Why are the Greens helping the Lib-Dems try to unseat pro-Remain Labour MPs?

If you're the kind of person who sincerely believe that the Brexit issue is far more important than other pressing concerns like the climate crisis, or combating the ruinous austerity fanaticism that caused Brexit in the first place, then the idea of a Remain Alliance between pro-EU parties makes some kind of sense.

However any such Remain Alliance must come with the obvious caveat that the Remain Alliance is only used to defend Remain parliamentary seats already held, and to unseat pro-Brexit MPs.

Unfortunately the newly announced Remain Alliance between the Lib-Dems, Greens, and Plaid Cymru goes a lot further, and actually targets the seats of a load of pro-EU MPs too.

One such target is the Labour MP for Warrington South Faisal Rashid, who holds a tight majority of 2,500 over the Tories (48.4% to 44.3%), with the Lib-Dem candidate coming in a distant 3rd place in 2017, with just 5% of the vote.

Rashid is a vocal anti-Brexit advocate, who wants another EU referendum, and represents a party that is committed to a Final Say referendum, opposes austerity fanaticism, and shares Green party views on de-privatisation of vital public services and infrastructure like the railways, water supply, national grid, NHS, and education system.

Rashid is also very vocal on the climate crisis, and in June 2019 he strongly urged Warrington Council to declare a climate emergency.

He sounds exactly like the kind of figure Green Party supporters should feel comfortable voting for, but according to the terms of the new Remain Alliance, the Greens are supporting the Lib-Dems in Warrington South, which seems like a very odd strategy for an alliance intended to put as many Brexit-sceptic MPs in parliament as possible.

If the Remain Alliance does succeed in their ambition to unseat Rashid, there are only two possible outcomes.

One is that the extraordinarily unlikely scenario where the Lib-Dem candidate comes from nowhere to achieve an unprecedented 40%+ swing, meaning a green, anti-austerity, democratic socialist who supports Remain is replaced pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, anti-worker, welfare-vandalising orthodox neoliberal who supports Remain.

Well, hooray for the Remain Alliance!

The other, vastly more likely outcome is that the Lib-Dems and their fellow Remain Alliance plotters split the anti-Tory vote, and let the pro-Brexit Tory take the seat (a scenario which would only necessitate a 4% swing).

Erm, hooray for the Remain Alliance???

Another ludicrous target for the Remain Alliance is Stephan Morgan in Portsmouth South, who is a vehement advocate of another referendum, who swears he'll lead the Remain campaign in Portsmouth if the referendum happens. He won the seat from the Tories in 2017 by 41% to 38%, the Lib-Dem the Remain Alliance is backing came a distant 3rd on 17%.

Again the most likely scenario is handing the seat back to a pro-Brexit Tory, with the remote outside chance of switching out an anti-austerity, anti-privatisation democratic socialist Remainer, for a pro-austerity, pro-privatisation neoliberal Remainer.

In what world does this make any sense whatever?

The reason the Greens are supporting this absolute lunacy is obvious. It's a quid pro quo.

In return for the Lib-Dems standing aside in a few Green target seats like the Isle of Wight, and Bristol West (which is also held by a vocal Labour Remainer, Thangam Debbonaire by the way) they're going to help the Lib-Dems sabotage other Labour Remainer MPs like Faisal Rashid up and down the country, helping them turn Labour Remain red, to Tory Brexit blue.

From a pragmatic perspective helping the Lib-Dems remove pro-remain, anti-austerity, environmentalist Labour MPs from parliament looks like dreadful self-sabotage from a wider green perspective, but from a narrow party political perspective it means a shot at increasing their representation from one seat out of 650 to maybe two, so it's a price they're apparently willing to pay!

The most charitable explanation possible is that all the Brexit chaos has given the Green Party a horrible dose of Brexit Brain Worms, rendering them incapable of thinking straight.

A less charitable explanation is that they're willing to embrace the notoriously untrustworthy Lib-Dem neoliberals and help them shoot down pro-Remain Labour MPs up and down the country, purely because they're prioritising their narrow party political interest above the interests of the nation as a whole.

Whichever way you look at it, it's incredibly disappointing and divisive stuff from a political party that most left-wingers, social progressives, and Labour supporters tend to agree with on most issues.

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