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Join the politics of the future! Updated for 2026

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This has been a momentous year! A year in which the Green Party has taken its place at the forefront of UK politics. A year in which young people in particular have embraced our message of hope and real change.

A year in which nearly 300,000 people joined together to help ensure we took our place in the national leadership debates. A year in which we are matching, and often exceeding, the Lib Dems, a party of government, in national polls.

And a year in which we have become the third largest political party in England and Wales! In the space of 12 months we have grown from 13,000 members to 55,000. Our membership has quadrupled!   

And one thing that the green surge means is that more than 90% of you will have the chance to vote Green on the 7th of May. For some that means the first ever chance to vote Green. 

Your vote can change the face of Britain!

In just nine weeks’ time, you will have in your hands something miraculous … the possibility of a peaceful political revolution. Your vote can change the face of Britain. It can end the failed austerity experiment, end the spiteful blaming of the poor, the sick, the vulnerable for the mistakes of the wealthy.

This election can be a turning point in history. The moment where we can deliver a better Britain, a Britain which works for all its people … A Britain which cares. 

Vote for what you believe in, vote for the policies of hope not fear, vote for policies that work for the common good not just the few, and Britain could be a very different country on the 8th of May. It is time for Green Politics – the politics of the future – that delivers:

  • a living wage: jobs that workers can build a life on, with support for those who need it;
  • public services run for the good of all – our railways run not for shareholders but for passengers, our NHS not handed over to profiteers but kept in public hands;
  • social housing, council housing, to meet our housing needs;
  • the means for everyone to live within the limits of our one planet – because it’s the only one we’ve got.


A society fit for people and our communities

No one should be living in fear of being unable to put food on the table. No one should be forced into debt just for trying to get an education.

No one should be worrying about a fracking drill burrowing into the heart of their community.  No one should fear being left destitute by Iain Duncan Smith’s punitive benefit sanctions. 

The politics of the future is not a politics of transaction, that discredited politics which offers selected individuals and groups a bribe of short-term, unsustainable personal advantage.

History tells us that is now the old politics, the tired politics, the failed politics. The Green Party is offering instead a society working for all of us; for the many, not just the few; a society in which those who can contribute do so, and no one in need goes without.

It asks voters to make a choice that will deliver a society fit for themselves, their communities, and their children.

#GreenSurge

That’s why the Green surge is much more than just a hash tag – although a highly successful hash tag it has been – the green surge is much more than just membership numbers. That’s why people are becoming engaged with the Green Party. 

I have seen the Green surge on the ground, around the country, from a village hall in Ilkley, Yorkshire, to an enormous, snaking queue of hundreds at Exeter University, to a Valentine’s Eve Friday night crowd at the London School of Economics. 

And of course we saw it last May with the election of Molly Scott Cato as the first Green member of the European Parliament in the South West – and boy, hasn’t she delivered for her voters! 

The Green surge is the result of your hard work as Greens. It’s thanks to you in this hall, and to all of the Green Party members and supporters up and down the country – to your commitment, your belief, your dedication and your hard work – that we approach the General Election as a central player in UK politics. 

And of course, it isn’t just Green Party. Up and down the country, campaigns demanding a new politics are getting stronger, bigger, more effective. There’s People’s Assemblies, Occupy Democracy, the anti-fracking movement and the fossil fuel divestment campaigns: the tide is growing, the demand for change is louder and clearer.

We’re fighting back

At last, the people are fighting back! Five years ago we made a huge breakthrough with the election of Caroline Lucas as the first Green MP, and she’s given Brighton a spectacularly good local voice and a national impact far beyond any other MP. Caroline has led the debate on issues from railway ownership to statutory Personal and Social Education.

She’s led the debate on parliamentary transparency and she has put her freedom on the line to oppose fracking. Because Caroline shows what voting Green delivers: passion, sensitivity and courage. 

On May 8, just imagine, a strong green group of MPs at Westminster – able to build on and expand Caroline’s work. A group which would never, ever support a Conservative Government. A strong group of Green MPs – in a parliament where they could have a huge say, a huge impact – that is a real opportunity to start to deliver a new kind of politics.

We know that the way things are in Britain is not sustainable. Continuing as we are is not an option. Since 2007, food prices have risen 22% but wages have fallen 7%. Almost seven hundred thousand people are listed as ‘in work’, despite having no guaranteed hours week-to-week.

It’s time to end the scourge of zero hours contracts. Almost half the new jobs created since 2010 are for the self-employed, yet nearly 80% of self-employed workers are living in poverty. I applaud the growing number of individuals who contribute to, who volunteer in, who run, food banks.

But individual charity is no substitute for collective justice. This the outcome of the years of Blair, of Brown, of the Cameron / Clegg Coalition and austerity Britain – this is the record of George Osborne’s ‘long term economic plan’.

The Green Party are calling time on the politics of low wages, job insecurity and fearing the food bank. We are calling time on privatisation – the sell-off and the handing over – of public assets into private hands.

We must treasure the natural world – not trash it!

We are calling time on the trashing of our natural world – the world on which everything, depends. Our economy, our lives, our future depend on society, which in turn depends on the Earth and its resources.

That puts a huge weight, a huge responsibility on our shoulders – a responsibility we have to meet in the next few years. We know now the damage we are doing to the Earth, as we didn’t know in the past. We have to be up to the task.

The whole ideology of Thatcher and her successors, be it Blair, Brown or Cameron, has failed. Change has to come. The market is short-sighted and short-term. It is blind. It is senseless. It works for the 1%, it fails the rest of us. All in it together? I don’t think so.

The current model of economics and society has served only those with power and wealth. In austerity Britain, the super rich grabs more than anywhere else in Europe. We must be first and foremost citizens, paying fairly to common funds to look after the poor, the weak, the old and the sick. 

Everybody contributes what they can and everybody benefits from that. This is what the politics of the future will look like, what the Green Party will deliver. The old politics, the failed politics of letting the market rule has to end.

Save our NHS! Save our social care!

There’s nowhere that’s more obvious than in our NHS. The insidious but rapid infiltration of the profit motive into our health service, the dreadful, senseless PFI schemes that have deliver despair and threaten bankruptcy, must be reversed.

The market costs us big time. In 2010 the Health Select Committee reckoned it consumed 9% of total NHS costs – well over £10bn a year. As Caroline has already said – we will repeal the Health and Social Care Act, which is damaging and threatening the health service.

And we will go further – we will replace it with an NHS Reinstatement Bill that removes the market mechanism from our NHS. But of course there is another side to care. Free healthcare is the very cornerstone of our NHS. Whether you are rich or poor you have the right to the best that is available.

That’s something the Green Party will restore – and extend. For that same principle should apply to social care – the support and services that you need to lead a fulfilling life should be available when you need it, free at the point of use. 

We believe that to be a decent, humane, caring society, social care must be free. We believe those who have the most should contribute to help pay for social care. We need a range of new taxes aimed at making Britain a more equal society.

We would introduce a new wealth tax, rigorously clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion and introduce a financial transaction tax – a Robin Hood Tax, and we are not ashamed to say that those on incomes above £100,000 should pay more income tax.

Providing Free Social Care for the Over 65’s means security and freedom from fear, suffering and loneliness for many, and it means 200,000 new jobs and training places. 

We will consult experts, users, and care workers on its exact design – but our manifesto will include this as a core pledge: social care is not a privilege, it is a right! 

Register to vote – now!

We know that the younger generation – many of whom are supporting the Green Party – have it tough. But we acknowledge, we stress, that isn’t the fault of their elders. 

In a Britain of solidarity, in a Britain of community, in a Britain of care, we all need to look out for each other. Of course – and I cannot stress this enough – we can only do this if you, the people of the UK have your say on May the 7th.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of each and every person who can vote registering to do so and making their voice heard. The deadline is April 20th, but please don’t wait – register today. Only then can you deliver the politics of the future, help us deliver for the Common Good.

There are people who want to see business-as-usual politics continue. People who are happy with politicians who learnt nothing from the global economic crash. People who’ve quietly forgotten the scandal of MPs expenses. Who are resigned to the failed austerity experiment, to low wages and to the swift demise of public services.

Those people will probably vote for the parties of yesterday. To counteract them, you need to use your vote. At this election, if we all vote Green, we can change Britain. Together we can create the society we all deserve a society that cares, a society that works for all of us. 

Vote for the party that cares. Vote for the common good. Vote for the politics of the future. Vote Green.   

 

 

Natalie Bennett is the leader of the Green Party of England & Wales.

This speech was delivered to the Green Party’s spring conference on Friday 6th March 2015. See original here.

 

 

 




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Join Global Divestment Day and make fossil fuels history! Updated for 2026

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Today marks the beginning of Global Divestment Day – a worldwide event marking the growing demands for individuals and institutions – churches, foundations, pension funds and others – to take their investments out of dirty energy.

The campaign has gained astonishing momentum and is seriously rattling the fossil fuel industry, and those invested in it. How do I know that? Because the industry is fighting back – however ineptly.

This week the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) published a new report in which they claimed that over the past 50 years, portfolios that included fossil fuels investments would have yielded more than those which would have removed fossil fuels from their investments.

After seeing fossil fuel share prices battered by the combination of low oil and gas prices, and the increasingly successful divestment campaign, it’s a desperate attempt to restore investor confidence – and one that’s doomed to failure.

Authored by Daniel R Fischel, a retired Chicago Law School professor, the report compares the 50-year performance of investment portfolios with and without fossil energy stocks. He concludes that the costs of divestment are “clearly substantial” and threaten to have “real financial impacts on the returns generated by endowment funds.” In the case of US universities alone, he writes, it could cost them $3.2 billion a year.

In fact, Professor Fischel was clearly cherry-picking information to reach a predetermined conclusion – as dictated by his fossil fuel industry funders.

As history tells us, the future is unlike the past

Moreover smart investors are not basing their investment decisions on performance over the last half century – any more than 1950s investors in railway locomotion were betting on the steam engine, just because it had made handsome profits for the last 200 years.

They are interested in what will happen in the future, because that’s what will determine their gains or losses. And right now they are taking increasing note, and acting upon, the innumerable indications that we are approaching the end of the fossil fuel era.

I must also emphasize our main message since the very start of the divestment campaign (it looks like the fossil fuel industry missed it): it’s not just about profits! It’s about climate change and making investment choices that will not destroy our planet for generations present and future.

Regardless of the so-called ‘facts’, this report exposes the fossil fuel industry’s colors. Its underlying message is that the industry does not want to change, despite the ever increasing weight of solid scientific evidence telling us that we must change. For them it’s about continuing with business as usual.

They want to continue to extract ever increasing volumes of fossil fuels, as they have over the last 50 years, no matter how it is going to affect humanity. And so they continue to block every attempt to introduce policies and regulations that will force them to alter the course of the next 50 years.

Their desire is simple: to continue amass profits and wealth, even as the fundamental processes that run our planet are disrupted by rising temperatures, and the poorest and most vulnerable people are hit by climate chaos.

So the IPAA report – and the recently released fossil fuel promo below – are a wake-up call for those who choose engagement with the fossil fuel industry. It is fighting change as hard as it can, making divestment the only viable option to bring about the urgent changes we need to avert climate chaos.

Divestment is ‘in’

Over the last few months, hardly a week could go by without new announcements of divestment commitments. Most recently, the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth, the largest single fund in the world, announced it was divesting from a total of 22 companies, potentially totaling billions of dollars in assets.

Similar announcements came from Bristol council in the United Kingdom and the city of Christchurch in New Zealand. All these announcements came in less than two weeks, testimony to the exponential growth of the divestment movement, and another blow to the reputation of the fossil fuel industry.

This is why communities across the globe are coming together this weekend for Global Divestment Day – a global party with 380 events taking place in 58 countries across 6 continents. From South Africa to USA, Bangladesh to Berlin, people are showing their commitment to taking on the fossil fuel industry.

This day marks an escalation and an expansion for the divestment movement, thousands of people from all over the world joining a growing movement.

The notion that we are approaching the end of the fossil fuel era is becoming more and more mainstream. Even banks are acknowledging the fact that if the world takes its climate change commitments seriously, then the dynamics of oil will be altered beyond recognition.

Coal, oil and gas will become constrained by the level of demand allowed under CO2 emission limits and this will have implications for the behavior of countries, companies and consumers alike. Perhaps last year’s falling prices were the first rumblings of this profound change.

Meanwhile renewable energy sources, solar in particular, are becoming ever cheaper, and have even reached the long sought-after ‘grid parity’ in sunny parts of the world. Even The Economist, which no one suspects of being left leaning, is telling us that the “fall in oil prices provides a once in a generation opportunity to fix bad energy policies.”

But the fossil fuel industry isn’t giving up. This very morning the World Coal Association has chosen to launch its call for more investment in so-called ‘clean coal’, insisting: “Greater investment is needed in cleaner coal technologies to meet global energy demand, alleviate energy poverty and minimise CO2 emissions.” Which sounds like putting a fire out by adding more fuel.

A call to action!

In the Pope’s recent visit to the Philippines, local Catholic institutions provided His Holiness with a letter that said:

“Investing in fossil fuel companies and in eco-destructive projects is synonymous in supporting the destruction of our future. Divestment provides the means to change this status quo – to shift towards a system that will prioritize the welfare of the people and of nature over the relentless pursuit of profit.”

For those who live in the Philippines and feel the horrendous impact of climate change, divestment is not about profits and losses from investments – its about their ability to survive.

Divestment and action on climate change is our era’s moral call. It’s about our existence on the face of this planet and therefore we invite everyone to join this growing movement during Global Divestment Day to defend our future.

Join thousands of people across the planet for Global Divestment Day. Together, lets tell our institutions to dump their investments in dirty energies!

 

 

More information on Global Divertment Day and events near you.

Yossi Cadan is Global Divestment Senior Campaigner with 350.org in Toronto, Canada.

 

 




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Join us on Saturday to demand Roads Fit For Humans! Updated for 2026

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A truly unique and dignified protest event will take place this Saturday on Oxford Street – The National Funeral for the Unknown Victim of Traffic Violence.

November marks the first anniversary of last year’s awful spate of six barbaric cyclist killings in London. These deaths led to a massive peaceful ‘Die-In’ protest organised by a new spontaneously formed grassroots pressure group called Stop Killing Cyclists, outside Transport for London’s HQ.

The event was broadcast all over the world. Despite this, Boris Johnson, local councils and the government have failed to make any meaningful investment in Britain’s cycling or pedestrian safety since then.

The UK spends a pathetic £2 per person on cycling safety, compared to the £28 spent per annum per person by the Dutch government.

A funeral procession for the 26,000 dead on our roads in 10 years

Stop Killing Cyclists is marking the anniversary by taking the protests to a national level, by taking a coffin mounted on a horse-drawn hearse, in a funeral procession from Bedford Square down Oxford Street to Marble Arch. (Full details below)

There, the coffin will be placed on a catafalque and the protesters will then lie down on the ground surrounding it, to represent the millions of UK pedestrians, cyclists and motorists who have been violently killed, maimed or poisoned over the last 10 years by our lethal motorised traffic culture.

This will be followed by a rally, where victims, doctors and grass-root safety campaigners will address the crowd. A coalition of pedestrian, environmental and cycling safety groups is endorsing the event.

While over 26,000 cyclists, pedestrians and motorists have been killed in UK traffic collisions over the last decade, the real death toll from our motorised traffic culture is far higher.

Transport CO2 emissions are also killing people, by their contribution to the 4 million people, as the UN estimates, that have died over the last decade due to climate change.

A litany of health damage and premature death

The NHS estimates that 50,000 people were killed by traffic pollution alone and Professor Garthwaite, from University of London, calculates that up to 400,000 may have died through physical inactivity due to lack of cycling infrastructure.

Hundreds of thousands more people across the UK are living with disabilities, lung and heart diseases caused by traffic pollution.

And finally, there is a national obesity epidemic with over 25% of adults clinically obese and 30% of children overweight or clinically obese, as millions are afraid to cycle to work or school due to the lack of cycling infrastructure.

This litany is clearly intolerable in a civilised country. There is hardly a family that the toll of death and disease from our motorised transport culture has not touched.

A report in the Lancet estimated that 4,500 lives could be saved in London alone every year if we moved to a pro-walking and cycling culture like they have in Holland. Extrapolated across the 60% of the UK that is urbanised, this would result in about 21,000 lives saved every year!

Another 60,000 people in London would be saved every year from living with disabilities. Breast cancer, heart diseases, depression and even dementia would be radically reduced.

Making roads safer for people to cycle or walk also has major equality implications. Over 50% of poorer households, 65% of pensioners and 40% of working single people do not have a car.

Whilst car-running costs have come down, public transport costs have consistently risen higher than inflation for the last decade, forcing more working people into transport poverty. Cycling and walking can help people escape such poverty, as well as increasing health and longevity.

Our demands are reasonable

The National Funeral & Die-In protest’s full 10 demands are:

  1. Stop the killing of children – set up national, multi-billion pound programme to convert residential communities across Britain into living-street Home Zones to abolish dangerous rat-runs.
  2. Stop the killing of pedestrians – establish a national programme to fund pedestrianisation of our city and town centres, including the nation’s high-street, Oxford Street.
  3. Stop the killing of pensioners from excessive speed – introduce and enforce speed limit of 20 mph on all urban roads, 40 mph on rural roads/lanes and 60 mph on all other trunk roads.
  4. Stop the killing of cyclists – invest £15 billion in a National Segregated Cycle Network over the next 5 years.
  5. Stop the killing by HGVs – ban trucks with blind spots by making safety equipment mandatory and strictly enforce current truck-safety regulations, to reduce levels of illegally dangerous trucks down from estimated 30% to less than 1%.
  6. Stop the killing without liability – introduce a presumed civil liability law on behalf of vehicular traffic when they kill or seriously injure vulnerable road-users, where there is no evidence blaming the victim.
  7. Stop the killing from lung, heart and other diseases caused by vehicular pollutants – make it mandatory for particulate filters that meet latest EU emission standards to be fitted to all existing buses, lorries and taxis.
  8. Stop the killing at junctions – introduce pedestrian crossing times long enough for elderly disabled to cross. Legalise filtered junction crossings by cyclists with strict legal priority for pedestrians and carry out urgent programme of physically protected left-hand turns for cyclists.
  9. Stop the Killing from Climate Crisis caused by CO2 emissions – all transport fuels to be from environmentally-sustainable, renewable sources within 10 years.
  10. Focus on Life! Transport governance must make safety and quality of life the top priority. Reform all council transport departments, the Department of Transport and Transport for London into Cycling, Walking and Transport Departments with formal pedestrian and cyclist representation.


The National Funeral of the Unknown Victim of Traffic Violence is a clarion call to people across the UK to unite to bring this carnage and environmental destruction to an urgent end. It is being organised by grassroots activists and so is dependent on grassroots support.

Please help spread the word about Saturday’s protest and help make our roads fit for humans once again.

 

 

Action:

  • Please sign up on the Facebook event page to let organisers know how many people are coming.
  • If readers are members of any environmental, road safety, community groups, trade-unions, student-unions, pensioner groups etc, please ask them to email their members about the protest.

Event:

  • Gather at Bedford Square London WC1 from 12.00 noon on Saturday 15th November. WE will set off at 1pm, proceeding west along Oxford Street to Marble Arch.
  • Full details on the website: www.stopthekilling.org.

Safer Oxford Street Campaign: saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.co.uk/

Donnachadh McCarthy is a Co-founder of Stop Killing Cyclists and Co-organiser for Stop The Killing. He is a freelance eco-consultant and journalist and long-time campaigner on a range of eco-issues. His latest book is The Prostitute State.

 

 

 




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Greens join Swedish government with radical environmental agenda Updated for 2026

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Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven heralded a return for the green and progressive values for which Sweden is internationally known as he welcomed the Green party into government for the first time last Friday.

Feminism, environmental responsibility and social security were all at the forefront of the government program in the unveiling of a new Social Democrat / Green coalition after eight years of centre-right rule.

As Löfven strolled to meet the press he was flanked by two smiling faces – Green Party co-spokespeople Åsa Romson (the new Minister for Climate and Environment and Vice Prime Minister) and Gustav Fridolin (Minister for Education).

Government posts are also going to Mehmet Kaplan (Minister for Housing and Urban Development and IT), Per Bolund (Minister for the Financial Market and Consumer Affairs), Alice Bah Kuhnke (Minister for Culture and Democracy) and Isabella Lövin (Minister for Development Assistance).

The new government has vowed to make Sweden a global leader again in tackling environmental degradation and inequality.

With 25 seats in the Riksdag (parliament) and three ministries, as well as important portfolios in the finance and business departments, the coalition marks a milepost on a long journey for Green politics in Sweden.

Rising from the ashes of the 1980s anti-nuclear movement, the Greens have spent the last decade readying themselves for government, and now find themselves a powerful voice in Scandinavia’s largest country as junior partners to Löfven’s Social Democrats.

Putting Green politics on the map

From his office window on Stockholm’s South Island, Green Party chairman Anders Wallner can see the Swedish parliament across the weir where the freshwater of Sweden’s inland lakes meets the Baltic Sea.

Wallner himself is typical of the new face of Green politics in Sweden. Like co-convenor Fridolin he is in his early 30s and has attempted to profile the party as a young and dynamic alternative to the older, more dogmatic politics of the Social Democrats and Left Party.

Unfortunately for Wallner and his colleagues, the left bloc failed to command the full majority it had expected from some opinion polls. The Greens even saw their vote fractionally decrease, by 0.45% to 6.89% – but still enough for them to retain their entire 25-seat bloc in Parliament.

And despite failing to match the record 15% achieved by the Greens in the European elections, Wallner is positive about the movement’s direction.

“If you had to choose between 7.3% as an opposition party or 6.9% in government”, he says, the choice is clear. “You can see we now have a chance to introduce more of a Green angle to government and then hopefully grow in light of what we will be able to show has changed.”

Hard fought gains

The coalition agreement took almost two weeks to hammer out, but it contains several key concessions to Green policy, points out Wallner. The holy grail of accelerated nuclear decommissioning is now within reach, as is a change of tack in other key areas of green policy.

“If you look at that declaration it is pretty clear this is a government that will put the climate first. We will introduce a framework that means the current government and its successors have to implement measures at the rate required to bring emissions down.

“We have also opened up the discussion toward big investments in rail and public transport, completely renewable energy and more funding for biodiversity.”

Åsa Romson the new Green Environment Minister, has plenty on her plate – including a lot of environmental ground to be made up following eight bleak years.

Under former Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s liberal-conservative coalition, in charge from 2006 until last week, 14 of an ambitious 16 environmental goals for 2020 were timetabled to fail according to the country’s own environmental protection agency.

Sweden also suffers from being one of Europe’s most consumer driven societies. A recent ranking by the WWF placed Sweden just behind the US and Gulf states in terms of its global environmental impact.

The nation’s wealth has created an insatiable appetite for consumer goods, meat and long distance travel. Less affected by the global economic downturn than the Eurozone or the UK, it has carried on spending in the globalised marketplace.

Its middle class regularly winter in Thailand, and central Stockholm is filled with large jeeps and estate cars belonging it wealthy suburban commuters.

Struggling with self-image

Across the city, in the middle of a busy shopping centre, stands former Green leader Maria Wetterstrand. What might not seem fertile territory for Green politics in other countries is illustrative of Sweden’s particular brand of mainstream environmentalism.

Wired up with a radio miccrophone, Wetterstrand and fellow Green Gabriel Liljenström talk at the shoppers diving in and out of chain stores and sipping coffees at American style mall cafes. They are there to sell a book, but also to sell Green politics.

“The environment is quite mainstream in Sweden”, says Liljenström. “All the parties try and profile themselves as green. In that sense we have achieved a breakthrough for the environment, and the environment is a big issue for Swedes.

“It always features in the top three concerns in polls, but then Swedes have an outdated picture of themselves. We were among the most progressive countries in the world in the nineties, but today we’re on the climate blacklist. Sometimes if you criticise our environmental record people think you are trying to talk the country down.”

Retaking the initiative

Despite being small in population terms, Sweden has always been a big hitter in environmental circles. The 1972 United Nations conference on the human environment, held in Stockholm, was a turning point in mobilizing politicians globally and at home.

With its seemingly endless forests and pristine lake systems the country is also a paradise for people wishing to escape the big cities. Yet thirty years on, the impacts of environmental degradation are still clearly visible in Sweden, from the bare hillsides of industrial forestry to increasing urban sprawl.

Neither is it safe from the impacts of climate change: last summer a forest fire tore through the region of Västmanland west of Stockholm, forcing people from their homes. The outgoing government was generally perceived to have responded badly, and an inquiry was launched to improve readiness for natural disasters.

The new government has also for the first time appointed a Minister for the Future, tasked with developing long term understanding of Sweden’s economic, environmental and social challenges.

There is another challenge lurking in the forests beyond the cities too. In the recent elections the far-right Sweden Democrats, whose policies include ‘balance’ in the science of climate change and increasing reliance on nuclear energy, cemented their support in large parts of rural Sweden.

They are one of the reasons the Greens and Social Democrats lack a full majority, and getting ambitious changes to the green agenda through parliament will be difficult.

“If you look at the negotiations between the Greens and Social Democrats they have gone pretty well … the danger is that we don’t then achieve the consensus to implement that policy”, says Liljeström, who was partly responsible for running the recent election campaign.

Breaking the deadlock

However there are things that can be done without parliament. The Greens were successful in pushing MEP Isabella Lövin, known in Brussels for her work in fishing reform, as aid minister in the Swedish Foreign Office.

And with Social Democrat former EU environment commissioner Margot Wallström as Foreign Minister, major foreign policy changes are on the way.

Under the last Government, Sweden moved radically to the right, as set out in a thundering article on CounterPunch by Jan Oberg: ‘Sweden, No Longer a Force for Good?‘, which alleged:

“There is no closer ally than US / NATO. It has stopped developing policies of its own and basically positions itself in the EU and NATO framework. It no longer produces important new thinking – the last was Olof Palme’s Commission on Common Security (1982).

“It has no disarmament ambassador and does not consider the UN important; it does not have a single Swede among the UN Blue Helmets. None of its top-level politicians make themselves available as mediators in international conflicts. Nuclear abolition is far down the agenda, problematic as a NATO-aspiring country.”

Now Sweden’s foreign policy is expected to take on an explicitly ethical outlook, according to Sofia Tuvestad of the Swedish peace and equality lobbying group IKFF:

“We’ve already seen some positive signs from the Foreign Office. Wallström has come out and declared that Sweden’s foreign policy will be more feminist, with nuclear disarmament at the centre of what they are trying to do.”

Another indicator of changes to come is that Mehmet Kaplan, City Planning and Environment Minister, was on board the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara in 2010 as it sought to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

And in 2003 Education Minister Gustav Fridolin was arrested by Israeli security forces in the Palestinian West Bank as he protested with against the ‘apartheid wall’ alongside the International Solidarity Movement.

Can Sweden transition to genuine sustainability?

The big question of whether Sweden can transition to sustainability will, for the time being, remain unanswered according to Jonas Hinnfors, Professor of Political Science at Gothenburg university and a close watcher of the Swedish Social Democrats.

“I think it will be hard for the Greens to make any impact at all in terms of getting away from the growth economy. It will be in the details that they will no doubt be able to make a difference, and that means they can use it as a symbolic marker that the party is on the way to changing people’s views on growth.”

If the Swedish model is to be made sustainable enough to last, it means voters being prepared to abandon some of the consumer prosperity they have grown used to in order to make it work.

Even if the Greens can put Sweden at the forefront of global environmentalism once again, the country is not out of the woods yet.

 


Dominic Hinde is a freelance journalist specialising in the Nordic countries. He has written a PhD on contemporary environmental politics in Sweden and also works as a translator of literary and journalistic texts. He tweets at @dominicmhinde.

 

 




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