After more than a decade of 80-hour working weeks, the member for Brighton Pavilion is standing down. What has she achieved as the only Green in the Commons? And does that feel like failure or success?
In the garden of a cafe in the middle of her Brighton Pavilion constituency, Caroline Lucas is eight hours into her bombshell day: the country’s only Green MP has just announced that she won’t stand again for election. She went from a squeaky, 1,200, didn’t-see-that-coming majority in 2010 to a don’t-bother-counting-them almost 20,000 majority in 2019, and has ascended to that very rare status with many of her constituents: it doesn’t matter whether or not you agree with her, you vote for her anyway. It would be rude not to: she works so hard and makes so much sense.
She has the very short hair of a person who doesn’t have time for hair, estimates that she works “75 or 80 hours a week” and looks harried but undefeated. I already knew she wasn’t going to stand again, obviously – that’s why I’m here. But I still can’t quite believe it, and keep opening my mouth to start a question that turns out to be nothing but “but”: “But you’re an institution … But your constituents love you … But you actually make things happen; who else is going to do that? … But there’s so much still to do.”
