This is a follow-up to “ Why Identity Politics is destroying the Greens Party” Part Two, posted on 11th August.
The party leadership’s desire for electoral success has substituted tactics in the form of the Target to Win formula for principles. This has meant that big politics such as climate emergency and loss of biodiversity are seen as vote-losers and sacrificed for identity politics and local issues which are considered as electorally popular. But electoral politics is precisely one of the reasons why so many environmental campaigners do not join political parties – even Green supporters.
There are, of course, examples of Greens getting elected to local councils across the country who do good work for their communities and the environment. At the May 2023 local elections the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) retained 225 incumbent councillors and gained 201 new councillors serving on 166 Councils. Green Party councillors now represent 3.6% of all councillors for England and Wales.
As posted here on 7th May, the Mid Suffolk Greens also secured a majority on their District Council for the first time anywhere in England. This was a remarkable achievement. But these gains aren’t always necessarily permanent – as confirmed with the dramatic loss of 13 Green councillors on Brighton Council – and have relatively limited influence nationally.
For several years the Green Party leadership has also prioritised expanding on its one MP. However, given that Caroline Lucas, sole Green MP for Brighton Pavilion for 13 years, has recently announced her standing down, it is entirely in the realm of possibilities that the party may end up with no MP after the next General Election. And a hung parliament under the First-Past-The-Post voting system is not likely to benefit the Greens in the short term either.
The party is obviously in favour of a fairer voting system and is close to groups campaigning for Proportional Representation, such as Compass, who advocate a progressive alliance and Get PR Done! . It is also affiliated to Make Votes Matter, a non-party political organisation funded by the Joseph Rowntree foundation, to which it seems to have ‘contracted out’ its own PR campaign.
If PR was to be legislated for in the foreseeable future this would, of course, create more space for real Green politics. But we do need to question whether putting the bulk of the party’s resources into winning elections is actually value for money and may do more harm than good. Many would argue that resources would be much more effectively deployed through campaigning on the big issues of our time towards achieving net zero, reducing the loss of biodiversity and building a sustainable global economy for future generations.
The Green Light 