Tag Archives: election

Election 2015: finally, our chance to ditch Trident Updated for 2026

Trident has in the last few weeks become one of the most potent symbolic political markers for the forthcoming election, and is likely to feature heavily in the debates.

Some of us who have been closely involved in the issue for decades may have been taken by surprise … previous promising moments have come and gone with minimal fuss and it has been a challenge not to become cynical.

But this time is different, and there are a number of factors at play, not least the rise of the smaller parties.

Whilst they lost the referendum back in September, the SNP were closer than most were expecting a year ago to successfully breaking up the union. Since then they have experienced a surge of support, are likely to increase their representation in Westminster in May and could well be a crucial dimension in any power arrangement after the election.

They have already highlighted the removal of Trident bases from Scotland as an absolute condition of any support they may give in negotiations. Statements have been uncompromising, so that it will be a big political challenge to row back from them should they come under pressure to change course.

A strong Green challenge could prove decisive

The Green Party, previously hoping to secure 2-3 seats on a very good day, could become serious challengers for more. Perhaps equally importantly, Green candidates up and down the country could capture many left-wing votes from disillusioned left wing voters who see the cautious positioning of Labour with dismay.

Some have even been suggesting that the Greens could do more damage to Labour prospects than the threat UKIP has to the Tories, in a sort of Ralph Nader moment.

They already have more members than UKIP and the LibDems, and could break through 50,000 in the coming few weeks. Of course, it is moments like these, with the Greens punishing the larger parties for their reckless support of unsustainable neo-liberal capitalist solutions, that their influence is strongest.

So far, particularly on the Trident issue, Labour has been captured by the narrative around legacies of lost elections in the dim and distant past. But their paranoia about being seen as a left wing could yet cost them more votes than it secures. It is about time they realized that the public is in a very different place.

When in the 1980s, heavily influenced by the fear-induced Cold War, a strong unilateralist stance may well have lost crucial support in various parts of the country, it is today generally ambivalent towards investment on Trident.

A time of austerity and cuts just when a new generation of submarines demands major investment could yet prove fatal to the project.

Is this a clever way for the UK to spend £4 billion a year?

Much has been made by campaign groups of the £100bn lifetime cost of the system, which is a reasonable estimate given the uncertainties involved in financial forecasting over such a long period.

Perhaps more meaningful, though, is the annual spend … and this will soon be shooting up from around £2.5bn today towards £4bn a year throughout the 2020s, with capital costs consuming a full one third of the whole defence procurement budget across the decade.

In Tuesday’s Commons debate former Lib Dem defence minister Nick Harvey used parliamentary privilege to expose the fact that the army is being asked to come up with plans to make do with manpower levels around 60,000 – a massive cut and one likely to reverberate around the Shires.

This creates unusual allies between anti-nuclear activists and armed forces constituencies.

Cheaper dual-capable nuclear options to Trident that could also plug the armed forces financial gap are now being considered seriously, promising to split the pro-deterrence lobby, enabling some to join the clamour for a reassessment and a less distorted government review later in 2015.

Cold war warmed up?

But remember: Trident is a weapon system dreamt up and developed in a Cold War context. Skirmishes and threats at the margins of Europe aside, no-one seriously considers the prospects of Britain facing an aggressive and totalitarian nuclear superpower alone as significant.

And yet that is the only scenario that could just justify the independent nuclear deterrent that both the Tory-led government and Labour Party are currently committed to hollowing out the armed forces for.

At a time when the future of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) hangs in the balance and states parties meet in New York for their every-five year review (at the same time as the election), Britain’s leadership is critical. And yet we are nowhere, our credibility severely dented by this insistence on wasting billions on our own arsenal.

Nuclear weapon states meet in London in early February to consider their game plan at the conference. The hopes of them pulling any scrawny rabbits out the hat at this final hour seem dim indeed.

Your vote can help rid us of this terrorist monstrosity

Returning to the election, the best we can realistically hope for from Labour is that it retain its commitment to a minimum credible nuclear deterrent – with some ambiguity around the posture and systems this entails, on the basis that Trident must be included in the Defence and Security Review soon after the election.

This will enable smaller parties, notably the SNP and the Greens, to take on a critical role in post election talks and demand a change in policy on Trident.

But what they do before the election matters too: the more they raise Trident in the campaign, the more they reflect public opposition to the spend, and the more influential they are in the result, the stronger their elbow at this crucial point becomes.

Perhaps then we will see a new government pause, order another delay and review, and perhaps we may yet see them move back from committing to a new generation of nuclear weapons before it’s too late and the money is committed.

Voters in Britain have a bigger chance than they have ever before to bring an end to Britain’s addiction to nuclear weapons, and cause an important upset to the global nuclear order.

Demo: Wrap up Trident – today, midday at the MOD in London.

Paul Ingram has been the Executive Director for the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) since 2007. BASIC works in the US, UK, Europe and the Middle East to promote global nuclear disarmament and a transformation in strategic relationships using a dialogue approach.

He was also until recently a talk show host on state Iranian TV promoting alternative perspectives on strategic matters, and taught British senior civil servants leadership skills.

Previously Paul was a Green Party councillor in Oxford and co-Leader of Oxford City Council (2000-2002) and a member of the Stop the War Coalition Steering Group (2002-2006).

389402

Greens’ election debate victory as surge continues Updated for 2026

Leave a reply

The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky will include party leaders from seven political parties in this year’s pre-election debates including the Greens, the Scots Nationalists and Paid Cymru.

The biggest loser from the move is UKIP, which had previously been the only one of the smaller parties to be recognised as a ‘major party’, triggering widespread protest – and head-scratching.

The broadcasters are now offering two debates involving the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats, UKIP, the SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru; and a single closing debate between the Prime Minister and the Labour leader.

One of the seven-party debates will be hosted by the BBC, and the other by ITV, and Channel 4 and Sky will co-host the final two-party debate. Proposed dates for the debates are the 2nd, 16th and 30th April.

And the broadcasters are clear that they will ’empty chair’ any party leader that declines the terms on offer. “The party leaders have been formally invited to take part in these debates”, reads a formal statement. “If any decide not to participate the debates would take place with those who accepted the invitation.”

‘This is the Green Spring’

“The decision to include the Greens in two debates is an acceptance by the broadcasters that we now are in an age of multi-party politics”, said Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett, who describes the current proposals as “fair and reasonable”.

“This groundbreaking decision serves the interests of both the electorate and British democracy. Our membership and polling surge demonstrates that when people hear about Green Party values and policies many embrace them.

“The political landscape is fracturing and fewer and fewer people want the business-as-usual politics offered by the traditional Westminster parties. This is the Green Spring.

“The fresh proposals means that Green Party policies that can bring real change to Britain – from bringing the railways back into public hands to a £10 minimum wage by 2020 to zero university tuition fees – will now be heard far more widely.”

Reacting to complaints of exclusion by Sinn Féin, the DUP and Respect, Bennett said: “I think it’s time to move on from the debate about the debates, and get on with the debate about the issues.”

The news is also welcomed by Plaid Cymru and the SNP, whose Leader Nicola Sturgeon said “the inclusion of the SNP, Plaid and the Greens will rightly show that politics beyond Westminster isn’t just an old boys club.”

Membership and poll success continues

Meanwhile the Green Party’s membership surge continues. As reported on The Ecologist, over 4,000 people joined the Greens in the space of two days last week when the ‘debate fever’ was at its height, pushing it above both UKIP and the LibDems on a single day.

By this morning the Greens had added more than 3,000 additional members, and the number of members now stands at over 48,000. On the basis of current trends, the party is likely to reach 50,000 members next week.

As well as showing support, the influx of members will also transform the Green Party’s finances. Even if the new members are only paying an average of £10 per year (reflecting a high proportion of students) an unscheduled £300,000 or so has reached the party’s coffers since January.

Opinion polls also show the Greens riding high. A 22nd January Yougov poll shows the Greens ahead of the LibDems with 8%, a lead of 1%, after briefly spiking at 10%. A Guardian/ICM poll published on 20th January shows the Greens on 9%, the highest recorded by ICM in more than 20 years, up 4% on the December figure.

But most interesting is the analysis of voters’ preferred outcome in the event of a hung Parliament, with the strongest support going to a Labour / SNP / Green coalition on 19% – more than any other arrangement. The least popular outcome was a minority Labour government, on 3%.

“The parties we used to relegate to the margins with the term ‘others’ are now moving centre stage”, Martin Boon of ICM told the Guardian. “The combined forces of all those outside the old LibLabCon triopoly has never been stronger during three decades of Guardian/ICM polling.”

But while the Greens are rightly celebrating their surge, they will now have to professionalise their act and prepare for far closer examination at both an individual and policy level, one Green Party veteran told The Ecologist:

“Finally the Greens have arrived on the mainstream political map, and this is something I have been fighting for for over thirty years”, he said. “But there is a cost to being taken seriously. Green policies will be scrutinised as never before and the same goes for Green politicians. The age of innocence is over.”

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

389401

Greens’ election debate victory as surge continues Updated for 2026

Leave a reply

The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky will include party leaders from seven political parties in this year’s pre-election debates including the Greens, the Scots Nationalists and Paid Cymru.

The biggest loser from the move is UKIP, which had previously been the only one of the smaller parties to be recognised as a ‘major party’, triggering widespread protest – and head-scratching.

‘This is the Green Spring’

“The political landscape is fracturing and fewer and fewer people want the business-as-usual politics offered by the traditional Westminster parties. This is the Green Spring.

Membership and poll success continues

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

389401

Greens’ election debate victory as surge continues Updated for 2026

Leave a reply

The BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky will include party leaders from seven political parties in this year’s pre-election debates including the Greens, the Scots Nationalists and Paid Cymru.

The biggest loser from the move is UKIP, which had previously been the only one of the smaller parties to be recognised as a ‘major party’, triggering widespread protest – and head-scratching.

‘This is the Green Spring’

“The political landscape is fracturing and fewer and fewer people want the business-as-usual politics offered by the traditional Westminster parties. This is the Green Spring.

Membership and poll success continues

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

389401

On election day, young Greeks will be voting for Syriza Updated for 2026

Leave a reply

As a young person in Greece, I have been hit especially hard by the crisis. Like many others my age, I feel that Syriza is the only party that represents people like me.

Greek legislative elections are due to take place on 25 January. All evidence points to a victory by the Coalition of the Radical Left party, Syriza, which before the economic crisis received 4% of the vote, but is now backed by a large part of the Greek people, especially the young.

Last year Syriza emerged as a clear winner in the 2014 European elections with more than 26% of the vote, thanks to a remarkable upswing of almost 22%.

Its rise can be attributed to how the crisis was used as a means to unleash a neoliberal attack on citizens’ rights, based on pre-existing divisions in society. Young people were among the first victims.

As a young person myself, I am a victim of the crisis too. As architects, my parents were among the first to take a hit. The situation got even worse, as Greece entered the IMF and Memoranda period.

An education in neoliberalism

I got into Athens Law School in 2011, at a time when an extended university reform had been voted in, that would begin the privatisation of Greek higher education. This reform would make it harder for poorer students to continue their studies, especially during this economic crisis.

With the Greek state becoming more conservative under the New Democracy – PASOK government, the de facto abolition of democracy and stories of activists’ torture, arbitrary police acts and immigrants’ murders, I turned to Syriza.

I became a member of the Organization of the Youth of Syriza, the autonomous organization of young supporters. In my view Syriza presents the best alternative to the problems young people in Greece are faced with.

Young workers were the ones hit hardest by unemployment – youth unemployment is over 50%. Those ‘lucky’ enough to find a job, even university graduates, will work for €250-300 a month or even unpaid to ‘gain experience’ or are tied to ‘voucher’ programs.

Young men and women remain financially dependent on their parents, cannot afford a household of their own or to start a family and are often forced to emigrate abroad.

At the same time, students have seen their universities collapse. Under recent governments, free higher education stopped being entirely free, as some of the costs are transferred to students, who often cannot shoulder them.

University degrees are becoming equated with those of private colleges, which teach half of the classes universities do, but have been boosted by the government. Pupils have in turn seen their free time shrink, as high schools increasingly resemble examination centres, with private tutoring thriving at the expense of knowledge and learning.

For these reasons, young students and workers have in the present circumstances no option but to support the only party that takes them into account, aiming at a productive reconstruction of the country, based on them, their strengths and ideas.

Rebuilding democracy in the mother of democracies

Syriza wants to reshape the way the Greek state functions, towards democratization and against the corruption of previous governments.

It wants to provide the necessary room for self-organization initiatives and attempts at a solidaristic and cooperative economy, which we saw spring up during the crisis as a response to unemployment, misery and desperation.

Besides, Syriza is the only party that lent passionate support to every movement and resistance that developed in society during these years, by actively participating in their causes and giving them a voice in parliament, while always respecting their autonomy.

From the 2008 uprising after the police murder of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, to the Greek ‘indignados‘ movement in 2011, to the locals’ resistance to the environmentally catastrophic gold mining in Chalkidiki, Syriza was there. It was there in the protests against the authoritarian closure of the country’s public broadcaster and in the protests against educational reform pushed by the government.

As Greece’s expected next government, Syriza will seek to realise these movements’ causes and offer protection to vulnerable social groups.

Syriza alone stands against austerity, racism and fascism

Syriza is also alone in advocating a Europe of the people and not a Europe of austerity. The EU seems to currently only care about protecting the powerful at the expense of the working class and young people, who are forced to accept constant work with no right to free time and a decent life, fully subjected to the neoliberal dogma of individualism and competition.

Only Syriza, among Greek parties, wants to move Europe towards real democracy and respect of human rights and away from a ‘fortress Europe’ with drowning immigrants in the Mediterranean, away from bigotry, islamophobia, racism and fascism.

The other political parties in Greece disregard young people, some of them blatantly. Why would young voters trust the outgoing New Democracy government, which led them to unrecorded labour or migration? The same party that now denies them the right to vote, excluding them from the upcoming election: 18 year olds won’t vote, because it is supposedly logistically impossible to add them to the electoral lists in time for the election; citizens living and working abroad won’t be allowed to vote in Greek consulates around the world.

Why would young people vote for PASOK, the junior partner of the governing coalition, which along with New Democracy represents the old and corrupt political establishment and which sent the country to the IMF?

Why should we vote for To Potami, the party that first appeared in European elections last year? It claims to bring new ideas to the table and targets young people, but in reality is funded by and consists of the corrupt political establishment and aligns itself with the neoliberal bloc.

Young people have no reason to support any of these parties, who are responsible for having destroyed their lives, whose sole concern is to implement the European elites’ and markets’ inhumane orders, only selectively altering them to suit their own and their political clientele.

Because the crisis doesn’t only deprive us of our dreams, but also affects us in our everyday lives, seeing our parents’ desperation, who after years of work don’t know if they’ll be able to pay the bills the next day.

This weekend, young people can vote for their dreams

Faced with this social collapse and desperation, young people shouldn’t give in to inaction and misery by abstaining from the election. Equating all political parties without having tried a different alternative is the wrong mentality.

On the contrary we need to seize the opportunity to back a party that wants to give us a platform to participate in decision-making.

Nor should we succumb to violent reaction, as expressed by the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, which advertises itself as an anti-system party in order to attract the indignant youth, but at the same time backs the government’s selling off of public property.

A Syriza victory, on the other hand, can give back hope both to the youth and to broader society. It can give us the hope which will enable us to raise our voices and actively take part in the country’s political life, from the local level to the unions, from the workplace to the universities.

Syriza can give us back what the previous governments systematically denied us: the ability to fight for our dreams.

Elati Pontikopoulou-Venieri is a senior student at the University of Athens, where she studies Law. She is a also a member of the Organization for the Youth of SYRIZA.

Thanks to Yannis Paradeisiadis for the translation.

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

389239

The Green voice must be heard in Election 2015! Updated for 2026

Leave a reply

Ofcom have made a provisional decision (technically it’s called an ‘initial view’) to exclude the Green Party from the general election debates.

This is a shameful and irrational decision. For here is the central point about Ofcom’s deliberations. There must – of course! – be consistent criteria for who gets included and who gets excluded from the debates.

If the criteria are backward-looking, looking based on what happened at the last General Election, then the Green Party must be included in the debates. For the Green Party got someone elected to Westminster – Caroline Lucas – at the last general election, unlike UKIP.

If the criteria based on current support, then the plain fact is that the Green Party have overtaken the LibDems in the polls. The Greens are consistently ahead now in Yougov results, which are the most regular polls by far: see their latest chart, showing the long-term trend, and now showing the Greens consistently ahead of the LibDems.

So, if the criteria are focussed on the present, once again, the Green Party must be included in the debates. This is the crux of the matter: if UKIP are a ‘major Party’, then so are the Greens, and that if the LibDems are a ‘major Party’, then so are the Greens.

Membership numbers – how’s this for a ‘surge’?

Another objective measure for Ofcom to apply would be member numbers. And here too the Greens have a story to tell. Latest figures show that our present membership has reached 31,492 in England & Wales, and close to 40,000 including Scotland and Northern Ireland.

That’s level pegging with UKIP, which claimed 40,000 members in December. And it’s slightly smaller than the LibDems, who reported 44,000 members in April 2014, trumpeting a “membership surge” with numbers rising by about 1,000 a year, a tad under 2.5%.

Now compare that growth rate to the Greens – our membership rose by an amazing 123% over 2014, and we have added 4,324 new members since the beginning of December – over the festive period when most peoples’ minds are fixed on matters other than politics.

At this rate, we look set to overtake both LibDems and UKIP in short order. So by whichever measure, the Green Party must be included in the general election debates! There is no way around this logic. The Ofcom decision is wrong.

Let’s add something else important: that the Ofcom decision is unpopular and undemocratic. A recent ICM poll showed that fully 79% of the British public wants the Green Party included in the debates.

Moreover, even key opponents of the Green Party want the Greens included in the debates. Sadiq Khan is running the new Labour anti-Green attack unit. Yet even he wants the Green Party included in the debates.

All credit to him for this: this is how democracy is supposed to work, by political opponents arguing with each other in public view; not by one Party being excluded arbitrarily.

Are there any good arguments against the Greens’ participation?

Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP, has already taken to Twitter to express his outrage: “it’s a disgraceful, indefensible decision by Ofcom”. And – most consequentially – David Cameron has already responded to the decision by insisting that he will not take part in the debates unless the Greens are included.

This will surely force the broadcasters to change their stance: for, if the cost of the Greens being excluded is that the debates don’t happen at all, surely that cost will be one that the broadcasters are unwilling to pay.

But are there are any good arguments against the Green Party being regarded as a ‘major party’ suitable to be included in the debates?

The only one I have heard that has any ‘legs’ at all (though it is not one that Ofcom highlights, to my knowledge) is that the Greens, unlike the other Parties, are not going to be contesting some seats at the General Election.

In fact, the Greens are already committed to contesting three quarters of the 573 seats in England & Wales – that’s 430 – and it looks like the Party may well end up contesting 80-85% of constituencies. In Cambridgeshire, where I’m the prospective Green candidate, we will have a full slate, and the same goes for neighbouring Norfolk and Suffolk.

Now, actually, we don’t of course know that the other Parties will contest all 573 England & Wales seats at the General Election, though in 2010 they did come very close. But they will certainly not be contesting seats in Northern Ireland – where the Green Party, which exists in Northern Ireland (and has elected representatives) will be taking part.

The position is clear. The Green Party is a national party, and as the #GreenSurge rolls on, so the number of seats in which there will be no Green Party candidate standing gets smaller and smaller.

The threat of a genuine alternative?

And here’s another couple of good reasons for including the Greens in the debates. The Green Party is the fastest growing political force in England – and, like the SNP, we are growing even faster in Scotland.

The inclusion of the Greens would make the debates so much more up-to-date and interesting … Caroline Lucas MP or Natalie Bennett, one of whom would represent the Green Party in the debates, would not only be the only woman there, but the only one of the five parties offering a genuine alternative.

For example, the Greens are the only one of the five parties opposing TTIP (the massive EU-US trade and investment deal now under negotiation). We are the only party opposing nuclear power and the UK’s ‘Trident’ nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

We are the only party supporting a Green New Deal as an alternative to endless economc austerity, promising to take the railways back into public ownership and to cut fares, opposing fracking and GM food and crops, supporting a Citizens Income and a Land Value Tax … the list of Green USPs goes on and on.

If Ofcom stick to their bad decision, and if none of the broadcasters include the Green Party, then it undermines the democratic legitimacy of the debates. In that event, it will be essential for a high-profile ‘alternative’ or ‘real’ debate to be set up which includes the Greens, and I believe that that not only should but would happen.

But it would be far better if the broadcasters were to recognise the widespread groundswell of opinion among media-professionals, politicians and the public that the Green Party should be included in the debates that have already been planned, and to make this happen.

You can help to sway Ofcom’s decision

Fortunately Ofcom’s ‘initial view’ is not a final decision. They can yet change their minds. I hope that the upsurge of outrage against this terrible decision will be so huge that they will have no option but to do so.

You can help in that process: for instance, by sharing this article on social media and on email – and by telling Ofcom exactly what you think of their decision, on their stakeholder forum. They are consulting on their ‘draft’ decision, now.

I have bent over backwards in this article to be fair to Ofcom. But there is no way around it: they are blatantly being unfair to the Greens, and unfair to democracy as a whole.

Let rationality and the people’s will prevail. Let the Ofcom decision be overturned, or let the broadcasters simply ignore that decision and make the 5-party debate happen – for, if the Greens are not there, then nor will David Cameron be, and there will then surely be no TV debates at all, this time.

It’s really very simple: #InviteTheGreens to the general election debates … If Clegg and Farage are there, then it is plain illogical to do anything else.

Rupert Read is the Green Party’s prospective Parliamentary candidate for Cambridge, and Chair of the Green House Think Tank, under whose auspices he recently co-authored a report on the state of democracy in an era of 5-party-politics: ‘Strangled by the duopoly: the collapse of UK democracy and some prospects for its revival‘.

388769

Election debates: only the Greens offer a genuine alternative Updated for 2026

Leave a reply

A YouGov poll showing the Green Party has more support than the Liberal Democrats raises yet more questions as to why the party is being excluded from a planned series of debates ahead of next year’s election.

If the decision to exclude the party was questionable before, it is even more so now. The Greens are quickly gaining ground and deserve to be taken seriously.

But more importantly, bringing the party in will make this a real debate, not just a Q&A with four white men who can only be differentiated by the colour of their ties.

The BBC, ITV, Sky and Channel 4 will run three debates between party leaders next year and will allow UKIP leader Nigel Farage to take part in one of them. Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, however, will not be included in the line-up.

The party has threatened legal proceedings and a petition calling for Bennett to be given a place has been signed by nearly 200,000 people.

The BBC argues the Greens have neither the past or present support to justify giving Bennett a place on the debate stage in front of a national audience.

They note, however, that they “will continue to keep any new evidence of increased support for the Green party under close review”. This latest poll would appear to be just such a piece of evidence.

The Greens have become a genuine political force

Politically, the Greens of 2014 are not the Greens of 2010. They are making serious gains in public opinion that could translate into significant electoral victories.

Peter Kellner of YouGov has referred to the Party as a ‘wildcard’ shaking up the election. He suggests a “two-headed protest vote” is emerging, with UKIP and the Greens as the driving force. For this reason, alone, the Greens have a legitimate case to be allowed into the debate.

It is no longer possible to simply dismiss the Greens as a fringe party. They are building a broad coalition of support that is progressively situating them as a legitimate political force.

Even David Cameron, admittedly for his own strategic reasons, acknowledged this changing reality. He has acknowledged the absurdity of including UKIP but not the Greens in the debate when each has a sitting MP, stating: “I can’t see how you can have a party in that has an MP in parliament, but not another party.”

Just as importantly, Bennett’s inclusion would do much for adding a different kind of voice to these proceedings, especially as the other three leaders are all white males.

A true alternative to neo-liberal austerity

There is, though, a more fundamental reason for greening the debate. The Green Party offers a real ideological and policy alternative to the similarly pro-market and neo-conservative platforms of the other three major parties.

Bennett would provide a different political perspective to the pro-austerity, pro-war and anti-immigration agendas that are likely to be pushed by the others.

Indeed, this is a point that Bennett, herself, has continually made but that remains largely overlooked. In this spirit, she recently wrote:

“Policies such as bringing the railways back into public hands, saying that the profit motive has no place in healthcare, that the poor and disadvantaged must not be made to pay for the fraud and errors of the bankers with the failed policy of austerity have extremely high levels of support. Only the Green Party is supporting these policies.”

These concerns are even more pressing now the Labour Party can be seen echoing the positions advocated by the Tories and UKIP.

Ed Miliband has now placed Labour firmly in the anti-immigration camp, directly challenging Cameron on this issue. He publicly declared that dealing with immigration “is at the top of Labour’s agenda” promised that there would be a crackdown on immigrants within weeks of his party winning power.

Similarly, while UKIP is gaining popularity as the outsider party its economic policies are quite similar to those of the Conservatives – they are perhaps even more austerity-driven.

Behind its populist facade, UKIP wants to eliminate progressive taxation, dramatically reduce spending back to levels before New Labour’s 1997 victory and stimulate employment by lowering business taxes and loosening regulation.

We need a true debate of ideas – not just the usual ding-dong

Democratic change is more than just an incumbent losing. It is also using elections to transform a country’s values and policies. By including the Greens, these debates would come closer to the ideal of having a space for exchanging different ideas about the direction the UK should take.

Without Bennett, it is four leaders arguing almost identical points using different language. It would undoubtedly make for compelling television, but contain little substantial value.

Elections are usually won and lost on pragmatic decisions by voters about which candidate is the least bad and including the Greens in these TV debates would not change that.

But while it would have limited electoral effect, greening the debate would at least provide the forum for a more genuine contest of ideas concerning what is good for the UK in the 21st century and beyond.

Peter Bloom is Lecturer in Organization Studies, Department of People and Organisation at The Open University. He does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

386194

Excluding Greens from TV debates would make a mockery of democracy Updated for 2026

Leave a reply

Next year’s TV debates could be a slap in the face to millions seeking a progressive political voice. And politics will only be the worse off for it in an era of alienation and disenfranchisement.

There’s a stitch-up being planned. One that could affect the outcome of next year’s General Election in the UK.

The main broadcasters are planning to exclude the Green Party from the televised election debates in 2015 – while including Nigel Farage’s UKIP, and the increasingly threadbare Lib Dems.

The decision was announced earlier this week, and it has rightly led to outrage from across the political spectrum. When you look at the figures, the plan to exclude the Greens becomes simply unbelievable.

Greens enjoy serious democratic representation

There are two ways in which broadcasters might reasonably judge whether a party should be take part in the election debates. First, by the level of representation the party enjoys.

The Greens have the same number of MPs as UKIP – one. The party has also held it for far longer than UKIP’s Douglas Carswell, a Tory defector: Caroline Lucas won her seat in 2010 and has proved a formidable force in Parliament, and popular among the public.

We, including the Scottish Greens, also have two MSPs in the Scottish Parliament (that’s two more than UKIP), and three MEPs (many fewer than UKIP’s 24, but triple the Lib Dems’ single member). The Greens also came third in the last London mayoral election.

In local authorities the Greens have 170 principal authority councillors across England and Wales, including two London Assembly members, and 14 councillors in Scotland. That’s not as many as UKIP with its 357 councillors, but still an impressive number that demonstrates broad-based, nationwide support.

Visible popular support

The other reasonable way to judge whether a party should participate in election debates is to go by the level of support that seems likely in future elections, based both on recent election outcomes, and opinion polls. So how do the Greens shape up there?

In the European elections UKIP led the field with 27.5% of the vote. But the Greens came in fourth place with 7.9%, a whole percentage point ahead of the Lib Dems with their 6.9%. That 7.9%, incidentally, reflected the votes of 1,255,573 people across the UK.

As for the opinion polls for the 2015 General Election, many show the Greens level pegging with the Lib Dems, at around 5-7%. This follows monumental growth in membership over the past five years, including a 56% boost in 2014 alone to over 21,000 members, and 1,000 new members in the last week.

In short, all the numbers show that the Greens represent a broad, substantial, nationwide constituency of progressive voters that are turning out to support us in elections in growing numbers.

And in 2015, many more will have the change to vote Green, with the Party contesting three quarters of UK constituencies – up 50% from 2010.

A deliberate close-down of choice?

But of course, the numbers don’t say it all. What is really at issue is the exclusion of choice – an attack on the principle of democracy. If Farage appears without the Greens, what we will have are TV debates between four ‘austerity parties’ all battling over the same political ground. The phrase ‘sham election’ comes to mind.

Not only that, but it will be composed of four parties who all support fracking, back ‘free trade’ deals like TTIP that threaten health and environmental protections, who advocate either grossly insufficient measures to tackle the enormous reality of global warming, or (in the case of UKIP) deny it altogether.

Who else is to advocate Green policies like:

the return of our railways to public ownership?
the abolition of the UK’s £100bn Trident nuclear weapons system?
a Living Wage for all, alongside plans for a national minimum wage of £10 per hour by 2020?
the scrapping of plans for a Hinkley C nuclear power station that looks like costing taxpayers and electricity customers over £30 billion?

Only the Greens are challenging the neoliberal ‘free market’ consensus of the ‘grey’ parties. And without a strong Green voice being heard in the debates, we will only have an establishment stitch-up. It’s vital that the thousands, if not millions, of Green voters – or potential supporters – are represented. If not, can we really say we live in a democracy?

In short, without the Greens, there is no one to present an unequivocally pro-environment, pro-people viewpoint. Next year’s TV debates could therefore represent a slap in the face to millions seeking a progressive political voice. And politics will only be the worse off for it in an era of alienation and disenfranchisement.

This isn’t about moaning. We are not trying to deny UKIP or the Lib Dems their right to be heard. Both the SNP and Plaid Cymru, who enjoy significant levels of support, should also be included. Democracy isn’t just about who you vote for – it’s about representation. That has to include Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If not, what kind of a union are we?

The new political reality must be recognised

Siobhan MacMahon, Co-Chair of the Young Greens, put it right when she said: “The obvious truth from the proposed TV debates is that broadcasters are struggling to adapt to the new political reality that we face in the UK, with five or more parties all staking legitimate claims to featuring in the debate.

“The Greens have been unfairly excluded from that process, despite receiving over a million votes in the European Elections and beating the Lib Dems into fourth place.”

That’s why the Young Greens – as well as calling for fair debates – are also leading the way calling for a series of youth debates among young party leaders from across the spectrum. With the Greens becoming the third party of young people, polling around 15% and doubling in size in 2014 alone, we are in a good place to pioneer such calls for experimentation in democracy.

The debates could be online – via newspapers, YouTube and other media – as well as on radio or TV. Nothing is written in stone. What is right is that they should happen. Young people deserve a voice too as those who will clear up the mess of the current lot in power.

Either way, the fact that over 168,000 have signed a petition calling for broader party representation on the TV debates shows just how strongly people feel. And they’re going to be very angry if they are ignored.

And it’s not just the poltically engaged that believe this. A YouGov poll showed that (excluding ‘don’t knows’) 60% of voters agree that the Green Party Leader, Natalie Bennett, should be included in the debates.

It’s time the media and political leaders to wake up to the multi-party country we have become.

Josiah Mortimer sits on the national committee of the Young Greens.

The petition: Include the Green Party in the TV Leaders’ Debates ahead of the 2015 General Election!

385516

One more heave! Ministers’ pre-election fracking drive Updated for 2026

Leave a reply

It’s a question of fear. What secretly worries pro-fracking Conservative ministers, The Ecologist has learned, is that a Labour administration in power after 2015 might reverse the current coalition’s efforts to make widespread fracking possible across the UK.

So in order to make it as hard as possible for the next government to reverse the plans of this one, the Department for Energy and Climate Change is accelerating efforts to get ‘phase one’ of fracking – as one government source calls the current drive – completed before polling day next May.

And they may succeed: none of the three mainstream parties that hold real clout in Westminster are likely to put up much of a fight any time soon.

Labour: intensely relaxed about shale

Right now an odd sort of rapprochement is taking place in Westminster. After years of glaring at each other suspiciously across the despatch boxes, government and opposition frontbenchers might be close to securing consensus on shale gas.

Labour has been creeping towards accepting fracking for some years now. In 2012 it set out a series of regulatory tests designed to limit localised environmental impact. Then, last month, the opposition tabled amendments to the infrastructure bill detailing these.

“If the government accept our amendments we’ll be in a position where there is much more thorough regulation in place”, said Tom Greatrex MP, Labour’s Shadow Energy Minister. “But there are other issues.”

These include the monitoring of methane gas, which remains the subject of a scientific study. A good excuse for Labour to delay its final endorsement of fracking until next year. In response, ministers are considering further concessions to get Labour firmly onside.

A bit more regulation is regarded by pro-fracking Conservatives as a price worth paying to win a swift political agreement. Even the industry has made it clear that they don’t oppose the bulk of Labour’s proposals.

Fracking firms’ only serious concern with Labour’s proposed regulation is the period of time needed to establish ‘baseline’ chemical levels in groundwater before drilling begins. The opposition is calling for a 12-month timeframe, but the United Kingdom Onshore Oil And Gas (UKOOG) thinks three months is plenty.

“This is a very regulated industry already”, said a spokesman. “Whatever government is in place, the industry will be committed to proper regulation and to full consultation with local communities that are affected.”

Nixing the NIMBYs

Oddly, the biggest threat to ministers’ fracking plans comes from backbenchers representing rural constituencies across England’s green and pleasant land – most of which are Conservative. These are the Middle Englanders – the ones who oppose fracking on the time-honoured tradition of ‘not in my back yard’.

Nick Herbert, a former government minister, is among them. Herbert supports fracking nationally, but rejected a proposal for explanatory drilling in his South Downs constituency earlier this year because it involved heavy lorry movements through a pretty local village.

“It’s difficult to judge when the costs of renewable energy might fall”, he says. “What the government must do is reassure those who have concerns about the environmental impact.” He also sees an economic benefit in developing domestic gas sources, since “shale gas could substitute for gas from other countries.”

Herbert, and the NIMBYs in his constituency, are always going to be a problem for the Government. But ministers have a ‘carrot and stick’ plan to reduce the number of times their campaigning actually stops drilling taking place.

Community engagement plans are being developed to combat their concerns. And landowners’ and homeowners’ rights to obstruct fracking under their property are being addressed in the Infrastructure Bill – which will allow energy firms to drill without the owner’s permission.

Campaigners remain defiant, and confident too

Green campaigners are facing a considerable challenge. They are fighting against a firm pro-fracking consensus in Parliament, where arguments about climate change are seemingly only being voiced by a handful of MPs – most visibly the Green MP Caroline Lucas (see photo).

Herbert, in common with ministers, thinks the minority of the population that are seriously worried about fracking and its potentially severe impacts are irrelevant to the debate – and can be safely ignored

But away from Westminster the enemies of fracking remain defiant, and confident. For Hannah Martin, a coordinator of the Say No To Gas group, the imminent election in May 2015 provides the perfect opportunity to squeeze MPs seeking re-election on fracking.

Say No To Gas now comprises 200 community groups which have grown up in the last year or so to stop fracking in their areas, and more are being set up all the time. The network is providing an “unprecedented level of resistance” wherever energy companies seek permits for exploratory drilling, she says.

As for the outcome, she is sure MPs and even ministers will be eager to please concerned constituents in what is likely to be a very close-run election. “It is definitely stoppable”, she insists.

Lib Dems: forgetting the long view

A key target will be Liberal Democrat incumbents desperate to win back popular support which has ebbed away during their time in government.

The party boasted about its environmentalist priorities while in opposition – but has done very little to restrain Conservative ministers in government. Following Cameron’s promise to form Britain’s ‘greenest government ever’, the result has been eco-catastrophe – and the Lib Dems must share the blame for that.

The party insists it has wrung concessions out of the Tories. Applications for exploratory drilling now have to be accompanied by a testing ‘statement of environmental awareness’. Planning guidance makes clear drilling will be refused in sensitive areas – and if the frackers appeal, ministers can ‘call in’ the case to make a final judgement themselves.

None of these really address the fundamentals of shale gas extraction, though. They won’t ensure the carbon from Britain’s shale deposits stays in the ground. Nor will they stop the industrialisation and pollution of countryside which may not all be ‘special’ but is still hugely valued by local people.

Martin Horwood, a Lib Dem MP worried by fracking, says his concerns have shifted away from earthquakes to water contamination and the long-term impact on climate change. “There’s still a lot of scepticism in the party”, he argues.

But will it make any difference? At last year’s autumn conference, the Liberal Democrats passed a motion giving the party’s official blessing to fracking. But it did so in terms that allowed its numerous doubters to keep quiet.

Now the rush is on to implement the policy, we may see further signs of Lib Dem unrest this autumn. So watch the Lib Dem’s party conference, where concerns over fracking may surface with renewed ferocity.

The coalition’s junior partners are unlikely to trigger a big row over the issue if they can help it: on fracking, as with nuclear power, they have allowed the Conservatives to call the shots. But the whiff of a grassroots rebellion among the party ranks could change all that in the blink of an eye.

Ukraine – the joker in the pack

Another dimension is the enthusiasm of American shale gas producers to get into Europe’s gas market. Encouraged by Europe’s growing tensions with Russia, they want to take advantage of the situation and give their flagging industry a new lease of life.

One plan is to open up Europe as a huge new export market for US shale gas. But the US lacks the export infrastructure needed to do this, and realistically the necessary terminals cannot be in place for some years.

The other plan is to use gas shortages in Europe this coming winter to engineer a pro-fracking concensus – and open up Europe’s fracking grounds to US companies.

Right-wing elements in the Ukraine government have already openly advocated closing Russia’s gas pipelines to the EU, something that would suit US fracking interests down to the ground.

But either plan would be a disaster for the planet because – thanks to high energy inputs and fugitive methane emissions from fracking wells – the global warming impact of fracked gas is comparable to that of coal. Add in the impact of shipping from US ports and it only gets worse.

But how big can fracking get anyway?

The switch to low-carbon energy generation, mainly from wind and solar, means that demand for gas should fall dramatically over the next 15 years. By 2030, the International Energy Agency estimates, shale gas could only ever provide 10% of the UK’s energy mix.

Then there is the problem that Europeans will strongly resist paying as much for their gas as the Japanese and emerging-economy countries do.

Some business analysts estimate replacing Russian gas with American shale gas would result in European gas prices doubling. Domestically produced shale gas will also need sustained high prices to be economcially viable, as it costs far more to produce than conventional natural gas.

“Realistically”, says the IPPR think-tank’s Joss Garman, “it’s not going to be a significant part of the answer.”

So the news is not all grim for the anti-frackers. Never mind the political support that fracking has engineered in the three main parties. Straightforward market economics might be enough to make sure that fracking never gets far beyond the starting gate.

Meanwhile determined anti-fracking campaigning aimed at MPs keen for electoral advantage in the 2015 election could make all the difference. It’s called democracy – and since it only comes around ever five years, there’s every reason to use it while we can.

Alex Stevenson is parliamentary editor of politics.co.uk, and an occasional contributor to The Ecologist.

383901

Eco Bio III Millennio

„“

Tag Archives: election

Election 2015: finally, our chance to ditch Trident Updated for 2026

Greens’ election debate victory as surge continues Updated for 2026

Greens’ election debate victory as surge continues Updated for 2026

Greens’ election debate victory as surge continues Updated for 2026

On election day, young Greeks will be voting for Syriza Updated for 2026

The Green voice must be heard in Election 2015! Updated for 2026

Election debates: only the Greens offer a genuine alternative Updated for 2026

Excluding Greens from TV debates would make a mockery of democracy Updated for 2026

One more heave! Ministers’ pre-election fracking drive Updated for 2026