For a party that loathes motoring so much it is an irony how often they seem to suffer political car crashes. Today’s general election campaign launch is no different. Natalie Bennett’s instantly infamous ‘mind blank’ on LBC was preceded by a deeply uncomfortable set of interviews that were characterised by long pauses, deflection and bluster of a kind we were told were being consigned to the history bin by the ‘new politics’ promised by the Green Party.
The result is all rather traditional, with Ladbrokes now offering 10/1 odds that the Greens will sling their leader onto the composite pile by election day.
But spare a thought for the position Ms Bennett has found herself. She is having to reconcile the fantasy world of Green policymakers with the crushing reality of global insecurity and economic hardship, all on the fly with skilled interviewers and audiences tapping their fingers waiting for an answer. Is there a supercomputer powerful enough to bridge the gulf between Green policy and reality without having a mind blank?
For example, the Green party have announced they would pull Britain out of NATO, wind-down our armed forces, and ban arms manufacture. This is a coherent set of pacifist policies, until they also claim that such policies will keep Britain safe. So how, Natalie Bennett was asked, would she deal with Vladimir Putin and his war planes that seem to be circling our shores once again? Her answer is to ‘build international alliances, work together’. You can see how such contradiction leads so quickly to mind blanks. Whilst withdrawing from NATO and the EU – a necessity to meet their commitments on trade tariffs – they will simultaneously build new alliances strong enough to contain Russia.
Natalie Bennett says the solution to war is to ‘build a new place in the world as a champion of human rights, as a champion of international law’. But the problem the Green party has is what happens when someone breaks the law, as Putin now routinely does? If Brighton and Hove is anything to go by, the answer seems to be to legalise it thus squaring the circle.
Almost unbelievably, this week the leader of the Green party in Brighton and Hove called for cannabis to be sold by the council in order to plug the looming budget deficit resulting from four years of Green rule. The Green parliamentary candidate for Brighton Kemptown, Davy Jones, agrees but wants to go one step further, saying ‘tax income from the regulation and sale of drugs could provide a major new source of funds…There is absolutely no logical health rationale for tobacco and alcohol to be legal and other drugs (cannabis, ecstasy, LSD or even cocaine and heroin) to be illegal’.
For some the anti-establishment voice of the Greens have provided a refreshing source of challenge to mainstream parties in recent years. But thanks to the much vaunted ‘surge’, followed by a less reported sag, they must be held to account for their policy commitments. Just as mainstream parties are expected to account for their promises, so must they.
Labour has a fantastic record of investment and reform in our public services which delivered progressively more to those in greatest need. We achieved this whilst maintaining our air and sea defences and strengthening our partnerships abroad. The result was a healthier and better educated country that exerted influence and strength in our dealings abroad. Today’s launch by the Green party shows us once again that looking to the Greens for answers to the toughest challenges our nation and planet faces is nothing more than a car crash waiting to happen.
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Peter Kyle is parliamentary candidate for Hove and Portslade
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Well said, Peter. To feel some emotional pull by Green waffle as we get disillusioned by Labour is pretty normal I’m sure. But if you let your head rule your heart you are throwing everything in the bin. If we don’t all fight the Greens’ appeals to our hearts from the front foot (as you say, today’s mind slip was not an aberration, it was part of the general Green inability – they have the worst recycling in the UK in Brighton for Godsake) then other councils will suffer the same fate as poor Brighton. Without the Green vote in Florida back when Bush ‘beat’ Gore, we would have had eight years of Al Gore as the Greenest Leader the world has ever had. Ed Miliband achieved more in a day as climate change minister than the Greens have done in four years making an ecological mess of Brighton. The Green vote in marginal seats will merely take votes from Labour (their target). Yes, Labour does need to return to its radical roots – it’s people joining the Greens and not fighting the corner within Labour that’s the problem. Brilliant article on the right day.
After Brighton Pavilion, the two highest priority Green targets are Bristol West and Norwich South, both Liberal Democrat seats at present. With the margins being so tight, Green victories could stop the Tories forming a majority.
I won’t claim that Brighton has been a success, but placing the blame entirely on the Green Party is nonsense. You’re probably aware that non-Coalition ran councils have been more heavily hit by cuts than Tory and LibDem councils. In addition the Greens inherited an equality law requirement that previous councils hadn’t dealt with; they’ve fought to bring outsourced services in-house; and they are a minority council who’ve regularly been outvoted by a Labour-Tory alliance in recent years.
I’ll admit the Ralph Nader problem is a concern, but the Green Party are only doing so well because hundreds of thousands of people, myself included, believe that Labour aren’t the long-term solution.
As you say, Brighton hasn’t been a success, and yes, the Coalition Government has not hit its own councils like it has hit the rest of us. My own (Labour) Borough has been the 9th worst hit, yet 33% of all household waste produced here in Islington
is sent for recycling, composting or reuse. I know it’s possibly less fun at the moment than Greens who are a on a roll, but Labour is the party which had the courage to set up the NHS and the Open University, fighting the Establishment all the way, and believe me, our heart is there to do it again if we have popular suport. Do you really think the Greens would unite around a Radical policy if they ever held power? Do you really think the Greens ever will hold power? Even in Germany? Sorry, but I was as disappointed as you probably were with Labour in power 1997-2010 but the solution is not a green fantasy. If you really examine what could possibly happen, then the Greens are not your ‘long-term solution’ If ecology is the issue, our Leader would be the Greenest Leader is in the West if he is elected and the 1997-2010 achievements in the UK and in the EU (where it counts) are second to none. I fully appreciate the current spirit among the Greens, but they are following their hearts with slogans not their heads. If you are serious about creating a better society you should join Labour and change it. As Peter Kyle says, it wasn’t a ‘mind blank’ – all politicians get them and we let them go (I worked in TV for 25 years, if it not live we re-record). Politicians should be able to speak freely and honestly without the fear of a distorted Daily Mail headline. But this was yet another admission of the fantasy world that is the Green Manifesto for 2015. That is why an apparently minor mind blank has been played again and again.
There are major differences between Islington and Brighton – Brighton is a minority controlled council, I think it’s Islington where 53 of 54 councillors are Labour, the only opposition being one Green?
There’s also the factthat the Greens in Brighton inherited an equality lawsuit, the equivalent of which cost Birmingham £757 million:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20294633
While the Greens in Brighton haven’t been a success in my opinion, there’ve been some impressive aspects – introducing a Living Wage for all council employees, for instance. If given a choice between them and the Labour councils in Redcar and Middlesbrough, I’d take Brighton without a doubt. (Obviously there will be some excellent Labour councils around the country, but I don’t buy the idea that Brighton represents unprecedented incompetence.)
I’ve a lot of admiration for the achievements of the historic Labour Party, and want something like that again. Aside from SureStart and the minimum wage, are there any transformative things Labour has
accomplished in the last 20 years?
There is the possibility that the Green Party won’t be able to remain radical as it grows, but the internal contradictions are smaller than in the
Labour Party (privatising Blairites and Marxist union officials) so I can’t see why not. The Green Party is also more democratic, and so more responsive to the members.
I actually like Miliband’s environmental record and policies, but he’s the most left-wing member the cabinet is likely to have any time soon, more than counterbalanced by neoliberals like Hunt and Reeves.
I really hope that the Labour Party can be reformed into something more confidently socialist and less Blairite, but if that is possible I think it would involve external pressure (the fear of losing to other leftwing parties).
Take your point about Labour not being transformative from 1997-2010, but unless we want 15 years or more of Tory government, we need a United Rainbow opposition. this needn’t be right wing, Obama had a very Radical record prior to getting to office. As I said above ‘Without the Green vote in Florida back when Bush ‘beat’ Gore, we would have had eight years of Al Gore as the Greenest Leader the world has (n)ever had. ‘
I’m no Green Party supporter and have been campaigning hard for Labour locally in one of the key super marginals. However I think you are making some easy hits and airbrushing over some of the real problems of the last Labour governments.
Putin’s airplanes are ‘circling Britain’ Oh come on. A little macho willy waving with a couple of bombers off the shores of Cornwall is hardly a major threat. This is not the cold war. I am no fan of Putin – under him Russia seems to be run by a quasi mafia of criminals and oligarchs – but I think his action over Ukraine is as much to do with shoring up his electoral base and concerns over Russian security that are misplaced but have roots deep in their history of fighting invasions. Europe and the west both have some culpability in stirring up the situation in the Ukraine.
And we “exerted influence and strength in our dealings abroad” did we? I think our entirely misplaced adventure in Iraq has contributed directly to the current highly unstable situation in the Middle East, fast approaching the shores of the Mediterranean. Dodgy dossier’s aside (did anyone seriously believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could target the west?) the complete failure to plan properly the-post conflict situation made it a total policy fail to my mind. Iraq is also one of the reasons so many people I know are attracted to the Greens and the hardest argument I have in trying to convince them to stick with Labour.
And cannabis taxation: While I agree Davy Jones’ approach is pretty left field, so are our drug laws that criminalise hundreds of thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens who use drugs recreationally on a regular basis, with, in the main, no more or even less harmful consequences than alcohol consumption. I’m not naive to the potentially harmful effects of skunk etc but criminalising users is a daft way of trying to tackle misuse as the wrongly sacked David Nutt repeatedly pointed out.
I’m not interested in championing the Green’s corner – to me they are a potential obstacle to a Labour government – but we might be better being a little less tribal in our politics and emphasising how WE are going to create a greener and more peaceful world on the bias of a sensible and realisable politics in alliance with all progressive forces who share our aims.
Anyway, enough of this – back to campaigning, there’s an election to be won!
Spot on.
See what happens when you let a woman run things Harriet and Gloria….. 🙂
The Green Party proposed to spend £5 Billion on affordable housing for rent – that would be paid for by ending tax relief for buy to let and other landlords.
2013 figures from her majesty customs and revenue (HMCR) show that private landlords claim £5.31 billion a year in mortgage interest and other financial costs and £7 billion in other tax deductible cost including repairs, letting fees and insurance. So the green party could have got another £7 billion !
At the moment the Governments spends less than £1 billion a year on the affordable homes programme.