Nothing demonstrates this Green directionlessness more than their dalliance with pro-austerity neoliberals as part of the campaign for an "another roll of the dice" referendum.
The case for another referendum looks questionable in its own right, given the possibility that Remain could easily conspire to lose again and end up creating an inescapable double-mandate for Brexit, but the loyalty pledges to Theresa May from the Lib-Dems and the CUK squatters to keep the Tories in power while they roll the dice again makes it even more risky, because a Remainer loss under these circumstances would end up creating a double-mandate for the worst kind of hard-right, economy-tanking, job-destroying, Tory administered nuclear Brexit.
Whether you agree with the campaign for another roll of the dice or not, the anti-austerity Greens make very odd bedfellows with the Lib-Dem austerity enablers who caused Brexit in the first place by helping the Tories to trash our living standards, ruin our public services, under-invest in infrastructure, health, housing and education, vandalise the social safety net, and impose the longest sustained collapse in the value of our wages in centuries.
And then the CUK squatters are even stranger bedfellows for the Greens, given that they're promising to "change" politics by ... err ... promoting more of the same pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, millionaire-bankrolled neoliberalism that got us in this mess in the first place, even after the disastrous consequences of these policies are now all too clear.
Somehow the Greens have decided that collusion with these toxic austerity ideologues is in their best interests. But when you decide that it's a good idea to swim with piranhas, it's a little over-optimistic to expect not to get bitten.
So now the Remain campaigner and vocal advocate of Lib-Dem style "centrist" neoliberal orthodoxy Gina Miller has helped to launch a "helpful" new Remain United tool to tell Remainers how to vote in the upcoming regional elections, and somehow, they've calculated that Remain supporters in the South West should abandon support for the sitting Green MEP Molly Scott Cato, and vote Lib-Dem instead.
In London where the Greens have another MEP, guess what, the "Remain United" campaign is advising Green voters to ditch their party and vote Lib-Dem instead in the hope that the Lib-Dems nick their seat!
And in Yorkshire and the Humber where the Green's leading candidate for one of the six available seats is the fantastic Magid Magid, once again the Remain United advice is to abandon the Greens and vote Lib-Dem.
And in the 10 seat region of South East England where the Greens already have a sitting MEP, and have the best mathematical chance of retaining a seat, guess what the "Remain United" advice is?
Well it's obvious, just like every single region of England, it's to abandon the Green Party and vote Lib-Dem so that the austerity-enabling Lib-Dems can wipe the Greens off the map and bag themselves two seats in the region!
This cynical attempt to use the Tory Brexit farce as an excuse to pinch Green votes on behalf of the austerity-enabling Lib-Dems (who helped create Brexit in the first place) is precisely what you's expect from a bunch of self-serving neoliberals, but then somehow the Greens have been too naive to see this threat coming, and by willingly colluding with these cynical opportunists, they've been wilfully handing out the nails that are being used to seal them in their own political coffins.
In fact they're still actively colluding with the Lib-Dems and CUK squatters over a plan to field a joint Remainer candidate in the Peterborough by-election!
The Greens are still colluding with these nasty neoliberal charlatans even as they're being stabbed in the back by them.
If this cynical effort to use Brexit to turn anti-austerity Green voters into pro-austerity Lib-Dems succeeds, and the Greens end up getting completely wiped out at the Euro elections, they'll unfortunately only have themselves to blame.
And in the 10 seat region of South East England where the Greens already have a sitting MEP, and have the best mathematical chance of retaining a seat, guess what the "Remain United" advice is?
Well it's obvious, just like every single region of England, it's to abandon the Green Party and vote Lib-Dem so that the austerity-enabling Lib-Dems can wipe the Greens off the map and bag themselves two seats in the region!
In fact they're still actively colluding with the Lib-Dems and CUK squatters over a plan to field a joint Remainer candidate in the Peterborough by-election!
The Greens are still colluding with these nasty neoliberal charlatans even as they're being stabbed in the back by them.
If this cynical effort to use Brexit to turn anti-austerity Green voters into pro-austerity Lib-Dems succeeds, and the Greens end up getting completely wiped out at the Euro elections, they'll unfortunately only have themselves to blame.
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Remember when politics was about a lot more than whether we should leave the European Union or not? (neither do I). We have all these problems in the world and it feels as though June 23rd 2016 is the new groundhog day. Every by-election has been the Brexit by-election; every local election has been the Brexit local election; and of course, the last general election was the Brexit general election.
ReplyDeleteI hope the Greens present themselves in these European elections as more than just a pro-remain party. We don't need to vote tactically in the European elections anyway, because they're conducted with proportional representation (so Gina Miller can go suck a lemon).
I usually agree with you but this article is very harsh on the Greens. I have seen no evidence of collusion with the Fib Dems or Chuck. I have no knowledge of what is happening in Peterborough (would like to know more) but one isolated local incident does not make the whole party "colluders".
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen any evidence of the Greens colluding with the LDs or CUK either. In fact, I've seen various high-profile Greens very firmly and publicly announcing that there'll be no such collusions. As a Green myself, I'm fine with that policy.
ReplyDeleteHow do you reach the conclusion that we're colluding with the Lib Dems in this election?
ReplyDeleteWe're standing no joint lists, and fighting in every region precisely because this election is about a lot more than just remain or leave, it's about what sort of EU we want to be in, what sort of future we want for this country and the rest of the EU.
The Green position is massively different to the Lib Dems on neoliberalism, austerity, climate change. We want to stay in a very different kind of EU to the lib dems and need as many Green MEPs elected as possible to help make that vision a reality.
... I have to say its not much of a "plot" if one party asks another party to do something - and that party then agrees to do it! I think Thomas needs his tin foil hat repairing!
ReplyDeleteMaybe its more a commentary on the stunning naivety of the average Green party organiser and supporter - and confirmation that they are not grown-up enough to be taken seriously.
Given the Greens’ opposition to nuclear power and GM foods, both of which are technologies that will go a long way towards solving climate change (ahead of renewables and organic farming) I’d say this was a pretty good thing, to be honest.
ReplyDeleteThomas really fucked it didnt he?
ReplyDeleteThomas doing his best Alex Jones impersonation here.
ReplyDeleteAs a Green voter myself, I would like to make it very clear that the party are against collusion with the Liberal Democrats in the European Elections. It would do no good to stay in the EU only to find the Green group in the European Parliament diminished at a point of climate emergency.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there's another reason to oppose collusion. It doesn't necessarily work and the odds of backfiring are higher than the odds of success. There are a lot of Liberal Democrats especially in the FBPE movement who don't really care about this, because the success of their own party is their only priority and they have done very well spreading a myth that big parties do well under the D'Hondt voting system. In reality, the second seat is harder to win than the first and so on and if you find 10% of Greens tactically voting it'll be enough to push the Greens under threshold but won't provide any more Lib Dem MEPs. More than likely the Tories will be the beneficiaries as the threshold adjusts.
The analysis at Vote Remain suggests, for example, voting Green tactically in the South West to gain another Remainer MEP.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.remainvoter.com/
(They define Labour as "uncommitted", which is IMO a little generous, but sure.)
Remain Voter is a better site, they have actually analysed the vote (in the light of the latest opinion polls) and worked out who's in the running for the last seat. they've then tested which (remain supporting) party would need the smallest amount of swing to get that last seat. And who they'd take it from.
ReplyDeleteA brief summary:
For Green supporters, the Greens could potentially win 6 extra seats: Voting for them in the South West and Eastern regions could take a seat from the Brexit Party, which is surely a good thing. Voting for them in the East Midlands and the North West could gain them a seat at the expense of the Tories, again surely a good thing. Voting for them in the West Midlands and Yorkshire could gain them a seat at the expense of Labour, which is more ambivalent.
For those who hate the Tories, they're also vulnerable in London - but only to the Tinge party. A lesser of two evils choice if ever there was one.
The Lib Dems only ever gain seats at the expense of Labour, which isn't acceptable to me. Go look it up yourself if you differ.
I'm always wary of these tactical voting groups. They tend to target a single party they wish to oust rather than cooperate with each other on policy, this should be a red flag for ANYONE.
ReplyDeleteA similar thing happened in Scotland and, strangely, had the then leader of the Scottish Labour Party (Kezia Dugdale) recommend on a live TV interview that Labour supporters should actually VOTE TORY! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it! Her idea was to oust the SNP and would even stoop to these depths to do so instead of, y'know, convincing people your policies are better than theirs!!
Obviously that backfired BADLY. The SNP held onto government and the Labour Party lost their more extreme members to the Tories, hence Labour now being the third party in Scotland from once having been the largest party for a few decades.
Now that the EU votes are in it's clear that no new Tory leader will be calling a GE anytime soon, not unless he/she wishes to further reduce their position!
So, we'll either keep extending Article 50 til the next GE or leave in October. Given parliament's track record on this we can expect more of the same as they simultaneously wish to ignore the referendum result and leave without any kind of deal whatever. Meantime our economy will stagnate as investment dries up, building stops and the public hold back from any kind of major purchase it doesn't ABSOLUTELY have to make. A living death. And while we're distracted by the news failing to report anything else, the Tories will slip thru ever more harsh laws on our poor, vulnerable and disabled...