Why I’ve lost faith in the Green Party

Liz Lee Reynolds
Nov 7 · 4 min read

I’ve lost a lot of respect for the Green Party in the last few years, and that makes me sad. Just a few short years ago they were my go-to party but with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn’s new-old style Labour, my allegiances, along with thousands of others who were somewhere between dissatisfied and disgusted with the Blair fronted New Labour, have shifted.

The Green Party will not have been unaware of this. It is notable that their membership dipped slightly around the same time that Labour witnessed a massive surge in members. Their response to this perceived new enemy has been to go on the defensive rather than encouraging the green policies Labour has been putting forward.

In the last few years the negative reactions generated by the Green Party towards Labour has been impossible to ignore. This week it was demonstrated once again when they took a poorly edited, out of context clip of John McDonnell speaking about airport expansion claiming that he was arguing that airport expansion can help tackle climate change.

McDonnell had in fact suggested that Labour would stop the controversial expansion of Heathrow but may back some expansion of smaller airports to eliminate reliance on central hubs. This kind of deliberate misrepresentation of the facts and wilful omissions of details is exactly the sort of underhand tactics I would never have expected to see from the Green Party.

In previous years they had been accepting of their small but significant place in British politics, admitting that they acted more as a pressure group for the other parties, particularly Labour, to become more progressive. Now however, the whiff of power seems to have overwhelmed them and they seem desperate to undermine their competition for a true left-wing party in England.

While in previous elections the Greens have tried to strike an electoral pact with Labour, in a bid to keep the Tories out of key seats, they have taken up a similar alliance with the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru this time round. While this union is in principle a uniting of remain-supporting parties it also feels symbolic of a slip towards the center for the Greens.

In collusion to keep out any supposedly anti-remain MPs, the pact in fact looks to target a number of seats where pro-remain Labour MPs currently struggle to keep off the Tories. Rather than bringing us a reversal of Article 50, the alliance is more likely to help bring about another Conservative victory or a ConDem austerity hungry coalition.

As well as joining forces with the Yellow Tories, they seem to have lost a more all encompassing left-wing narrative which they successfully articulated around the time of the 2015 elections. I used to argue passionately with people who called the Greens a one-policy party and to be fair to them they still seem to hold two policies, the climate and remaining in the EU.

Green Party Billboard
Green Party Billboard
Green Party Billboard, image by ernie neil

A tweet on Sunday from Green MEP Molly Scott Cato encapsulated this issue. She criticised the Labour commitment to zero carbon emissions by 2030 which contained caveats to guarantee “an increase in good unionised jobs” with “the cost borne by the wealthiest”. She called this a compromised pledge to keep the unions happy, but surely she must recognise the need to underlie the creation of jobs through green industry, especially for the Labour party. Their position is not compromised but promises a fair green deal which will benefit both people and planet.

This seems to be the Green Party’s tactic. Rather than applaud the fantastic policies and commitments made in Labour’s Green New Deal they seem to try to find any crack to hound them on. Of course there is more work and progress which could be done on the side of Labour but the Greens have taken a stance of aggressive heel-biting rather than constructive, friendly criticism.

By doing so they have made themselves part of a system desperately trying to keep a truly progressive popular party out of power, along with the Tories (of both the standard and yellow variety), media outlets who wring their hands at how o-so confusing Labour’s Brexit plan is (agree a good exit deal before having a final people’s vote with their deal and remain as the options) and the other powerful forces in this country who are terrified of change.

The Greens shouldn’t be playing into these power games which are damaging the entire country but working with other left-wing parties to combat them. This is the role they played to get thousands of people on their side and it is one I hope to see them return to.

This General Election is so important. It’s not just an election about Brexit, it’s about protecting our environment, the NHS and the other public services up and down the country. Those things can only happen is Labour gets into power.

The Greens have said they want this to be a climate election but by joining with the Lib Dems they have instead prioritised a slim hope of overturning the referendum result.

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