“People already know how much we care about the climate crisis and the environment,” Spencer told POLITICO in February. Instead, the Greens are hoping to combine their climate credentials with wider topics, “linking it to other things we really care about.”
‘I fixed homes for a living’
When Spencer was announced as the Green Party’s candidate, her working class backstory was core to her messaging.
“I didn’t go to university to study politics,” she said at the party’s campaign launch last month. “I’m a plumber here in Manchester. I fixed homes for a living. I spend my days in people’s kitchens, in their bathrooms, and their front rooms.”
Spencer left school at 16 — a far cry from a university-dominated Commons — and took an apprenticeship, eventually setting up her own business: Hannah’s Household Plumbing. Responding to questions about the authenticity of her working class roots during the campaign, she told the New Statesman: “I’ve been a plumber for nearly 20 years. What do they want, to see a toilet I’ve fixed?”
“They want to keep Westminster for a small club of posh boys that all went to the same schools or studied at Oxbridge,” she argued. “That’s why things have been run into the ground – we’ve had too many politicians that don’t know what it’s like to graft.”
Spencer also qualified as a gas engineer and plasterer — the latter while the by-election campaign was in full flow. The owner of four greyhounds, Spencer took the dogs — Olive, Forrest, Judy and Will — on the campaign trail, and has spoken about the impact of campaigning against dog racing on her politics. “I’d turn up and hand out leaflets, kindly explaining but also listening to people,” she told the Manchester Evening News.