Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party. Image: Underclassrising, Flickr, some rights reserved.
The general election brought mixed results for the Green Party. For the country the result was better than expected. The Tories lost ground and with it the prospects for hard Brexit and austerity. The Green Party, through the Progressive Alliance (PA), played a big part in this. But the Party saw its vote share drop. Hence a real feeling of ambivalence about the result. The country needs a thriving, confident and influential Green Party. So the next few months of debate really matter. Here I want to set out the achievements of the Party, the role of the progressive alliance and ideas about future strategy.
First though a bit of context. I’m a member of the Labour Party and chair of Compass, the good society pressure group. Compass has been greatly influenced by the Greens. We started out as a Labour orientated group but the involvement of Caroline Lucas and other Greens made us change our constitution so that anyone could join us if they shared our good society values. Many Greens have and its made us a much richer organisation. Today we have members of all progressive parties and none that share our good society goals of much greater equality, democracy and sustainability. This pluralism has made us so much stronger.
