The advent of proportional representation in regional assembly and mayoral elections has been widely welcomed. It pulls Britain into line with many of its European neighbours and lessens the likelihood of the sort of iniquitous results that have plagued the First Past The Post system. In the polling booth, though, it has created conundrums, particularly for the most staunch of party supporters. Who to vote for as second, or even third, choice?
For those Labour Party members who cannot bring themselves to vote Lib Dem, a cursory glance over the ballot paper may reveal a ‘worthy’ cause: a prominent independent; a local community association; a single-issue protest group; perhaps, even, a leftwing splinter group. Likely to be nestled in there is a Green Party candidate, a deserving second option if ever there was one. Or is it?
Proportional representation has seen a boom of sorts for the Green Party. With three members in the Greater London Assembly, one in the Scottish Parliament and two MEPs, times have seldom been better. Yet their gains are limited and belie an appalling record on the national stage. The unfairness of First Past The Post aside, they have held onto just three deposits in the last three general elections, despite fielding a combined total of around 600 candidates. Polling 166,000 votes out of a total of more than 26.5 million in 2001 is perhaps a truer reflection of where the Greens really stand, yet it hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of Penny Kemp, chair of the party executive. ‘I don’t think it’s unrealistic to say we will have an MP at Westminster within the next ten years, even under First Past The Post,’ she claims. ‘It probably won’t be the next election, but certainly the one after that, in 2009.’
Such unstinting optimism is a recurrent feature of the Green Party. Their boasts are usually as headline-catching as they are unfeasible. Not only are the Greens going to have a Westminster seat by 2009, they were also going to get eight seats in the Scottish Parliament (they got one); act as main contenders in various by-elections (more lost deposits); and serve (in their own words) as the ‘obvious choice’ for ‘fed up’ Labour supporters who were going to defect in ‘bucketloads’ at the last local council elections (they returned 45 councillors out of 6,000 – virtually unchanged from last time round). Their idle bravado may make attractive copy for newspapers but they have made less impact than even niche groups like the Referendum Party or the UK Independence Party.
Aspects of the Green agenda are undeniably forward-thinking and progressive. Their calls to decriminalise cannabis and prostitution have been agenda-setting, while on the London stage they were key supporters of Mayor Ken Livingstone’s radical transport blueprints, particularly congestion charging. In Oxford – where they shared power on the city council with the Lib Dems between 2000 and 2002 – they moved the council’s electricity power supply to ‘green electricity’, and claimed to have halved rough sleeping and expanded local recycling schemes. Some of what they say on the environment is eminently sensible, enlightened and achievable.
But on the other hand, their 2001 general election manifesto and many subsequent outpourings look as if they come from the mouths of pseudo-revolutionary sixth formers. The idea seems to be to promise everything – social ownership of public utilities, renationalisation of railways, more power to the unions, a ‘fresh deal’ on worker’s rights, environmentally friendly industries – but provide a realistic agenda for nothing. The moderate reforms made in Oxford were about all they achieved and last May its residents gave their verdict on the Green coalition – by voting it out.
Although they have made their most impressive gains on the European stage, the Green Party has assumed a vehemently anti-European complexion. Perhaps eyeing the successes of their Irish cousins, Britain’s Greens have also adopted the anti-European flag. There, campaigning as part of a rainbow coalition with the likes of Sinn Fein and various independent candidates – some with far right connections – against the Euro and, later, the Nice Treaty, brought six Green gains in the Dail at the general election last June.
Their spring conference was told – with typical hyperbole – ‘We are going to make being anti-Euro fashionable by the summer.’ MEP Caroline Lucas claimed, ‘It’s OK to be against the Euro’, maintaining that entry into the single currency would have stopped Gordon Brown’s spending plans. They have also argued against the expansion of the EU into Eastern Europe, saying that it will accelerate the process of globalisation and take away control from local communities and governments. Conversely – and rather contradictorily – they also claim, when it suits them, to be internationalists.
The shortcomings of their anti-European stance are all too obvious. Not only has the EU often been a more powerful legislating force on environmental issues than many of its member governments, the impact of its expansion into the continent’s industrial backyard – where the ecological legacy of the communist era lives on – is likely to be enormous. For a party that also pleads a belief in social justice, their opposition to eastward expansion seems strange, even given their rather woolly anti-globalisation stance. Far from taking power away from new member states, EU membership can only empower them. One only has to look at the economic transformation undergone in Greece, Portugal or, most significantly, Ireland, to see what benefits it can bring.
Claiming to be a real and viable alternative to the mainstream parties is one thing; trying to simultaneously steal the thunder of the left and – by way of its posturing – the right is quite another. It is contradictory, incoherent and ultimately quite superficial. The lack of firm leadership means that power gained by the Greens will be power wasted, while the party’s absurd claims – though headline catching – will never be met. The result is an organisation that has not only undermined its attempts to be taken seriously as more than a single issue party, but also as its original incarnation: an environmental pressure group.
‘Quite scary really’
Two years of Green coalition government in Oxford City council still brings a chuckle from Alex Hollingsworth, who led the local Labour Party back to control of the council in last May’s local elections. ‘It was a shambles from start to finish,’ he remembers.
In the 2000 local council elections the Greens surprised many by securing eight seats and forming a council with the Lib Dems, after nearly two decades of Labour control in Oxford.
‘I don’t think it was a protest vote,’ says Hollingsworth. ‘We’d been in power for nearly 20 years and it was a long time to maintain energy and drive. They had strong roots in certain parts of the city and were able to persuade whoever was out to get us to coalesce and vote for them.’
After campaigning against the city’s budget deficit in the run-up to the election, once in power Oxford’s Greens immediately increased expenditure, ‘digging,’ says Hollingsworth, ‘a huge financial hole.’
Their attempts to rein back revenue ranged from the shortsighted to the bizarre. They implemented a levy – to huge local opposition – on large items of waste, such as mattresses and white goods. Rather than discourage unnecessary dumping, the move led to a spate of fly tipping. ‘I remember this Green councillor basically standing up and saying “If these people have to end up to their necks in rubbish before they learn to stop dumping… then so be it!’”
The other great point of local contention was the cut of a local subsidy to help the elderly maintain their gardens. Even though the financial cost to the city council was small and the cut hugely unpopular, the Greens were unrepentant, claiming that helping disabled pensioners keep their gardens tidy encouraged a ‘dependency culture.’ ‘It was libertarian with a capital L’ said Hollingsworth. ‘Quite scary really.’