I Lost My Flame — But I Helped Win an Election

Has2BGreen is about teaching people about the climate crisis — but the real goal is something deeper: moving from knowledge to action.

Helping ordinary people become capable of creating meaningful climate change solutions in the real world.

A month ago I was selected as Campaigns Officer for our local Green Party.

We had only a few weeks to run a campaign and try to elect a Green councillor to a Town Council that had never had one before.

Our candidate was brilliant — dedicated, thoughtful and deeply committed to Green values — but the odds were not obviously in our favour.

I have stood for UK Parliament twice before, but both times as what is called a “paper candidate.”You stand, you campaign, you promote the party — but realistically you know the chance of winning is extremely small.

Both times I was largely left to run my own campaign.

This time was different.

A local team formed in just a few weeks, people stepped forward, volunteers appeared, and together we built a campaign almost from scratch.

I had never run a campaign before, so it was a steep learning curve.

As the campaign developed, I did what I tend to do — I built systems. Using my database background, I created tools to manage canvassing, track voters, organise volunteers and coordinate the work.

In many ways this was exactly what Has2BGreen talks about:not just understanding the climate crisis — but learning how to organise people and systems to elect climate leaders.

The workload was intense.

On several days the campaign work was so full-on that I never even logged into Skool — and for the first time since starting Has2BGreen, I lost my flame.

But last night the result came in.

We won.

Our candidate received 40% of the vote against two other candidates, and for the first time a Green Party councillor has been elected to that Town Council.

It was a true team effort.

And we learned an enormous amount.

The story doesn’t stop here.

Our next election is only seven weeks away.

This one is bigger:

• 7 candidates

• A much larger area

• 78,000 voters instead of 1,800

So now it’s time to regroup.

Analyse what worked.Fix what didn’t.Improve the systems.Grow the team.

And keep building the skills needed to elect climate leadership where it matters.

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