GO Greens

[malaise]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/green-party-chaotic-but-have-lesson-for-main-parties
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Political education of British troops between the end of the war and the famous July 1945 general election was extraordinary, according to my late father, a member of the forces’ educational team. The troops did not want to hear Conservative and Liberal plans. They only wanted to hear about full employment, a welfare state and making the economy serve the people. It was a collective, unstoppable grassroots roar.

Seventy years later, there is no parallel roar, no overarching programme of either left or right that appeals to the majority and, even if there were, there’s little or no trust in politicians’ capacity to provide anything on such a substantial scale. Compared to 1945, our fiscal situation is a doddle: the national debt is proportionally very much lower. Yet the discourse is that any ambition to act collectively, to use the state or spend public money to pursue great goals is off the agenda.
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The sole option is to rein back any collective ambition. “Credibility” in economic policy is about the degree to which the serious politician conforms to the suffocating mantra of prioritising public debt reduction above any other aim, which by some strange osmosis will address the country’s other dysfunctions – growing unfairness, low growth, falling real wages, already hard pressed public services and, above all, the lack of a shared vision of what a good society looks like.

The party that is now riding the tide is the Greens, whose membership last week broke the 50,000 threshold, making it Britain’s fourth biggest political party. It is an important political moment. All these minor parties, whatever your view, at least dare to have visions of an alternative future. For the Greens, it is less ecological sustainability and an impending planetary crisis that is attracting new members, although most people concede the case even if not with the same zealotry. It is more the wider perception that the Greens dare in the name of a better society.

In some respects, their programme is no more outlandish than Labour’s in 1945. The Greens want to organise public policy to support, systematically, a vision of living a sustainable life. They propose nationalising the railways, taking the NHS back to its public benefit roots, obliging employers to recognise trade unions and doing all we can to limit climate change. This prospectus may never be attractive to the majority. But it has a political integrity. Yet it also means a scrutiny for which the party is ill prepared. Last week, Andrew Neil skewered Green leader Natalie Bennett on Sunday Politics in what has become a mini YouTube hit. By roaming over the Greens’ website, Neil was able to expose apparent absurdity after absurdity.
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I hope they do well. The times are changing slowly and all the current parties of the status quo will be swept away with the tide that destroys the neo-liberal agenda.