Who I’m hoping people vote for in the 2016 GPEx Election
The campaigning period for the Green Party of England and Wales internal elections is now upon us. The campaign period will be running throughout July, with the vote being conducted between the 25th of July, and the 25th of August, so that the results may be announced at the Green Party’s Autumn Conference in Birmingham on the 2nd of September.
With the announcement that Natalie Bennett is not seeking reelection, there has already been a lot of discussion about the Leadership side of the election, but these are not the only roles up for grabs. These Executive posts will be elected for a two-year term:
- Leader or Co-leaders,
- Deputy Leader(s),
- Chair of the Green Party Executive
- Campaigns Co-ordinator
- Elections Co-ordinator
- External Communications Co-ordinator
- Management Co-ordinator
- International Co-ordinator
- Trade Union Liaison Officer
There will also be two roles up for a one year term; Finance Co-ordinator and Internal Communications Co-ordinator.
Alongside the already high-profile Jonathan Bartley and Caroline Lucas job-share candidacy, other Leadership candidates are formed of a series of former Green Candidates in the 2015 General Election.
The much more interesting race will be that for Deputy Leader; usually the Green Party has two deputy leaders, however, if a job-share candidacy, i.e. Bartley/Lucas, wins the Leadership election, then there can only be one Deputy Leader. There is a much more interesting set of candidates too; both of the current Deputy Leaders, Amelia Womack, and Shahrar Ali, are standing and joining them are: the Party’s Energy Spokesperson, Cllr Andrew Cooper; East Midlands lead candidate Kat Boettge; and a couple of other former parliamentary candidates.
I’ve been giving quite a bit of thought of as to who I want to take the Green Party forward from the impressive work that Natalie Bennett has done. From helping the party achieve the largest vote share in the party’s history in 2015 to the Green membership surge, I would argue that Natalie has been our most successful Leader to date.
Who I am voting for
Leader: I’m going to be slightly controversial here, and advocate for Re-Open Nominations (RON). I feel that none of the candidates really connect with the membership of the party. Caroline Lucas is the only instantly recognisable name, but she’s standing as part of a jobshare, and is still our only MP. In my opinion, she should focus on her work in parliament and abide by her 2012 commitment of allowing new talent to grow in the party.
Deputy Leader: Without a shadow of a doubt I support our current Deputies continuing. I want them both to be able to continue their amazing and inspirational work as Deputy Leaders. Since being elected as a Deputy Leader of the party two years ago, Shahrar has made impressive work across the party. I have had the pleasure of being able to work with him as a Party Spokesperson and seen him be extremely supportive to members and make many motivational and intelligent speeches. To recycle his own words: Shahrar Ali is a real green deal!
As for Amelia, I’m struggling to know where to begin! She has been absolutely impressive in her work for these past 2 years. From her commitment and drive in the Sennedd elections, boosting the Welsh Green Party vote, to really supporting and engaging with core groups of our members such as the Young Greens and LGBTIQ Greens, Amelia is an amazing force for good in our party. I hope she can continue.
I am saddened by the possibility that we will lose one or both of our current deputies, due to a Job Share Leadership. Shahrar and Amelia have connected with the members better than any of the Leadership candidates, and it is a shame that they didn’t stand together for the position of leader.
Chair of GPEx: Clare Phipps
Finance Coordinator: Emma Carter
Elections Coordinator: Benali Hamdache
Campaigns Coordinator: Cadi Cliff and Chris Jarvis
External Communications Coordinator: Matt Hawkins, Penny Kemp, and Jennifer Nadel
Internal Communications Coordinator: Sam Coates
International Coordinator: Derek Wall and Jessica Northey
Management Coordinator: Re-Open Nominations (RON)
Trade Union Liason Officer: No preference
This was originally posted to Huffington Post, and has been cross-posted with permission from Aimee Challenor and Huffington Post. You can view the original article here. Bright Green will be reporting the 2016 Green Party of England and Wales Elections across the board from hustings and interviewing and profiling as many candidates as possible to gathering what the members are saying, so to stay up to date make sure you like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
In my view Caroline Lucas is currently our very best option. As you say she is instantly recognisable and that in of itself is nothing to be sneered at.
In politics that is a huge plus, it takes years to build up voter recognition, time we dont have.She gets a lot of support and respect from people online even when they support other parties.
In Caroline we have a unique combination in modern politics along with Nicola Sturgeon – recognition and Respect. She is regarded across the spectrum with respect as a dedicated principled politician and receives remarkably little hate. She is very intelligent, articulate hard working, charismatic in the best sense and responsive, and that is crucial.
She genuinely listens to peoples concerns.
As to her job share, I think it could turn out to be a great strength, presenting a new saner way to do politics that doesnt rely on one ego, whilst reassuring elements of the public who might balk at a woman that we really are about equality.
Amelia is an astonishing personality, much more forceful in public AND in private than many would give her credit for. The few media clips we have of her just don’t do her full justice.
Aimee, those ‘couple of former parliamentary candidates’ you mention amongst Deputy Leader candidates are me, Alan Borgars, and Storm Poorun.
You also forgot to mention former Bristol councillor Daniella Radice, or that the other candidates for leader are Simon Cross, Clive Lord, David Malone, Martie Warin and David Williams.
Hi Alan. We should definitely be hearing more from you and there should be more articles publicly visible. Have you produced anything we could see and perhaps that you could link us to at all? I must admit I’m not sure I have much idea of your background and special skills which really is my fault as I’ve been too busy to keep up. Anything you could provide would be very useful.
The Party’s future depends on us assessing the skills and record of each candidate before making any recommendations. Benali’s Bright Green article of the 31st May: “What we do (and don’t) need from our new leadership team contains some very useful thoughts about the qualities we should be looking for in the persons we elect to GPEx”.
There is, however, little indication in Aimee’s list that any objective criteria have been applied in reaching her preferences.
Aimee’s list contains people of proven worth, such as Emma Carter, but it also contains those about whom it could be said, diplomatically, that there are major reservations by those who have worked closely with these them.
Included in Aimee’s list of preferred candidates is someone who, when last on GPEx, failed to carry out his responsibility, resulting in major problems for governance at a critical time . The list also includes at least two members who experience has taught us are not team players.
Out of interest, why do you advocate voting for RON rather than myself and Liz for Management Co-ordinator?
It would be interesting to read your thoughts on the other contest Gpex positions, as well.
Hi Tom,
As mentioned in response to your twitter thread I do not believe that the Election for the Role of Management Coordinator is being conducted in a fair and democratic manner. It is for the members to decide in their voting who is and is not suitable for each post. GPRC’s role is only to identify reasons as to why someone should not be a candidate. GPRC broke this when they removed Molly/Lee-Anne/Ronald from the ballot. Because of the illegitimate removal of candidates from the ballot, it is my opinion that the election should be voided for this role, and reheld. The way to do that is for RON to be elected.
Hi Tom,
As mentioned in response to your twitter thread I do not believe that the Election for the Role of Management Coordinator is being conducted in a fair and democratic manner. It is for the members to decide in their voting who is and is not suitable for each post. GPRC’s role is only to identify reasons as to why someone should not be a candidate. GPRC broke this when they removed Molly/Lee-Anne/Ronald from the ballot. Because of the illegitimate removal of candidates from the ballot, it is my opinion that the election should be voided for this role, and reheld. The way to do that is for RON to be elected.
Thanks Aimee. Good to have it here as well as on Twitter.
The constitution doesn’t specify whether GPRC should err on accepting candidates if they cannot find reasons to block them, or whether they should err on rejecting if they cannot find reasons to accept them. It simply says:
“Candidates for the GPEx Chair and Co-ordinator posts shall have been a member of the Party for the two complete years preceding the date of close of nominations, and shall be required to complete a standard application form. Nominations of candidates must be supported by the signatures of a minimum of ten members of the Green Party of England and Wales. Or, if they have been a member for a minimum of one complete year preceding the date of close of nominations, their nomination must be supported by a majority of GPRC members in attendance at a quorate official meeting of that body.”
It’s up to GPRC to decide, and I am told that they were fairly unanimous in rejecting all applications bar one, for Ellie Chowns, whose application they thought to be exceptionally good.
In the absence of evidence the contrary, I don’t believe the removal was illegitimate. It was simply GPRC exercising their constitutional role.
As ever, if you disagree with their decision then you can run for or support other candidates for GPRC, and of course there’s the motion in the D section for autumn conference that proposes removing the two year requirement altogether.
Re: fair and democratic, we really need to be encouraging more than one person to stand for a lot of the internal posts. Even the wingnuts who maybe only myself and a few others really support. If their names and known and they have been involving themselves in the party we should be reaching out to them and asking them to stand. At the moment I think a lot of people feel left out and unable to affect things and when that happens they tend to cause trouble. Of course, sometimes that trouble is fun, sometimes it shakes things up and makes people more honest and sometimes it’s just something people like to gawk at, but we really should be in a situation where people like me shouldn’t feel bashful about supporting our favoured candidate, even if they are a bit weird or whatever. It’s for the electorate to decide who they want, after all.
Thanks for this, but what would be really useful at this point from Bright Green is a comprehensive list of candidates and dates when we can find out about them. So far I feel pretty uninformed still
agreed.
Hi Joseph.
The Bright Green Editorial team are working on a series of posts to help here! Keep your eye out, there’s plenty of content to come. 🙂
Here’s the website for mine and Peter Barnett’s job share candidacy for Internal Communications: http://internalcomms.greenwords.org.uk & on Twitter https://twitter.com/GP_PeterPaul & on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/greenpeterandpaul/
I’ll be posting some more details on those sites and on the members’ website in the coming weeks, but get in touch if you want to know more.