NATALIE Bennett insists the Greens will not be swallowed up by Jeremy Corbyn’s new-look Lab­our Party in a competition for left-wing voters.

Rather than worry that the “surge” in membership and interest in the Greens, which helped define a lively general election campaign, would be punctured by Labour’s apparent change of direction, the Green Party leader said her supporters should be encouraged by Mr Corbyn’s takeover.

“What is really exciting about the Jeremy Corbyn surge is that politics is coming in our direction,” she said. “The people who are really going to be left out, isolated, are the Tories.”

Ms Bennett, who lives in Somers Town and stood for parliament in Holborn and St Pancras in May, added: “The old politics, neo-Thatcherism, call it what you like, but it’s clearly not working.”

In Camden, the Greens have one councillor at the Town Hall, but Labour hope to oust Sian Berry from Highgate at the next opportunity with sources saying Labour membership in the neighbourhood has almost doubled with Mr Corbyn’s rise.

But Ms Bennett said that, while people may be attracted to Mr Corbyn’s politics, they did not necessarily trust Labour councils to get it right. 

She said:  “When you think of somewhere like Camden, it’s often the Greens, sometimes in alliance with others, who are really challenging what the Labour councils are doing. 

“If you look at the Syrian refugees, the motion about helping them came from Sian together with Flick [Rea, Lib Dem councillor] back in March originally. We were the ones who put that on the agenda. 

“We challenge, we question, we scrutinise. We are not the establishment, we are representing the people campaigning against the eviction of council tenants, campaigning to protect the most vulnerable people – we are the ones doing that.”

She added that the Greens were clear about their opposition to HS2 and that Mr Corbyn needed to come out clearly against “this nonsensical waste of money”.

She was speaking to the New Journal in Bournemouth, soon after her conference-opening address to members.

In that speech she said 2015 would come to be remembered as the year in which left-wing, anti-austerity politics made its breakthrough.

The New Journal asked her whether opponents  would actually see this year as one in which the Conservatives won a Commons majority. Ms Bennett replied: “They are in power, but they have a small majority, and there are already a few issues, foxhunting being one of them, where they clearly didn’t have a majority so they pulled it. 

“It’s a very fragile majority. On some of the issues we are going to see coming forward – human rights issues, snooper’s charter – there will be a significant number of Tory rebels.”