Recent Green party Articles

Green leadership election: We need to revive our campaigning spirit

contribution by Romayne Phoenix

If elected by the Green Party membership my leadership would be distinctly different to the other candidates, partly due to my political priorities, but also due to my previous experience and skills.

As the only candidate who has held public office (Lewisham councillor 2006 – 10) I am also the only candidate to emphasise that the party needs two strategic pillars to make progress – a smartly targeted and improved electoral strategy, coupled with a robust campaigns strategy.
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My ‘first 100 days’ plan for the Green Party

Britain’s three largest parties offer voters slight variations on the financial liberalisation, privatisation, trash-the-planet hyper-capitalism that has left 19th-century levels of inequality on a fast-heating Earth with degraded soils and water.

The Green Party offers a radical alternative vision, yet since 2010 have not been making the electoral progress we could be.

If I’m elected leader my focus for the next two years will be to make the Green Party a truly national party – to focus on getting other people elected, rather than being elected myself.
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Why the Green Party should elect me as leader

contribution by Peter Cranie

I don’t come from the kind of background which allows me to be dismissed as a typical Green. My uncle was a miner, and my grandfather a miner too. My great-grandfather was blacklisted during the General Strike and didn’t work again until the outbreak of the Second World War.

My family migrated from Scotland to England during the recession of the 1980s, and I’ve spent time employed as a social worker in some of the most deprived areas of Liverpool. I’ve also been involved with the Green Party on local, regional and national levels for a decade.
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The Greens must get better at communicating our support for science

The Green Party is more pro-science than any other party. Party policy commits 1% of GDP to public funding for science research.

Whilst Labour, Lib Dems and Tories increasingly demand that researchers demonstrate the immediate commercial viability of their work, Greens argue that we should fund science for its own sake, because discovery is key to civilisation.

Even on areas where we once were a little wobbly, various conference motions in recent years mean we can now be proud of our polices.
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Why protests against the GM foods field trials is pro-science

contribution by James MacKenzie

There’s been a lot of fuss this week about Jenny Jones’ support for Take The Flour Back, a revival of mid-1990s anti-GM activism. On one side, so the story goes, you have plucky scientists just doing research, and on the other side you’ve got anti-science vandals and woo-merchants.

The truth is rather different, but to be fair to the skeptic firing squad, some of the Take The Flour Back logic was poor. They’re worried that one of the genes inserted at Rothamsted is ‘most similar to a cow’.

I should declare an interest, or at least some history – I was convicted in Edinburgh in 1999 for an anti-GM protest, and acquitted on appeal in 2003.
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With Caroline Lucas stepping down, how the Greens need to change

Caroline Lucas MP, has announced that she will not stand for re-election as Green Party leader in September in order to make way for new leadership voices.

In the announcement says that “I will also be able to dedicate even more of my work to the political frontline, putting the Green case for change in Parliament and in all circles of national political debate.”

This is an extremely positive development despite the fact that Caroline Lucas is clearly the most capable, extra-ordinary green politician.
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What the Greens in London will do next

My third place in the London Mayoral contest was a big blow to the Liberal Democrats within the coalition. After promising to scrap tuition fees and oppose austerity, doing the opposite has shattered many Londoners’ trust even in their outsider candidates like Brian Paddick.

The result was an endorsement of the Green Party’s focus on pay equality, lower fares paid for with a pay-as-you-drive scheme (“Oyster for your car”), lower rents delivered with co-operatives and private rented sector reform, and healthier streets thanks to less traffic and cleaner vehicles.

We are determined to push forward with these ideas on the London Assembly.
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Why Caroline Lucas has outflanked Labour on the EU vote

Yesterday, Caroline Lucas submitted an amendment. to the EU referendum bill.

She has spotted not just that the ‘status quo’ option (a) and the ‘nutter’ option (b) are unacceptable.

She has also spotted that the midway option (c) is still a Conservative ‘free trade’ option, under which the neoliberal norms embedded in the current Lisbon Treaty and the devalued but still dangerous Growth & Stability Pact would remain, while at the same time allowing for an assault on the things that Europe has done well, such as the freedom of movement within borders and (some) worker rights.
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Why Greens need to embrace the idea of economic growth

contribution by Jonathan Kent

Greens don’t like growth. It’s the mantra. We like to talk about a ‘stable’ economy; one that neither grows nor shrinks.

The trouble with maintaining a zero growth economy is that you have to maintain zero population growth alongside it. Zero economic growth and a twenty percent population increase and you have the sort of contraction in living standards that we’re desperately trying to fight off at the moment.

I am not opposed to economic growth.

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Challenging conventional wisdom about the elections

Following last week’s elections, the conventional wisdom can be summarised roughly as follows. The cause of electoral reform is dead; Labour did well in Northern England but poorly in Southern England; Labour’s defeat in Scotland was unprecedented and historic; the Lib Dems got hammered by Labour; and Labour needs to move to attract ‘centrist’ voters and fight the Tories for the ‘centre ground’. I think the lessons of the elections give cause to challenge all of these. continue reading… »