Natalie Bennett has announced she will be stepping down as leader of the UK Green Party and will not stand for a third term when the leadership elections take place this summer.

Natalie, who has been in the top job for four years (two terms) has seen membership to the Green Party increase five-fold under her watch. She says: “We’re the only party with a platform that recognises the essential interrelationship between economic and environmental justice – that we must have a society in which no one fears hunger or homelessness, while we collectively live within the environmental limits of our one fragile planet.

“The Green Party offers a genuine alternative to the tired status quo and I am proud that Greens do politics differently.”

UK environmentalist and author, Tony Junpier, paid tribute to Natalie’s achievements but added that a new leadership could be the perfect time to reinvent the message of the Greens to fit better with the world in which we now live.

“Whoever takes on the leadership will have much to thank Natalie for but also a big job of reinvention. This could be a hugely exciting time for Green politics in Britain and I hope the party will select someone up to the task.”

Greg Neale, the new Editor-in-Chief of The Resurgence Trust which owns The Ecologist website, as well as Resurgence & Ecologist magazine, says: “During Natalie’s leadership the party has now established itself in many areas beyond its original centres, while the Green Party in Scotland has grown vigorously.

“At the recent elections for the Scottish Parliament and for the Mayor of London, the Green vote showed that more and more people are beginning to turn towards new solutions to our problems: this is another of Natalie’s legacies.”