Today there is unlikely to be a more propitious moment for a party advocating a different kind of politics and agenda
Happy birthday, Green party. Exactly 40 years after a handful of people gathered at a solicitors' office in Coventry to try to work out a democratic alternative to the politics of growth, the party is back in the Midlands for its spring conference, and celebrating a modest harvest of steady progress. One Westminster MP, two MEPs and nearly 150 councillors – not spectacular, more a model of sustainable growth. Yet at a time when voters across Europe are searching for alternatives to the mainstream and when the headlines are dominated by crises – on fuel prices and horsemeat – that offer Greens an open goal, the party struggles to get out a message that might influence the debate, let alone galvanise support. It's one thing to spend half a lifetime putting down roots; sooner or later the party has to explain why it bothered.
The nature of the party's difficulties was all too plain in yesterday's conference speech from the party's newish leader, the former Guardian journalist Natalie Bennett. There may be a coherent narrative linking the plight of bees and hedgehogs to coalition plans for welfare reform and the NHS, but it takes more than mentioning them in adjacent paragraphs to explain what it is. Ms Bennett, like other Green optimists, constructs a beguiling ladder from incremental advance in May's local elections to next year's European elections, the only national vote where the system gives smaller parties a fair chance. There's talk of trebling the number of MEPs, creating momentum to deliver at least one more MP to join Brighton's Caroline Lucas at Westminster in 2015.
But it will be a hard struggle, and it's not obvious that the party is up for it. Never quite clear whether it wants to fight from inside the system or outside, it has tried both. Permitted by the electoral system to avoid hard choices, the Greens have for too long been a convenient shelter for a kind of self-indulgent radicalism. It marks them out from some sister parties in Europe who are more familiar with the uncomfortable compromises that come from government. Struggling for a profile, they are disadvantaged by polls that hide their support among anonymous "others". Yet with their eyes on the small print of electoral advance, they still fail to articulate an alternative vision.
It was the idealism of the Greens in the 1980s that raised the salience of environmental politics, before the mainstream parties responded in the 1990s. Today there is unlikely to be a more propitious moment for a party advocating a different kind of politics and an agenda constructed on different priorities. The Greens have put down their roots. Now they have to rediscover the commitment and focus that first put them at the head of their movement. Reported by guardian.co.uk 13 hours ago.
Happy birthday, Green party. Exactly 40 years after a handful of people gathered at a solicitors' office in Coventry to try to work out a democratic alternative to the politics of growth, the party is back in the Midlands for its spring conference, and celebrating a modest harvest of steady progress. One Westminster MP, two MEPs and nearly 150 councillors – not spectacular, more a model of sustainable growth. Yet at a time when voters across Europe are searching for alternatives to the mainstream and when the headlines are dominated by crises – on fuel prices and horsemeat – that offer Greens an open goal, the party struggles to get out a message that might influence the debate, let alone galvanise support. It's one thing to spend half a lifetime putting down roots; sooner or later the party has to explain why it bothered.
The nature of the party's difficulties was all too plain in yesterday's conference speech from the party's newish leader, the former Guardian journalist Natalie Bennett. There may be a coherent narrative linking the plight of bees and hedgehogs to coalition plans for welfare reform and the NHS, but it takes more than mentioning them in adjacent paragraphs to explain what it is. Ms Bennett, like other Green optimists, constructs a beguiling ladder from incremental advance in May's local elections to next year's European elections, the only national vote where the system gives smaller parties a fair chance. There's talk of trebling the number of MEPs, creating momentum to deliver at least one more MP to join Brighton's Caroline Lucas at Westminster in 2015.
But it will be a hard struggle, and it's not obvious that the party is up for it. Never quite clear whether it wants to fight from inside the system or outside, it has tried both. Permitted by the electoral system to avoid hard choices, the Greens have for too long been a convenient shelter for a kind of self-indulgent radicalism. It marks them out from some sister parties in Europe who are more familiar with the uncomfortable compromises that come from government. Struggling for a profile, they are disadvantaged by polls that hide their support among anonymous "others". Yet with their eyes on the small print of electoral advance, they still fail to articulate an alternative vision.
It was the idealism of the Greens in the 1980s that raised the salience of environmental politics, before the mainstream parties responded in the 1990s. Today there is unlikely to be a more propitious moment for a party advocating a different kind of politics and an agenda constructed on different priorities. The Greens have put down their roots. Now they have to rediscover the commitment and focus that first put them at the head of their movement. Reported by guardian.co.uk 13 hours ago.
