Sure usually hangs out in Russia between elections, right?

And God forbid they spend any money on local elections where they can affect things like I don't know actual green party issues.

Not even Greens, they don't put any serious effort into local elections either. Any other (serious) third party would be better locally.

This. The Brits have a first past the post system. Greens now are winning mayorships and parliament seats and making deals with labor not to split the vote in their favor because they have been building local support for decades.

They are a force in their districts, so they get elected to office in their districts. Do that to a few dozen districts and you can meaningfully affect the balance of power in Westminster. Then you start getting into coalitions and supplying ministers.

You can’t just wake up once every four years and hope to be anything but a spoiler candidate.

It's not a question of wanting competition or not. Political parties by nature will attempt to get as strong a coalition as they can, until they reach a size large enough that bisecting the party still leaves one half in power and some internal disagreememt triggers the split.

Fringe parties in America, like the Green and Libertarian parties, arent oppressed by some conspiracy between Rs and Ds. Rather, they are left at the fringe because they do not have any power worth pledging to, for the simple fact that in the american single-rep plurality-wins system tbere is no prize for second place.

Voters who like the current office holder work to keep them in power and those who do not work with the opposition to remove the incumbent from power. Anyone not joining one of these sides serves only as a tool for one side against the other, since anything but a vote for the runner up is an effective endorsrment of the eventual winner.

The American system is imperfect and could be a lot better, but fringe parties and vanity campaigns do nothing to actually encourage systemic change.