Why the ‘posh’ label sticks just as dangerously to Greens
by Stephen Wood, who blogs here.
Class is back in politics. Or at least that is what the media has been telling us, after an attack on the out-of-touch ‘posh boys’ David Cameron and George Osborne from backbench Tory MP Nadine Dorries this week.
Whilst Dorries remains a divisive and marginal figure, her attack has crystallised a view of the party leadership that has begun to resonate both within the Westminster village and in the broader public. After several years of taking class out of contention as an issue in politics, the fiercely partisan recent budget and the reveal of improperly close relationships between business and the Tories has taken a toll. The public is increasingly less trusting of Cameron’s ability to appreciate and champion their problems.
Yet the pattern here isn’t anything new. When times are prosperous, the background of those in charge has always remained broadly irrelevant to voters. As the standard of living tightens and people either lose or become very focused upon job security, expectations always rise steeply that politicians feel and communicate that anxiety.
As an issue, it is something that threatens Greens too. In spite of the rapid transformation of the Greens into a force for social justice in the last few years, this change has not translated itself obviously amongst the outwardly facing frontbench of the party or the appearance of our priorities.
In part this is a result of our inability to invest time into creating a democratically-elected cadre of front-line politicians operating as a shadow cabinet. In our knee-jerk refusal to ape the existing parties, we have missed a trick in not having a representative face to the public. (It also goes without saying that we remain a muddy prospect for those approaching us with media enquiries)
Our existing elected leadership, whilst not anywhere in the same league as the millionaires littering the Cabinet, I’m afraid still does portray a very middle-class worldview, both in the manner and subject matter they choose to talk about. Much as Greens don’t like to admit it, the issues that exercise our members are still seen largely as to the side of the public’s political centre of gravity.
Here I will be blunt. The Green Party has spent the last twenty plus years talking about environmentalism and sustainability, yet when we receive our pitifully small amount of media air time, never fail to run back to the safe embrace of these topics. Not only does it betray a lack of confidence in our platform outside familiar comfort zones, but it screams to the majority of voters that our priorities are miles away from those struggling in society. Even when we try to link things like the Green New Deal and employment, it feels like we’re only tackling one small part of the employment issue.
At this stage, I think it’s safe to say we have cornered the electoral market on environmental issues. However, by not having them as an integral part of a broader political vision, this achievement is undone by the sense that these policies are a fantasy wish-list. We need to shake off the view that Greens are the ultimate political dilettantes, because it is this that will ultimately alienate more completely than whether someone is too posh.
To read Stephen’s recommendations for the Green Party of England and Wales see his blog.
Mr Deane is still officially representing the party at events such as this, organised by Reinvestigate 9/11 – a deluded troofer organisation:
http://www.reinvestigate911.org/content/crimes-one-percent-2nd-scad-conference
3.45 – 4.00 Martin Deane, UK Green Party candidate: our strategy
Caroline Lucas doesn’t subscribe to loony 9/11 conspiracy theories, not sure she’d like this much; a surefire vote loser making the greens look like a bunch of weirdos. I can support the party on every other issue but this is enough to put me off on its own.
The Green Party is becoming more electable every month.
Your science policy is now sensible and credible.
Quite why your deputy leader met up with this 9/11 truther idiot (see below) is beyond me. You need to fully distance yourself from these people, keep making inroads with working class people, get some of them involved on the ground and if so, I can see things looking rosy.
http://martindeane.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/size-matters/
Tell me more about this party of “bourgeois bohemians”… do they give out free hash cakes?
I think there is a large political, cultural and organisational difference between the Scottish and English/Welsh parties with things both sides could learn from each other.
What i fear though, for their slightly different reasons, is that neither is working on a plan on how we change society.
What you consider “posh” depends very much on your perspective on society. More than half of the population self-defines as working class, and it’s probably fair to say that a lot of them would describe the signifiers of middle class status as “posh”.
Since when has being middle class classified as “Posh”?
I think part of the problem is too many people falling all over themselves to appear polite and reasonable in their dissent over a multitude of issues, and therefore projecting an aura of weakness and indecisiveness.
Being a practicing environmentalist is not easy, nor is winning the hearts and minds of the voting public.
In attempt to take a single issue movement forward into the politically complex environment, at some point you have to stop trying to appease every member, and let some fall by the wayside.
It is an unpleasant task drafting a manifesto, or mission statement as it is called more frequently nowadays, but it might help in defining the party’s direction, and certainly give people a list of ideas to grasp at.
Despite my predisposition of sympathy for the party, reading the website leaves me feeling like nobody is editing for impact (or grammar) and the party line is “It’s not fair” a particularly ineffective rallying call.
Rupert, Jim,
I think that the problem we’ve had in Scotland is certainly not that the environment hasn’t featured. In fact, little else has.
And when we talk about the environment in Scotland it’s not the important global issues, it’s the narrowest of narrow middle class parochial environmentalism. So instead of the 2007 Scottish Parliament’s campaign on Climate Change in 2011 we ran a Lothians campaign on banning plastic bags and stopping the building of a new Forth Road Bridge.
In the middle of an economic crisis it makes us look aloof, arrogant and dismissive of people’s everyday concerns. We appear to be a party of people so comfortably off that we don’t need to worry about the economy. And because of that we’d be happy with any old economic policy.
And the electorate are deeply suspicious of that. They won’t trust us on their everyday concerns until we look like we take them seriously. They’re right to be suspicious. In Ireland the Greens enthusiastically voted for all sorts of benefits cuts in return for a ‘grow yer own veg’ scheme and some bikes.
Until Greens stop yearning to be the class party for bourgeois bohemians and start taking the rest of the population seriously we’ll never achieve any of the environmental or social changes we want to because the electorate will continue to be deeply (and rightly) suspicious of us.
The problem is this becomes a matter of discretion and judgment as to whether we abide by our democratically agreed policies or not.
This proposal actually brings us *closer* to the way other parties do policy. Labour conference voted time and again against the policies of the Labour government, but their structure meant the MPs just carried on.
As an unwhipped party we are all free to disagree with party policy, even our MP, and that’s a good thing. I wouldn’t have joined the party otherwise. But when someone has a role to articulate the policy as it stands rather than as they think it should stand. They should only take that role if they can do that and should be sacked if they can’t.
By introducing elections into this specific role I think you’re downgrading party policy and undermining the democratic role of party members in the party. On the face of it it appears more democratic but in fact it is a way of by-passing commonly agreed positions.
I’m not arguing in favour of how it’s done now, because i think it’s a shambles, but your solution would create a party I’d be very happy to campaign against.
Jim,
that’s why the Green Shadow Cabinet proposal I framed was for people to run for the shadow cabinet and not for a specific post within it.
That allows the leader the same discretion as other party leaders have of allocating the portfolios. If particular GSC members were unable to argue for agreed policy in one area that would allow them to be allocated a different portfolio.
However that’s more an issue of the specifics than the principle. The principle is that we decide policy collectively yet don’t whip. A Green Shadow Cabinet only faces the same conundrum as an elected leader and deputy leader – how to respect a collegiate approach while being members of a party that doesn’t compel its representatives to follow a party line but allows for conscience.
It’s the same issue that every Green A.M., councillor, MEP and MP faces. Of course we may find we hit problems – but so does every other political party – but I’d rather have honest and principled disagreement than the hypocritical and dishonest semblance of unity manufactured by other parties which voters see through and which turns them off politics wholesale…
I’d trust you to make that call just as I’d trust any other Green I felt deserved my vote for a shadow cabinet…
Quite right Debra – the England and Wales Party can only speak for itself, although I’d peersonally like to see more cooperation between the parties.
I think Rupert’s main point is right, that particularly in the lead up to 2010 the Party almost stopped talking about environmental issues entirely. That was fine for that election but needs to be brought back into balance. I think that has happened to some extent but wold like to see us leading more on conservation and animal issues (in a sensible way) than we are at present.
One last thing. Although I agree that the way we do political leadership in the party at the moment is extremely poor there is a problem with directly elected spokespeople. That’s democratic accountability.
We have policy that is democratically agreed and the current role of our spokespeople is to articulate that policy, whether or not they agree with it.
If however I, for the sake of argument, run on an economics Green Growth ticket and win, becoming the economics spokesman i have a mandate to push a line contrary to the party’s position. In practice the post holder would take presidents over the policy and I’m very uncomfortable with that.
Cough! NOT UK wide. we have a SGP and a EPEW and a UK cabinet does not fit the political realities here.
We do need to talk about the things that matter to the majority of the population most – and that is jobs, education, health, crime … and we need to be clear to how these link to a green future. Perhaps we all need to be clearer about what that green future looks like and how we might get there in the face of the money-power interests?
Here’s the debate from 2 years back BTW
http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2010/08/why-the-green-party-should-elect-a-shadow-cabinet/
I think it’s probably time to get the Green Shadow Cabinet back on the table.
There was some opposition from people who didn’t like the idea of standing for a GSC and then being allocated a portfolio – just like in real life – but who wanted to speak about the one thing that interested them.
That doesn’t surprise me. The Green Euro Hustings in the South East featured a number of people who are clearly very focused on particular problems, whether that be energy, transport, animal welfare or what have you.
However we need to apply real life disciplines to our politics and one of the most important is that most people want representatives who’ll tackle THEIR big worries, not the candidate’s betes noir. For most people that’s jobs and the economy, health and schools. So all of us need to be thinking about those issues as well as the ones we hold closest to our own hearts.
As for Rupert’s comments about us needing to remain ‘The Ecology Party’ – I rather liked the old slogan ‘neither left nor right but straight ahead’.
That said I tend to see environmental issues as a bloody great neon sign pointing to deeper problems with the way we live and tackling those inevitably leads us to address issues of social inequality, social justice and, at the very root of it, the very unequal distribution of power and influence in a society that is supposed to be democratic.
I draw my inspiration from the great radicals of our past – Lilburne, Rainsborough, Paine and Cobbett – radical comes from the Latin for root and that’s a very Green place to be. Rather than buy into the political language and landscape dictated by grey politicians of every shade I’d like us to challenge some of the notions we rarely stop to question while all the time asking ourselves how what we propose will affect the real lives or real people and the things they care about.
Appreciate your thoughtful response, Rupert. Glad you see the merit of putting together a Shadow Cabinet of the rising politicians within the GP, especially as with our difficulties in getting major positions of authority, they would prove a solid proving ground for many of our skilled and politically-savvy members.
I guess I come from the slightly different wing of the party to you on the environmental issue. I’m committed passionately to issues of climate change (have worked on a campaign team at Friends of the Earth in the past), but I do think we are trusted implicitly on sustainability and environmentalism. I think we can afford to branch out into new territory as far as the electorate are concerned. Our members are embedded in green community activism at every level across the UK, so I’d argue that for those voters who agree with the importance of these issues, we won’t be going anywhere.
You are broadly right on our failure to get ourselves a Shadow Cabinet (which should of course be UK-wide). However, I think you are wrong on our alleged fixation on environmentalism. ON the contrary, there is a danger that we are _losing_ our USP here. In particular, our failure to continue to project faith in a no-growth economy risks making us virtually indistinguishable from Ed Miliband and the clever vaguely leftish figures surrounding and supporting him (incl Glasman). It is the media who keep insisting that we are an envioronmentalist Party; in our (correct) effort to overcome this narrow label, we risk throwing out the ecological baby with the bathwater.
We changed our name from The Ecology Party for reasons of presentation. We ought to remain The Ecology Party in substance.