into them
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