[A-List] UK state: political realignment

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Greens hope to gain from Iraqi split

Labour members' disillusionment at threat of war raises small party's hopes
for a realignment of the left

Anne Perkins, political correspondent
Friday January 17, 2003
The Guardian

The threat of war in Iraq could lead to a realignment of the left in British
politics, a leading member the Green party predicts.

Voting reform for the European elections, and in Scotland, Wales and London,
has given the party a toe-hold on power. Now Greens are beginning to hope
that they could be on the verge of a political breakthrough again.

"Iraq is making a lot of people rethink their positions," says Jean Lambert,
one of the two British Green MEPs. "We are meeting a lot of Labour people
who find it very hard to accept the government's position. We have to take
advantage of the political vacuum."

As well as two Green MEPs, the party has a member in the Scottish
parliament, and three members on the Greater London assembly. The party has
only just over 5,000 members, but it says numbers swelled by 25% in the
election year of 2001 and a further 10% last year.

"About 30% of our new members are coming from Labour," says one national
executive member, Spencer FitzGibbon. "We've always said that once people
realised New Labour were in fact the new Conservatives, they would see how
much more they had in common with us than with them."

As trade unions cut back on donations to Labour, Greens are beginning to
dream that the campaign against war in Iraq might provide the platform they
need to make a national impact and that the trade unions might h elp to fund
it. At last autumn's conference, the RMT leader Bob Crowe was hailed as a
hero.

But even in anticipation, the burden of power is exposing a traditional
fault line in the party, between fundamentalists and realists. One realist,
Jean Lambert, is convinced that if the Greens are to be taken seriously,
they must be serious about being in power.

"We don't have a choice on this," she says. "If you stand for election, you
are saying you want to be in there. There are always problems with power
sharing. We have to make the shift into a party of proposition, not just of
opposition."

Yet her fellow MEP, Caroline Lucas, is not so sure. "On a personal level, I
have misgivings about power sharing until we have a stronger base," she
said.

"If you join a government when you only have 5% or 6% of the vote, your
leverage is not as significant as you would like, and you get associated
with decisions you don't agree with but you don't have the power to change."

Two years' experience working with Ken Livingstone has made Darren Johnson,
the Greens' candidate for next year's London mayoral race, even more
sceptical. "There is a danger that too many elected Greens, rather than
working to build up public support for their radical policies, have been
spending their time sitting in cabinet meetings negotiating those policies
away," he told the party's autumn conference.

"We must be aware that the Green vote has not increased in one single
country as a result of participating in government coalitions." Mr Johnson
favours the New Zealand option of supporting sympathetic governments from
the outside.

Asking voters for their support while denying that they want to be in power
is at the least a contradictory message, one with uncomfortable echoes of
the self-destructive acrimony which distinguishes Green politics from the
more conventional parties across Europe.

After winning 15% of the vote in the 1989 Euro elections, British Greens
reacted to their brush with success by retreating into a chaotic
fundamentalism.

Now the party's organisation has been streamlined - although they still have
a 10-member leadership and two figureheads, which could be considered
perhaps top heavy for a party of 5,000 members.

In London, the Greens will also have to share blame or credit for congestion
charging.

Their defence is ready. They argue that they wanted the policy, but it may
not have been correctly implemented, and it certainly has not been sold
energetically.

Mr Johnson is ready to go further. "I think we will need to look at
extending the area covered and bumping up the cost."

But he may yet find campaigning for the congestion charge makes arguments
about power sharing irrelevant.

Policy checklist

· A sustainable society that guarantees the long-term future of the planet -
"we threaten our future if we try to live beyond those means"

· Everyone entitled to basic material security as of right

· Voluntary co-operation between empowered individuals in a democratic
society, free from discrimination

· Non-violent solutions to conflict, that take into account the interests of
minorities and future generations in order to achieve lasting settlements

· Campaigns that recognise electoral politics is not the only way to achieve
change

· Quality services - publicly funded, publicly accountable, and publicly
owned

· Recycling to ensure a "zero-waste Britain" by 2020

· Taxes to make airlines pay their environmental cost