We’ve seen this tendency in spades during the Brexit debate. A remarkable number of Leavers have kept to their faith that Brexit is a simple cure all and continue to attack everyone who points out the enormity of the genuine problems that will arise as if they were the spawn of the devil. A tendency has also developed amongst Remainers to lose the nuance - instead of insisting on clearly stating the things that are wrong with the EU or engaging in the vital debate about what kind of policies we should be implementing if we do actually leave.
You can also see the same tendency towards purist belief within the Green movement. At the recent hustings for the leadership of the Green Party I asked the candidates whether there was one Party policy they were uncomfortable with. I wanted to find out whether they were honest enough to openly admit that no intelligent person ever agrees with every jot and comma of the Party line.
Jonathan Bartley passed the test by saying that he had found it hard at the last election to explain how we funded the citizens’ income policy and that, whilst he still continued to believe in the policy, we needed to do more work on the costings. He was then subjected to a childish attack by one of the other candidates who pronounced that he would have no difficulty in telling him how to fund it and he should be ashamed of himself for questioning the party line.
The truth is that this is not a simple policy to fund or to implement and that it takes a lot of explaining to many people in the electorate. For those of us who are in the Green Party because we think there is a major environmental crisis that needs tackling urgently it is not necessarily easily evident why we have to be wedded to that policy.
Making people a flat payment for being a citizen is an interesting idea that might produce some benefits for society. It is not an essential plank of policy that cannot be questioned or debated without drawing accusations of betrayal.
Personally, I have always disagreed with the policy as any kind of immediate practical objective. My problems with it are that no one has yet answered to my satisfaction certain fundamental questions. The most basic of these is why should we make an equal payment to every citizen when every citizen’s needs are different? I don’t want the state to pay £70 a week to Mr Rees Mogg. He doesn’t need it. Nor do I think it is adequate for the state to pay £70 a week to a single mother with 3 kids who lives in London and needs to pay rent.
Many of us have spent a lot of energy campaigning against Universal Credits and the pain it has caused to try and combine several existing benefits and “simplify” the benefits system. It has been an utter shambles and caused a lot of people a lot of anxiety not just because it was too meanly funded and too unpleasantly implemented. There were also huge numbers of unforeseen anomalies caused by the attempt at simplification. They resulted in people who were seriously poor losing out on significant amounts of income that they needed because of something particular about their circumstances that hadn’t been foreseen. I happen to believe that any Citizens’ Income system is highly likely to cause similar problems. It is too simplistic and not sufficiently targeted. I know that means testing comes with huge problems but I continue to prefer to target available funds at those in greatest need. Does that make me a bad person? Does that make me incapable of representing the Green Party in elections?
Leninists believe in one firm party line that those best equipped to interpret the Marxist truth should hold to or face discipline. Open minded people from more humane political parties ought to operate differently and accept reasonable diversity of opinion. There can be some dramatic gaps between the beliefs of those of us who have a strong interest in politics and people who don’t share what might insultingly be described as our hobby. It is unwise to ignore those gaps or to ignore the practicalities of what can immediately be achieved in pursuit of an ambition to have the bravest and most purist position on an issue regardless of what can practically be achieved in the near future.
To give another example I have had a recent set of twitter exchanges over the use of pesticides. Personally, I have not used any for over 30 years and am completely persuaded of the importance of adopting organic farming practices as widely and as rapidly as possible. I’ve also lost an awful lot of crops to pests and diseases despite my best efforts. So I put out a tweet arguing that it is hard to produce enough food without using any chemicals anywhere in the country but arguing that we needed to drastically reduce our use of pesticides as soon as possible. I was immediately attacked for claiming to be Green whilst justifying the use of chemical pesticides.
My position is that we need to change the behaviour of as many farmers as possible as quickly as possible. The snails pace at which we have moved over to organic farming in the last decade is simply not an adequate response to the scale of the problems that are building up. We’ve lost insects and birds, damaged soil quality, and become dependent on using tons of chemicals that pests and diseases have rapidly developed resistance to. We can’t wait on change.
The challenge we face is not, however, how to write a better party conference resolution that makes us even more committed to the organic solution. The challenge is to get farmers to work with us and actually do things differently. I believe it simply isn’t possible to get every farm in the UK to move over to organic methods of production overnight. I think our policies need to be focused on subsidies, research, training and support to enable change to happen quickly. It is better if a chemical-soaked farm cuts down on its usage and adopts what is called integrated pest management than if that farm sticks with the status quo. I want us to work with the farming community to win their support for a rapid change in approach. I think it is a poor look out if a Green Party isn’t seen by farmers as a natural ally that is fighting to help them maintain high standards on their farms, get good prices for their food and make changes that they believe they are capable of implementing whilst remaining in business.
I know that many environmentalists will see this as a weak and backsliding position. I happen to think that the problems are so urgent that we don’t have the luxury of waiting until we are powerful enough to force every farmer to go organic immediately. I also think that is a counter productive approach and we can achieve change more quickly by working with farmers and incentivising improvement rather than waiting for total revolution.
There are people in the environmental movement who entirely disagree with that point of view. But do I become a bad person who needs to be cast beyond the pale for holding to it? Diversity of views is important. Focusing on practicalities is important. We have to find a way of moving the Green Party on from being an organisation which has the most radical, interesting and future orientated policies of any party in Britain. We need it to become the party that voters can trust to implement those radical policies in the most practical way that makes progress and helps them improve their daily lives. Until we can achieve that we’ll always be a party with a big heart and some very interesting ideas but we may not be a party with a big vote that is implementing some very valuable changes. That is what we need to become.