Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): My first prediction is that a news event that is already today ongoing will be big, and will run and run. New Labour are determined to push nuclear power through, this year. This will arouse huge opposition. It is a litmus-test issue for any politician wishing to don green clothing. Because it is a lie that nuclear is a low carbon source of energy: if, as one must, one factors in the energy needed for mining, transporting and processing uranium, and if (as one must, and this is crucial) one includes the vast amount of energy needed to decommission monitor and protect nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years, then nuclear ends up with a stupendously huge carbon footprint.
The Tories may come in 2008 to rue their equivocal attitude to nuclear - this policy may yet be a dreadful millstone for them, an ugly albatross hanging around their greenwashed necks. Zac Goldsmith believed, when he joined the Tories, that he had a commitment from them not to go down the nuclear route. Now it is clear that the Tories are willing to allow new nuclear power providing it is privately funded - that, in effect, they will NOT oppose New Labour policy. Zac must be feeling rather betrayed...perhaps 2008 might even see him return to the fold, and join the Green Party?
The May 1st local elections will be a significant milestone in British politics: the first real test of Brown's Labour Party. In London, Ken Livingstone will hang on to be re-elected as Mayor, and the Green group on the Greater London Assembly will grow to 3 or 4 A.M.s, thus strengthening the Greens' grip on the budgetary balance of power in London. Where I am writing from, in Norwich, we may achieve a historic milestone. If just 3 seats change hands, then the Green Party could become the largest Party on Norwich City Council, the first time that that has ever happened on a British Principal Authority Council. Fighting on issues such as more affordable housing, no to incineration, and yes to ‘home rule' (Unitary status) for Norwich, the Green Party will, I predict, certainly become at least the second-largest Party on the Council, consigning Norwich's LibDems to the dustbin of history. And that outcome, official Opposition status for the Greens, would itself too be a milestone, a historic first in British politics.
The Green Party's 1st ever Leadership election will take place in early autumn 2008. By the end of this year, the British public will be getting used to not just Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, but also a fourth name: Caroline Lucas? Sian Berry? Peter Tatchell? We will, of course, have to wait and see a while longer, to find out who will stand for the Leadership of the Green Party, in an election which, because of its first time status, will surely attract more publicity than the Greens have experienced since 1989.
The most important event of 2008, however, will not take place until December, and will not take place in Britain. In Poland, the successor Conference to Bali may well decide the fate of human civilisation. The long run-up to this event, as governments and NGOs try to get hard figures tied down to the "deep cuts" in emissions that the Bali agreement has promised us all, is the real story of 2008. Failure in Poznan will negate success in everything else in the year ahead. For, to put it simply: without a sustainably-liveable planet, within a couple of generations none of us will have any elections - nor indeed anything else - to worry about.
Comments
Brighton will be very interesting - personally I would welcome a Green MP as I think it would add to the national political debate.
The single issue was more in response to Adrian -
We will get our first MP in the next election -- we only need a 3000 vote swing, in Brighton Pavillion.
As for the idea that we are a single issue party: well, yes we are: the single issue is: all political issues, combined into one, wholistically. Because you cannot have (e.g.) a transport policy which is not simultaneously also a crime policy, an economic policy, an ecological policy, en education polcy, a food and farming policy.... We are the only Party that truly believes in joined-up government. If that is being a 'single issue party', then i plead guilty!
The Lib Dems a single issue party - pot and kettle anyone?
I think you all grossly exaggerate the importance of the Greens doing well in Norwich local elections. They are only LOCAL ELECTIONS - poor turnout and a "I'll vote for them its only the local elections" mentality. Nationally the Greens have little electoral impact and politics is still dominated by the two major parties (Con and Lab). Until the Greens get 1 (!) MP I don't see how they can be seen as a serious national political force - sorry guys!
Greens in England - and particularly in some of the places mentioned - have leapt forwards in recent months and years. By building a steady base, it is looking more and more likely that Greens will begin to replace the Lib Dems as the third party in the UK. And rightly so. A third party should not exist for it's own sake. It should not exist to be more right wing than the Tories in Tory seats, and more left wing than Labour in Labour seats. It should not unite only around a desire to be elected. It should be elected to unite those who desire change. It should not aim just to be elected. It should aim to make change through election. The Lib Dems cannot do this. They are not one party, but three - right wing Liberals, left wing Social Democrats, and local populists. When London Lib Dems meet Edinburgh Lib Dems, they have less in common than Labour and the Tories.
It seems, with the election of Clegg, the Lib Dems have ripped off this plaster. They are accepting they cannot be all things to all people. They have become the right wing Liberal party of their distant past. A party standing for nothing more than a vague notion of individual liberty - but unsure what it means by this. As Clegg says, they represent a traditional British commitment to civil liberties. That is all. They have become a single issue party.
And they have done it as the Greens have become organised enough to replace them as a truely progressive force in national politics.
Exciting times.
Interesting post, RR, many thanks, but "dustbin of history" is an ugly phrase, with a Stalinist past and like many arrogant and revealing turns of the tongue turned on those who used it rather than those whose demise it scorned. At the very least as a Green you should be both generous and wise enough to want to see the Lib-Dems in Norwich recycled. Even better, however forward looking you may think you are, we humans always live in our history and more respect we pay it and less we ragard it as a dustbin (see Blair) the better.
Anthony
Of course, if a greater Norwich Unitary council does go ahead it will double the number of people served. Unfortunately, there are no Green councillors outside the present Norwich city boundaries - the overwhelming majority are Conservatives, then the Lib Dems.
In any Greater Norwich authority the Greens would most likely be the fourth biggest party.
If the Greens want to have any influence over the future of Norwich they would be wise to fight to maintain the city's independence and not back the unitary bid.
Perhaps I was getting a bit over-excited, when I used the term 'dustbin of history'... Apologies for any offence caused... (For a fuller explication of why I think the LibDems fundamentally ARE history -- why they have no future, and why what is happening to them in Norwich will happen to them everywhere before too long -- see my earlier 'OK' post, http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/2007/12/18/cleggs-liberalism-is-not-the-opposition-we-need/
; or see my autobiographical account of why I left the LibDems and joined the Greens, at http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/voices/read.htm ).
That said, I think that John Bennett is wrong: It is the LibDems that are likely to be the 4th Party in greater Norwich, after unitary. I am not sure that Mr. Bennett realises how much trouble the LibDems are in electorally, in the Norwich area, and how badly they are likely to fold, this May.
That said, I strongly agree with Mr. Bennett if he is suggesting that the area currently proposed for the greater Norwich unitary authority is FAR TOO LARGE. Norwich Green Party wants the full Norwich urban area to be included in the new Norwich unitary authority. It is is a nonsense for places like Sprowston and Hellesdon to be 'outside Norwich', when they are plainly part of Norwich -- it makes proper planning in andof the city impossible . But we will _oppose_ the move to a unitary authority, in the final analysis, if the Boundary Commission decides to include swathes of rural Norfolk including villages or even possibly surrounding market towns in the area of 'Norwich'. (See "Greens launch 'middle way' campaign on boundaries of unitary Norwich", at http://www.norwichgreenparty.org/default.aspx?url=http://www.norwichgreenparty.org/archive_news.html ).
"dustbin of history" was Trotsky (Stalin's main opponent)... but that said I'm no great fan of the phrase, even whilst acknowledging no one will much care in Norwich how many cllrs the lib dems lose or gain but the shock waves of Norwich Green Party results could be felt all over the country.
Plenty of LibDems are "decent sorts" but if we're to achieve radical change we need a dramatic shift in the way we do politics and the three main parties simply do not provide this - although they can be pushed in a more environmentally friendly direction, as the example of Norwich shows.
Post new comment