Leadership in the Green Party: a dangerous new approach
There is much writing about leadership theory, almost all of it a built on assumption that the leader of an organisation has significant individual (or dual, in the case of co-leaders) agency in pursuing their particular agenda. The leader has been appointed or elected, and as such, they are free to do as they wish.
This is not the case in The Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW). The Party outlines very clearly the position of the leader in the constitution, it sets out the bounds of what they can, and cannot do. It sets out the decision making process for leadership decisions. All in all, the constitution of The Party, not to mention the internal culture of The Party, sets out very clearly the style of leadership that the elected leader is able to pursue.
If we were to pin down the leadership style open to the leader(s) of GPEW, then it would be a consensus leadership. The leader(s) of the party have equal authority in decision making with the rest of the executive. The leader (or co-leaders) only gets one vote, just like everyone else. They don’t get to exert their authority on the executive or the party: they simply don’t have that opportunity, or at least shouldn’t.
This situation, built on the constitutional and cultural approach of The Party, seems under threat by the newly elected leadership team. There seems to be, based on what we have seen so far, a wildly different approach to leadership. Their approach seems to be an almost vanguardist approach: a chosen policy is paraded out by the leadership to the press first, then The Party decision making process is left to pick up the pieces, scrambling to try and come to decisions on what The Party position should be. All the while, a position has already been presented in the press as representing the party, despite it being nothing of the sort.
We can see this approach in action recently in three key areas. Firstly, with regards to “progressive alliances”, then with the announcement of the party supporting a snap general election, and finally, most recently in support of a second EU referendum. In each of these cases, there is no evidence that the policy making processes which are set out for such decisions has actually been followed, leaving many members bewildered at how The Party arrived at these positions.
Calling for a progressive alliance is something that should have been undertaken on the basis of a policy statement. This is either approved by conference or Green Party Regional Council (GPRC). Yet no such statement was made. As far as we can see, it exists as a policy principally on the basis that it was one of the Lucas/Bartley election pledges, and little more. Even though progressive alliances have little if any formal support from The Party, it has come to dominate the discussions around our electoral prospects for the future.
The calls for a second general election are similarly structured. The call was made in the press regardless of whether the most basic of requirements could possibly be met by The Party – for example, The Party finances as published, make it quite clear that the party could not afford to fund it, and our own selection processes require weeks in order to identify candidates, something which a snap general election would not provide.
More recently, the leadership has been vocal about support for a second EU referendum – it even made it into the pages of Bright Green as something that is “sort of – party policy” when it is nothing of the sort. In fact the opposite is true, if we read through the PfSS section on public administration, then almost every section on referendums are clear that the outcome of the decision should be respected, that we should accept the results of them. This is a far cry from calls for a second referendum. Even if we give the benefit of the doubt and accept that the call is on a different question, this is still well outside the bounds of our policy on Europe, and on democratic engagement more broadly.
It’s clear that the current leadership team are using their media platform to set the agenda for The Party, and are making an attempt to subvert the constitutional position which the leader holds, thereby imposing a much stronger leadership model on The Party. This has been evident from the outset when they announced, ahead of everyone else, that they were standing for the leadership through an article in the Guardian. Their actions throughout the campaign have been consistent with this approach and it seems to be continuing.
It remains to be seen if the ‘policy making by press release’ is brought under control as the co-leaders establish themselves as part of the new executive. To many in the party, it seems as though our new leadership team are more interested in courting the attention of the press and less interested in taking on board the views of members.
The Green Party prides itself on being democratic, bottom up and member led: this approach is none of those. Whilst there has been at least some, although far from unanimous, support for the proposals which are currently being made, there is a significant danger with this approach that one day, this will not be the case.
This approach to leadership is a dangerous strategy, and one which has the potential to significantly damage the reputation of The Party.
I can’t say I’m happy with the direction the party is being taken in at the moment. 🙁
Conference voted overwhelmingly in favour of progressive alliance in emergency motion E1, I voted against partly because I felt we were bounced into it by the new leadership team.
I felt uncomfortable by the way Caroline and Jonathon Bartley announced their leadership candidacy to the press, before nominations opened. I felt it was disrespectful to the party and a move designed to make it difficult for other well known figures in the party to put themselves forward. I wrote to several celebrities in the party but they didn’t think they could stand against them.
I feel this is a consequence of having changed to the leadership model instead of the principal speaker model and I for one would like to return to that model. Is there any appetite for this?
I fear that the leaders will be asking for more and more powers in a similar way to the way Kinnock and Blair did in the Labour Party. I hope not, but ask everyone to be vigilant in keeping an eye out for this type of creeping takeover.
“Conference voted overwhelmingly in favour of progressive alliance in emergency motion E1, I voted against partly because I felt we were bounced into it by the new leadership team.”
I think this misrepresents the conference votes, and the decisions which we make by voting particular ways at conference.
In voting down E1, we didn’t vote to support progressive alliances – we voted down the specifics of the motion.
What we do know was that there was an attempt to delete the section which was critical of the way we got to the discussions in the first place, and there was a vote on keeping that, or getting rid of it – and the vote was won – by a simple majority – so we know that a simple majority of members were in favour of the paragraph which was critical of the leadership being in the motion.
What we don’t know, is why people voted against – they could have been completely opposed to progressive alliances (and E1 was softly in favour of them) they could have been opposed to the critical paragraph, or thy could have not read it, and were voting when they were told.
We can’t draw conclusions on the basis of the data we have – we have 2 points of data – more than 50% of conference voted to keep the criticism of the leaders in, less that 50% of conference voted against the motion overall.
Doug Rouxel’s argument is totally void.
Caroline and Jonathan put the Progressive Alliance forward directly and explicitly in their election manifesto, and the green electorate gave them an overwhelming mandate. This is what they said:
“We believe electoral reform is essential if Greens want to make a serious electoral breakthrough. But we don’t have forever.
The clock is ticking, the climate is burning, and the gap between rich and poor continues to grow ever wider.
As Co-Leaders we therefore want our Party to fully explore the idea of a one-off, general election only progressive alliance in 2020 in England & Wales, with other political parties of the left. The purpose of such an alliance would be to secure a deal on proportional representation and allow the Green Party’s growing support to translate into a fair number of seats in Westminster and on councils up and down the country.
On everything from the living wage to tackling air pollution, the Green Party has a history of leading where others follow. The era of two party politics is over but the voting system hasn’t caught up and as Co-Leaders we want to do what the Greens do best – set the agenda. We recognise that our party works differently to others and that decisions are ultimately made locally”. http://www.bartleylucas.com/plan.html#readmore
Doug Rouxel and other PfSS fundamentalists should be reminded that important PfSS policies can be made or rejected in Conference on a Monday morning by as few as 60 voters. Caroline and Jonathan were elected by 13,570 votes.
End of.
Richard
They were elected as co-leaders of the party – this is a position which is “the primary public faces of the party, responsible for presenting Green Party policy and promoting its electoral activity and campaigns to the public on a daily basis.” It’s not a position from which they can dictate the policies of the party.
They might have put that in their manifesto, but it was not an action they could actually take from the position to which they were being elected – I can stand for local council saying I will end the war in Syria, people can vote me in, and I might try and use my position to do that, but in reality, I can’t, my election manifesto to stop the war in Syria from Nowheresville local council is void – in the same way that 90% of Caroline and Jonathan’s election manifesto is also void.
Doug (below) is saying that C&J do not have the right to propose that the Party should “fully explore the idea of a one-off, general election only progressive alliance in 2020 in England & Wales”.
This proposal was put before the whole Party membership and was accepted by 13,570 of them – an overwhelming majority of those who voted (in the 80% region as I recall).
It is perfectly reasonable for us as a party to explore this idea. It is perfectly unreasonable for Doug to try to block this exploration.
From ROPS
First Past the Post and Proportional Representation
GPEx and the leaders of the Green Party will work with other interested parties to replace the First Past the Post voting system with Proportional Representation as soon as possible, and to call a new PR election as soon as possible to more fairly reflect the opinion of the electorate.
Passed Spring 2015
https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/record-of-policy-statements.html
The proposal which was put to members was should they be the party spokespeople (“leader”) – it was not that they should have sole discretion over what the party does, and to dictate it’s direction without recourse to considering the membership.
It is completely illegitimate to extrapolate conclusions beyond the question put to the electorate – which was “should Lucas and Bartley being the party spokespeople (“leader”)”.
I’m not blocking anything, I have no more power than anyone else to do so – I’m calling out our new leaders for acting outside their democratically arrived at authority, that’s all. In fact – I would be happy for the party to explore what is being proposed, what I am opposed to is the party being bounced into supporting something before the exploration has taken place – the way this should work is actually already spelled out in the constitution! The fact that this is being ignored by the co-leaders is nothing short of shoddy.
Your quoting of one RoPS which has a different proposal to the so called “progressive alliance” approach which is now being discussed seems to be the scraping of the bottom of a very deep barrel.
“the leaders of the Green Party will work with other interested parties to replace the First Past the Post voting system with Proportional Representation as soon as possible”
This is a very reasonable basis for the Progressive Alliance. Note also that C&J are calling for a discussion of this idea. They put it in their manifesto. 13,570 party member voted for them. End of.
I agree with many of the concerns raised here.
But to say that the Greens are a democratically structured party is a stretch.
It still only is if you can make it to conference. Such a system is woefully outdated and incompatible with the new membership numbers.
Then there’s the cumbersome, unwieldy website to navigate…
A motion was passed to reform conference voting to solve this issue and introduce an online voting element. I would like it to be implemented sooner rather than later for the benefit of us all.
I am with Doug and Sam in principle. I will.be. Re standing for policy development at the next opportunity because on the whole we have a good policy process. Luke Walter comments that they were clear. That is not good enough. The should have co proposed a motion to conference or democratic structures on progressive alliances or made it clear they were not representing the green party on the question. Ditto with the second referendum I think one is enough. Caroline and Jon are great that is why we need to make sure their exessive power is held to account.
One can add qualifications to the above article but it is essentially correct. The new leadership has by-passed and ignored the democratic decision-making processes of the Party.
The three examples cited : the so-called Progressive Alliance , calling for a general election and a second referendum have nowhere been agreed by Conference or the two governing bodies: GPEx(the Green Party Executive) or GPRc(the Green party Regional Council). They are simply what the Co-Leaders advocate in the media.
One of the things that Natalie Bennett stressed in her bid for the leadership was that she only had one vote on GPEx as Leader and Natalie overwhelmingly worked constructively for four years by consensus.
Democratic behaviour is not a luxury to be treated as an avoidable nuisance. It maintains the unity of the Party membership and it maximises the serious evaluation of policies , tactics and strategy. Instead of unifying leadership behaviour the examples demonstrate top-down manipulation of the Party membership. This is resulting in members either being deferential to or alienated from the new Leaders. Deference to leaders rather than support for reasoned analysis via democratic structures is conservative not progressive behaviour.
At Conference there was a Panel session on the so-called Progressive Alliance. There were five speakers. All five advocated forms of PA. Nobody had been invited onto the panel to put the case against.Very little time was left for questions or comments. Such imbalanced behaviour speaks,too,for practising manipulation and not reasoned democratic debate. (Interestingly many who were alienated or against the PA did not attend but the majority who attended seemed deferential to the new leadership).
Complicated issues like the PA idea need a good deal of examination and I understand that has been going on including by GPRC and I know many members of GPEx are concerned about the lack of critical analysis that has occured (whatever claims have been made in speeches, pamphlets and now a book.)
We all respect the good intentions of the new Co-Leaders but by-passing the Party’s procedures and deserting its progressive culture is as the writer says “a dangerous new aproach” and if continued will undermine unity and land us with poor tactics and strategy.
I was OK about being bounced into supporting a Remain campaign, even though it smacked of business-as-usual politics. It appeared to me that a Kitchen Cabinet was behind the manoeuvrings at Conference, and was getting away with the lack of consultation, debate and discussion because reamining in the EU was more or less in tune with party values and principles.
I was OK about being bounced into a Progressive Alliance, because my local party would retain control of the decisions in my constituency. It still had echoes of a small cabal, in a bubble of supporting journalists and commentators, making critical decisions around the Aga over a kitchen supper and a glass of something fruity. It smacked of a mindset that took members for granted.
I got a bit nowty over being bounced into a Second Referendum, even though I was getting used to reading it first in a supporting journalist’s column.
Doug has reflected my misgivings and bewilderment about BarCus’s style of leadership, and the precedents that risk turning GPEW into a business as usual political party.
There is a small amount of disgruntled members who are very loud on social media who:
1) Believe that their minority view (only 1% of members voted RON in the recent election while 86% voted for Lucas / Bartley) represents a ‘silent majority’ of members
2) Work actively to prevent the Green Party from being more efficient and would rather the Green Party remained a small footnote in British politics
3)Are so ensconsed in the party’s bureaucracy that they’d rather every single little thing went through a million decision making bodies, taking months.
This speaks volumes about how impractical these people are. They are not serious about growing the Green Party.
Well challenged Doug. I share your concern but feel thankful that there are only 3 cases pointed out here and that generally I think they are in keeping with what I’ve heard from other members. It’s good to challenge these things and protect democracy and fortunately in this case I don’t see a real threat to that yet. Also maybe this discussion will help keep things on track.
Is there any evidence that ‘many members’ are ‘bewildered’ by what is happening? I can’t see it myself. In the leadership campaign Jonathan and Caroline made many of their positions clear and the members who participated in the ballot gave overwhelming support to Caroline and Jonathan.
The chances are the vast majority of Green members have no idea what the PfSS is and will never show an interest in reading it. Unfortunately our party structures are too rigid and too conservative to fit with the modern demands of politics.
GPRC, whilst a check to curb excesses, is a body most members don’t come into contact with and I doubt regional members will know who their reps are.
Most members don’t actively participate in the running of the party in any way, shape or form. It is clear that our existing modes and structures are failing to bring members fully into the decision-making process.
Some accommodation needs to be made with allowing leaders to make statements that are in the spirit of the party’s values whilst also reforming party structures to generate more interest amongst members to participate in decision-making.
I don’t know what PfSS stands for. Sometimes this party is a little too much like working for a large corporation, with its initialisms and other inaccessible language. If I have to read a sentence or paragraph more than once then something is wrong.
“I don’t like the way our party currently works so we should just ignore it and do what we like”
That’s a crap way of working for a party who prides itself, and uses as a unique selling point, that it is democratic.
The suggestion that being elected as a spokesperson for the party, with a single vote (between the two of them) on the executive somehow gives Caroline and and Jonathan carte blanche to implement their pet projects as party policy is quite frankly ridiculous – it flies in the face of the current realities of the party, and suggests that the party has somehow morphed overnight into the Labour party where the leader can make pronouncements left right and centre and that’s what the party are doing. We are not the Labour party, we do things differently. I’m sorry if that’s “too rigid” and “too conservative” but that’s the way it currently is. There is a process to change it, use it. (On the “too conservative” point – I personally find that Caroline’s position on many things is far far too conservative, safe and almost completely unwilling to rock the boat – that is a very different question though.)
In terms of evidence that many members are bewildered by the positions the party takes – I have been convener of Standing Orders Committee for 4.5 years up till autumn conference and as the person who oversees the compilation of the conference agenda, people often ask me how did we end up with policy x – it’s something which has happened for the last 4.5 years, there was a spike of questions around the “3 yesses” and there was a spike of questions around the general election – which directly related to PfSS – and there has been a spike of questions now – if we look at the emergency motion which was heard at the last conference, proposed and supported by current members of the executive, it’s clear that even they are not clear on how what was essentially an election platform (in progressive alliances) somehow became official party policy prior to the end of the election, and without even a by your leave to the parties democratic process.
I think the excusing and exceptionalism which is granted to a small group of people with recognisable names in the party is distasteful and unbecoming of a party which prides itself on being different, on being bottom up and on being democratic.
I think we have to distinguish the questions of whether a particular proposal or position has support within the party from Doug’s central point about Green Party democracy and policy making – which is I think valid. To be fair, both Caroline and Jonathan went some way to re-engage at conference but by that time a certain amount of damage had been done, with members asking how did we get to this position? We may need to be more “agile”, especially in the run-up to an election but we lose our”bottom up, member-led” approach at our peril.
btw A straw poll of our local members showed almost overwhelming support for opening discussions on a “progressive alliance”. Trouble is of course that, like Brexit, it means many different things to different people.
Leadership is not command. It is not a function of decision making, In a truly democratic organisation the membership decides direction, the leaders then enthusiastically take the organisation in that direction. Doug is right.
I think that’s just 1 style of leadership, sometimes called “laissez faire” leadership, essentially where the leader(s) rubber stamp things and are spokespeople.
I don’t believe this is a new development. Was the “3 Yeses for Europe” campaign discussed at Conference? I don’t think so. Natalie Bennett was leader at the time.
What evidence does Doug have for the proposition that the idea of a progressive alliance has “little if any formal support” within the party? Of course, people have serious reservations about such a course of action, but, from personal experience of talking to other members, there seems to be a good level of interest.
Let’s face facts: we’re on 4% in the polls – climate change isn’t going to wait. Are the anti-Tory parties going to squabble while the world burns?
The Three Yesses was at least reported to conference and members were given an opportunity to critique and oppose it – that hasn’t been the case with these proposals, which could (should!) have all been reported to our most recent conference. So, I agree that this is not new, however, we an point to 1 instance over the 4 years of Natalie’s leadership, and three within the last few months, most of which has been Caroline and Jonathan acting as leaders prior to their actual election.
My evidence for the proposition that Progressive Alliances have “little if any formal support” is that there is nowhere within the party (not local parties) – not conference, not GPRC (who are the bodies who would properly decide on that sort of thing) who has formally supported this course of action! If there were formal support, it would be recorded somewhere, it’s not – and indeed, a majority of members at conference voted to oppose the approach which has been taken and sounding a clear note of alarm – it wasn’t the 2/3rds required to pass the motion, but it was a majority of members.
It is not correct for Doug to say “indeed, a majority of members at conference voted to oppose the approach which has been taken and sounding a clear note of alarm – it wasn’t the 2/3rds required to pass the motion, but it was a majority of members” since that vote was not counted (as it was absolutely clear that there was not a 2/3 majority. My assessment was that the vote went the other way.)
More significant was that this was the first time in 21 conferences that I can recall an emergency motion being unsuccessful, demonstrating that contrary to Doug’s claim there is plenty of interest in the idea of a progressive alliance, as also shown by the very well attended panel on the subject.
Your memory is clearly not as good as you think Chris, because I can remember numerous emergency motions being unsuccessful in passing – there was one on Brighton in 2012, there was one on population matters in 2013 – as two examples off the top of my head.
None the less – the point I made – that more than 50% of the people in the room supported the motion – is 100% valid.
I disagree. Party policies are very slow and unwieldy in terms of their development. Politics moves too fast for stuff to be decided at conference.
Leaders should make prudent and politically canny announcements and should be free to lead thr party while not making seismic shifts. There isn’t time for rule by committee and I don’t feel that they have deviated too far from the spirit of GP policy.
That would be all well and good, if it was what we had agreed as a party – however, it’s not.
“ii) The Leader and Deputy or Co-Leaders will be the primary public faces of the party, responsible for presenting Green Party policy and promoting its electoral activity and campaigns to the public on a daily basis.”
They are there to present the policy, not to make it up as they go along.
A lot of words there we could apply to thd NEC VS Jeremy Corbyn.
He and his policies are very popular with the membership but the Labour administration became so empregnated by cronies that the party became a faux oposition.
While I lake the info required to evaluate the facts behind this article, I would expect #GreenTories to deliberate perpetually over any essentials for progressive electoral success under First Past The Post, such as a progressive alliance, thus guaranteeing a fragmented majority can not win elections or have an open enough consensus to expose the existance if ballot rigging.
It is also important that everyone has the right to voice what THEY guarantee to propose support or oppose regardless of party lines.
In a functioning democracy that would be a requirement for each candidate and the winners woukd be accountable to honoring their guarantees by recall.
It is well established that the establishment try to bog their oposition down in beuracracy.
This article worries be that they have moved in.
Interestingly, I’ve always considered Caroline overly safe, far from radical and very ready to appease the (right wing) press rather than take the (much more) radical positions which the party has democratically arrived at – I see this as a Blair in 1994 type situation, far more than a Corbyn in 2015 type situation. A smooth media operator is shifting the party further and further away from a radical grass roots democracy in order to present a much less radical, much more safe and “sensible” (read – not going far enough) face to the world than is commonly held by the party.