May elections could establish the colour of Britain’s fourth party
Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): Local election campaigning kicked off this week - what will it mean for the UK’s fourth party?
A lot of focus will inevitably be on the situation in London. The London Mayoral race is hotting up. At the top, it is closely-contested by Ken Livingstone of Labour and Boris Johnson of the Conservatives. But the election system used for Mayor of London means that voters can pick as their first preference whoever they want, and transfer their vote tactically using their second preference vote. The Lib Dems are polling poorly, and are likely to drop below their score in ‘04 - the Green Party candidate (Sian Berry), on the other hand, is charismatic and dynamic, and it may well be that it is the Green Party that profits from the AV system. Sian Berry will quite probably get the highest-votes ever received by Mayoral candidates for the Green Party in a mayoral race.
Sian would make a brilliant Mayor, and it would be fantastic to see Green policies transforming our capital city. In terms of who would get my second preference vote; I’m not sure - but I’m afraid it definitely wouldn’t be Boris. He is a very affable guy, and smarter than he looks (believe it or not, we used to be political allies!); but the Mayor of London has to be someone who can actually run the country’s capital city. I don’t think that that would be Boris’s forte. Hosting “Have I got news for you” and running London are not really comparable enterprises. But now that Ken and Sian have cross endorsed one another, it is starting to look less likely, thankfully, that London will end up electing an un-green mayor this time.
As for the wider local elections, the Green Party will I believe expand by about 15-20% in terms of numbers of Principal Authority Councillors elected on May 1st. In the London Assembly elections, we will benefit from proportional representation and Sian’s profile, and go from 2 members to 3, or possibly even 4. Crucially, we will also move into a position of much greater power and influence on several Councils around the country - including my own Norwich, where I believe we will on the night of May 1st gain somewhere around 3 seats, to become the official opposition. This will be a first, anywhere in the country, and will put us within striking distance of taking the Council. It will also turn a media spotlight on us that there has never been before, and frankly we are looking forward to that.
Across the country, on May 1st, many voters will have a chance to make their views known on (among other things) which Party could commit to actually tackling - globally and locally - dangerous climate change, the pre-eminent issue of our age. All three ‘main’ Parties have been “captured” by the rich and business interests; there is no realistic chance of them turning away from neo-liberal orthodoxy to a genuinely ecological alternative. All the main three Parties have to offer is green window-dressing overlaid upon the same old grey politics/economics. That is the underlying reason why I think that we Greens will once again move forward significantly, on May 1st.
The Tories will advance as well, partly through having as yet fooled a number of citizens that one can vote blue to go green, the evidence of their catastrophically anti-green local administrations around the country notwithstanding. But the more significant, for me, is the likelihood that Britain will awake on May 2nd with the Green Party very firmly established as the fourth Party of British politics, with many more Councillors (and more London Assembly members) than ever before.
Filed under: Green Party, Local democracy
I suspect that the Green party will actually do quiet badly at the Mayoral elections. Sian is left wing, and her alliance with Ken has more to do with her political leanings than with her green leanings, but then again the green movement has really been co-opted by the anti-capitalism/ socialist brigade. Another interesting insight into how well the Greens do, is whether the general public is suffering from green-fatigue: lots of retoric on climate change applied to increase taxes and restrict quality of life but not much in terms of real action - consider labour’s last budget - nothing on increasing flood defences - and look at the billions ken has wasted on the congestion charge, how much better if the people of london had spent the money on saving the rainforest; an example of positive action as powerful as introducing a new tax which costs nearly as much to collect as it raises. I await the May elections with interest.
“what will it mean for the UK’s fourth party?”
The Greens are NOT the UK’s fourth party.
Firstly, there are THREE different Green Parties. The Scottish Green Party, the Green Party of England and Wales, and the one that operates in Northern Ireland.
Secondly, in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, there are several parties which collect far more votes than the Green Party of England and Wales does. These would include Plaid, the SNP, and the numerous parties which stand for Stormont. The Scottish Green Party has a decent claim to being the fifth party of Scotland, but it is a different organisation to the one you refer.
The Green Party you refer to, also stands in Wales, but the Welsh Green Party is well on its way to becoming a separate party, as the SGP did many a moon ago. As this happens, the idea of the English Greens being a fourth British - as opposed to English - party is increasingly distant.
magik
Without wanting to get into a big argument over this, I must correct one thing: whatever being Green/supporting the Green Party or working as a Green politician is about it isn’t about ‘reducing quality of life’. We (as a society) have higher than ever MATERIAL standard of living and yet ‘quality of life indices’ that take into account factors like personal happiness show DECLINING quality of life. How could this be? Could it be that soaring levels of stress, unemployment, inequality, social isolation and chronic illnesses, mostly lnked to this never ending quest for higher material standard of living is taking its toll?
Green policies are basically ‘more for less’ policies - wothwhile and satisfying work, supportative communities, a healthy environment and more control over our lives at a local and individual level. Surely that is where real quality of life is to be found?
I think that in terms of proportion across the county the Greens do a pretty good job in terms of being the fourth party in our island at least.
The Greens have proven that they go further than just being the single issue party of the 80’s. They are elected in areas of massively varied social demographics, and are the only party after the big three that is elected to all but one level of government. Even there, being Westminster, the Greens came within striking distance of winning a seat and there is no doubt it is a matter of time before they are elected there too.
In London the candidate for the Greens is receiving more attention than in either of the previous two elections. This can only mean an increase in support and the media recognising that the Greens are no longer a joke.
The one thing I would pick on is Ruperts assertion that the Tories are likely to gain council seats. This is questionable, unless they can get onto the big northern councils, this set of elections has little promise for them. They gained almost all they could in 2004 and as said the only councils that are either in the North. Or down south where the tories already have massive majorities or are struggling to get more than 20%. Hence I think there will be little change amongst the big three.
“I think that in terms of proportion across the county the Greens do a pretty good job in terms of being the forth party in our island at least. The Greens have proven that they go further than just being the single issue party of the 80’s”
James, please read my comments above. There is no UK Green Party anymore. I also don’t know what you mean by “our island” - does this include Anglesey, Lewis or the Isle of Wight?! I’m afraid, this along with your use of “the North” (without saying the “north of England”
shows an anglocentric mindset.
By what measure is the Green party the UK’s “fourth party”? They had no candidates elected to Parliament (DUP was fourth). They rank sixth in terms of the number of votes cast in the last general election (UKIP was fourth). They were fifth in terms of the numbers of councillors in 2007 (Residents Assocation was fourth).
Within striking distance? The closest they came was in Brighton Pavilion, where they came third, Labour having a 11.6 % majority over them…
Ray Bell’s remarks are a complete red herring. I have just come back from a weekend Conference of the ‘Green Islands Network’, in London, with reps from the Northern Irish and Scots Greens joining us in detailed discussions and joint-planning. Please don’t use the fact that we are a properly decentralised Party with a mostly-independent existence in Scotland and Northern Ireland as a technical tool with which to assail our claim to being the 4th Party of ‘our kingdom’. I don’t see how the Nationalist or the specifically-Northern-Irish Parties can make such a claim, because they do not stand candidates anywhere in England.
In the battle for fourth place in terms of numbers of Councillors elected on May 1st, the Greens Party’s only country-wide competition, sadly, is provided by UKIP and the BNP. Would anyone care to bet on them having more Councillors than us, come May 2? I am happy to take on such a bet, and we’ll see who wakes up that day smiling…
[Should probably be posting this on UK Political Betting, I guess...]
To be fair you didn’t make clear the measure you were using - or at least it wasn’t clear to me - and you didn’t mention England. For the reason I stated, the DUP is like it or not the UK’s fourth party. By other measures, of course, it is not.
As for betting on outcomes of elections, I won’t take your bet on the local elections, but I would bet against the Greens gaining a Commons seat at the next election. As I understand it, you simply aren’t trusted more than the usual suspects on the issues most important to the electorate at election time.
“Please don’t use the fact that we are a properly decentralised Party with a mostly-independent existence in Scotland and Northern Ireland as a technical tool with which to assail our claim to being the 4th Party of ‘our kingdom’.”
The Scottish Green Party is a *completely different* party to the one in England. One look at the electoral commision’s website can verify this.
They split amicably at some point in the early 1990s, I believe, but they are not the same party. They are both affiliates of the European Green Alliance (or whatever it calls itself)
“I don’t see how the Nationalist or the specifically-Northern-Irish Parties can make such a claim, because they do not stand candidates anywhere in England.”
The only other country of the UK which the English Green Party stands is Wales. In terms of coverage, as opposed to votes, it can never properly claim to be a UK party when it does not stand in Scotland or Northern Ireland. (Although to be fair, most UK parties leave NI to itself!)
These parties can put in a claim on the basis of the votes they get. Although they do not stand in England, Plaid, the SNP and the Northern Irish Parties are all parties standing within the UK, and therefore their votes can be tallied up in any UK-wide rankings. The SNP and Plaid stand candidates in every Westminster and Parliament/Assembly consituency, and on every Parliament/Assembly regional list. They also stand in the vast majority of council wards. None of the Green Parties of the UK have so many candidates, nor indeed as many elected representatives as these two parties.
Needless to say, the SNP garners a hell of a lot of votes these days - in every region we’re talking of thousands of votes, and they frequently best the Lib Dems and Tories here. Even Labour sometimes! In contrast, the vote of the English Green Party’s sister atrophied in the last Scottish election - something which I think was unfortunate, but very real - they have two MSPs due to our PR. They don’t even stand in constituencies, except in by-elections.
In NI, the situation is so complicated, I’m not going to even comment on it!
In Scotland and Wales, the SNP and Plaid are in the national governments - one in minority, one in coalition. The local Greens are well away from this, other than here, where the SGP had an electoral pact with the SNP they’ve more or less broken.