Green Party ‘planning pledge to ban benefits sanctions’

The policy would form part of a campaign that the party says will focus on “restoring and extending public services and tackling climate change”.

While the Greens have previously talked of “coming first or second” in 12 seats at May’s general election, senior figures say they believe a realistic hope would be to win three – including the seat it already holds.

Baroness Jenny Jones, a senior figure within the party, says: “It would be great to go beyond our one MP. There are two seats where we are quite optimistic: Norwich South and Bristol West. And we really hope to keep Brighton Pavilion.

“But people don’t understand how difficult it is to win a seat, it takes a lot of knocking on doors and campaigning. It is tough, especially when you are fighting the political parties that have been in power for hundreds of years.”

Such a result would represent a record high for the party, to go with its exploding membership. This election will also see it fielding its greatest ever number of candidates, with the party saying it will cover” more than 90 per cent” of the constituencies in England and Wales.

In early October last year, the Green party reported what was then a record high of more than 20,000 members, having seen 45 per cent growth in 2014. Since then, the membership has nearly tripled again, according to Jones.

Adam Ramsey, a party activist, said that – beyond those three hoped-for victories – he wants to see the party come second in around eight seats, putting it in a strong position to go on and win them at the 2020 general election. He adds that an average of five percent of the vote across the rest of the seats in which it is standing would also represent a strong performance.

And, while Ramsey admits that that party’s leader Natalie Bennett is not the slickest on show, he says that “these things take practice”.

He adds: “It was clear at conference that there is a huge amount of love for Natalie in the party – she was instrumental in driving the massive growth in membership – and the fact that she isn’t a smooth PR machine doesn’t change that.”

The worst-case scenario, he says, would be losing Caroline Lucas’ seat.

Over the last few years, polls have consistently put the party in the single figures. While they have been behind Ukip since November 2012, the Green party has recently outpolled the Liberal Democrats at times and has come within a few percentage points of Nigel Farage’s party in some polls in recent months.

Such polling also represents an expected improvement on its 2010 general election performance.

Its leader Natalie Bennett has already talked openly about a plan to pay every adult in the country £72 per week as part of a scheme called the” citizens’ income”.

The plan was floated during an interview on LBC, which Bennett herself called “excruciating”. After that disastrous interview – and a significantly better performance in the leaders debates – the Greens’ will be hoping their election drive can gather some momentum. Besides their manifesto launch, they are also preparing a national billboard campaign.

And, on Wednesday, it released a general election broadcast video that features actors playing the leaders of the Conservative party, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Ukip as members of a boyband.

Bennett has also said the party would build 500,000 social houses to rent by 2020, but struggled to explain how it would be paid for.

And she has revealed that she will be campaigning for a minimum wage of £10 per hour, as well as for the renationalisation of the railways.

But Jones – one of the party’s most recognisable figures – says she will be “playing fourth fiddle” in the campaign – behind Bennett and the party’s deputy leaders Amelia Womack and Shahrar Ali.

Her role in the election, she says, will be to tour parts of the country where the party needs support, while Bennett visits the most strategically important constituencies.

A Green party spokesman refused to confirm or deny that a pledge to scrap benefits sanctions would be included in the party’s manifesto.