Labour leftists looking for a win should embrace the big green elephant in the room
These days you’d be hard-pressed to find a left-leaning Labour Party member who’s happy with the direction their party is taking. Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign pitched him as Corbyn-lite, but three years on he’s positioned himself to the right of the Conservatives. Long gone are the pledges of nationalised utilities, freedom of movement and a foreign policy based on peace and justice. Instead, Starmer’s Labour is a party of big business, harsh immigration rules, and war in the middle east. So, what about the Green Party?
Abandoning Labour – but where to?
Understandably many left-wing activists have abandoned Labour and cancelled their memberships, while others choose to stay inside the party machine and criticise Starmer from the sidelines. In both camps we see great swathes of disaffected but passionate activists promising to boycott the next election entirely, resigned to five more years of misery.
These people have more power than they think. They’re still following politics, tweeting tweets, writing letters, signing petitions, and attending protests. Under Corbyn they were the whirlwind force of door knockers and leaflet posters who delivered the stunning upset of the 2017 general election.
If all of that energy could be channelled into a focused political movement, a truly left-wing party with progressive policies and grassroots decision-making at its core, Rishi Sunak and Starmer could face their own shock at the ballot box next year. This movement, this fantasy political party already exists: the Green Party.
Overlapping policies
The overlap between Corbyn’s Manifesto – even Starmer’s ten broken pledges – and Green Party policy is immense. Economic justice through higher taxes on the rich, abolishing tuition fees, promoting peace instead of war, public ownership of utilities, defending migrants’ rights, strengthening trade unions, and of course bold action on climate change. These are all staples of Green Party policy.
Not only do they exist and share the Labour left’s top priorities, the Green Party are clearly capable of winning enough votes to break the Labour/Tory duopoly. Currently polling at an average of 6%, the Greens peaked at 12% in a national election as recently as 2019, convincing nearly two million voters to back them at the European Parliament elections. All this with a mere fraction of the funding and membership numbers of Labour or the Conservatives.
With the addition of thousands of former Labour members, the Greens could see a surge in voting intention similar to the leftward shift we saw in the summer of 2017. What the Greens lack in balanced media coverage, a problem Corbyn’s Labour also faced, can always be overcome with people power.
And it’s not like this new influx of members would be outsiders working for a rival party. They would have agency and ownership within the party. Unlike Labour or the Conservatives, the Green Party’s policies are made by the membership, local parties choose their own MPs and leadership elections happen automatically every two years. If a Starmer-style Thatcherite ever lied their way to the Green leadership, they would not be able to purge the left, overhaul party policy, or impose right-wing MPs on local parties.
Leftists should embrace the Green Party
With a strong Green Party as a left-wing option on the ballot paper, with the right number of passionate activists to make them a viable force in British politics, this country doesn’t have to face five more years of Red or Blue Conservative government. We can have real, meaningful change for the better.
Leftists should embrace the Green Party with open arms and set off the political earthquake this country desperately needs.
Featured image via the Green Party
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I have been a member of the green party for seven years. We have a real chance to make difference at this next election. The right already know this. Thats why they try to portray climate activists as terrorists
If I was British, especially in England, I’d think quite seriously about joining the Green Party, which unlike Canada’s Green Party or Germany’s, the latter the most electorally successful out of of all countries’, doesn’t appear to be having an identity crisis. But what measures is the party taking to extend their appeal beyond the middle class to working class voters? That, it seems to me, is the key to much greater electoral success. I assume like the Lib Dems the party is quite strong on electoral reform but in what form? The Lib Dems if I’m not mistaken have always preferred PR by single transferable vote but perhaps the Greens are considering other options?
As a previous member of the Labour Party, I found that supporting the Green Party was a natural progression. I voted for them in our local by-election. Some people say its a wasted vote due to minimal success, but if we look back in history, the Labour Party gained momentum by the aspirations of disenfranchised and apathetic sections of community, poor health, poor welfare services, lack of real employment and the list goes on.
It can be done and I see the greens as our only
hope.
This is a bit behind the curve, and it has been obvious as a way to go since Starmer conned his way in to take over Labour. I have been a member for about 4 years as an escapee from Labour. If you canvas for the Green Party people seem glad to see you as they know how important the issues are. Glad to see that the argument is now being made.
It’s long overdue that left-leaning platforms like The Canary should start stating the plainly obvious: that for anyone who actually cares about the state of politics in the UK, a vote for Labour at the next election is a wasted vote. Sure, you might help to ‘get the Tories out’ but so what? By voting Labour, you’ll just be helping to replace them with a political party almost as venal and far more authoritarian than the incumbents. It’s fair to say that in many constituencies, it would be hard to create a vote swing that elected a Green MP. But in others, enough people voting for a political party that actually stands for what they believe in could actually swing some seats for the Greens. A Green caucus in the next parliament would have a real effect on politics over the next 5 years and would lay the ground for a much larger Green caucus in parliament in the election after the next one.
I’d suggest here are still many independent, Left-leaning, ex-Labour candidates to choose from first! Those long-standing, so-called, ‘Labour Lefties’ jettisoned by Starmer in favour of his chosen candidates who get parachuted in.
I also haven’t forgotten the Green, Lib Dem, SNP pile-on attacking ‘Red Ed’, creating a Tory win. No solidarity there. No concerted attack on the REAL enemy! No – go for the selfish easy option. (I know, that’s politics, but it was the way they belittled Ed and let Cameron off the hook). The Greens only ever get Brighton, and they might lose that at the next election.
Apart from poor old Charles Kennedy, an admirable man with a moral compass, cruelly hounded to death by foes and ‘friends’ alike, (I suspect), those running the Lib Dems over the last 40yrs or more have proved themselves untrustworthy wolves in soft-Tory anoraks. (I have personal and local experience).
But, even as a Labour Party member, a forward looking Corbynista refusing to go quietly, (yet open to new ideas), I do hope people vote tactically to get rid of the Tories, thus denying Starmer his anticipated landslide win.
Starmer deserves to find he still has to deal and negotiate with those true Labour members he ruthlessly kicked out of the party. And, more importantly, the people deserve to have those voices holding Starmer and his thugs to account, not least for the lies he told to get elected leader.
‘I’m a Celeb’, ‘Britain’s Gone to the Dogs’, and other TV game show, have proved people can take control through clever voting, even when the host and producers want a different outcome, and Brexit showed this realisation has permeated into politics.
If, like me, you still have a hardworking ‘traditional’ Labour MP, no problem. If not, I agree those on the Left, whether Green or Red, have to work at convincing people to take a chance with the right local independent or smaller party candidate, one who will help curb the worst policies of any future Tory, or Tory-lite party government.
We know this is not going to be easy.
I wish us ALL good luck!
Reading this, I have just this minute joined the Green Party. I joined the Labour Party really excited to try to get Jeremy Corbyn, an obviously honest politician into a position where he could make a difference to our country. As we all know we were screwed over by the media and our own party MPs who created a false image of a monster/idiot and tore the man apart. Good on the Canary for pushing this Green idea.