All too rarely you get a moment in politics that electrifies you – that makes all the meetings and the struggle worthwhile. One such moment happened to me at the Green Party conference in Harrogate earlier this week. It was, I believe, a profound moment for all of us who want a better world. But before I tell you about it – a little context.
Compass, the organization I chair, helped create the ‘progressive alliance’ – the idea of parties working together for the common good. When Theresa May called a snap election, a long-term cultural transformation strategy quickly and understandably got boiled down to transactional deals – how to stop the Tories getting a landslide. The Green Party, at least nationally, were the only ones to take it seriously and stood aside in a number of key seats to ensure the progressive vote wasn’t split. It worked - in that it helped stop the landslide. If it had worked better it could have put Corbyn in Downing Street. But neither the Lib Dems nor - especially - Labour took the idea seriously at the top.
