Caroline Lucas is the UK’s first ever Green party MP. She was first elected for Brighton Pavilion in 2010 and has been re-elected three times since then, each time increasing her majority.
She has kept issues such as the climate emergency, the ecology crisis, human rights and animal protection at the forefront of the political agenda.
She is currently sponsoring the Climate & Ecological Emergency Bill and Green New Deal Bill (formally known as the Decarbonisation and Economic Strategy Bill) in Parliament. She was born and raised in Malvern and educated at the Universities of Exeter and Kansas. While studying at the British Library in London, she read Jonathon Porritt’s seminal book on green politics, “Seeing Green” in 1986, which inspired her to seek out the Green party office in Clapham and join the party.
Her first election success was winning the Green party’s second council seat in the UK on Oxfordshire County Council which she held from 1993-1997. In 1999, she was elected as an MEP for South East England, standing and winning re-election in 2004 and 2009. She has led the Green party twice, the second time from 2016-2018, co-leading with Jonathan Bartlett.
She has been voted The Observer’s Politician of the Year in their ethical awards three times from 2007-2009, named best UK Politician of the Year in The Independent’s Green awards in 2010 and “MP of the Year” in the Women in Public Life Awards 2011.
In 2019, she won the prestigious 2019 Patchwork MP of the Year Award in the Other Party People’s Choice category. The following year, she was the first to be given the special recognition award by Patchwork who said she was being recognised for her consistent championing of progress.