Clegg's liberalism is not the opposition we need

Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): I knew and worked with Chris Huhne long ago, back as a student in Oxford in the 1980s, when we were both in the SDP. He always impressed me, and he would have been a serious Leader for the Lib Dems. But not for me: I left the Lib Dems eight years ago, terminally dismayed at their (lack of) direction. The critically important thing, from my perspective as a Green, was that the Lib Dems, like New Labour and Cameron's ‘New Tories', had become thoroughly committed to neoliberalism and to globalisation. That is why it didn't really matter to us whether Clegg or Huhne triumphed today. The differences between them in terms of underlying political economy are negligible: <!--more-->Clegg is marginally more right-wing, marginally less green, and marginally more vacuous - but the key word here is "marginally".

Similarly, that is why Cameron's call at the weekend for a ‘progressive alliance' between Tories, Lib Dems and Greens sounds so strange: so laughable, really, to us. It is not just because of the Tories' rampant non-progressiveness. It is also because the three grey Parties now have so much in common that it matters very little which of them governs: they might as well all do it together. The only real opposition is provided by the likes of us: only we question whether further economic growth will actually improve quality of life or diminish it; only we stand for localisation as opposed to globalisation; and only we in the Green Party propose to protect the local, globally, rather than allow neoliberalism to run riot and continue trashing our planetary life-support system - our atmosphere, our climate.

Now that Nick Clegg has won, albeit so narrowly, there will undoubtedly be a rash of newspaper articles suggesting that we may see a Lib Dem resurgence. New Labour has allegedly abandoned the ‘liberal tradition' of British politics, and Clegg is using the word ‘liberal' over and over again, in an attempt to inherit this tradition for himself. This tactic may have some mileage. But this liberal tradition consists principally of two components: the first, political and juridical liberty, has indeed been massively undermined by Labour. The second however, economic liberalism, has been massively embraced.

The Lib Dems support both parts of this liberal tradition. But an era in which the overriding political issue of the time is the human race bursting through the ecological limits of the planet that sustains it is not an era well-suited to a liberal approach to economics and consumer choice. The Lib Dems' staunch liberalism will stand directly in the way of their alleged commitment to taking green issues seriously. For example? A totemic issue: there should be no ‘right' to use high-energy lightbulbs; they and their ilk should simply be banned.

The new Lib Dem Leader may energise their Party for a while. A leadership contest can do that. But there will also be a leadership contest for the first time ever in Britain's 4^th political Party, the Green Party, next year, now that the Greens' members have decided to adopt a formal leadership structure. And the Green Party, not the Lib Dems, is best-suited to be the real opposition in a decade which will see the climate crisis rightly trump many reactionary calls for individual liberty, of the like Clegg majors in. So long as Clegg's Lib Dems go on about ‘liberty' and being ‘liberal', they will always miss this point.