We are, nevertheless, entitled to look back over the record and ask which parties and which politicians have got the big decisions right in recent decades and question whether the ones that got those major choices wrong can be trusted to do any better next time round. For most political commentators the big historical issues have always tended to be war and peace and the economy. I would add to that personal political issues because I believe that gender and sexuality freedoms are fundamental to the way people live their lives. I also believe that there is one other issue that has become so significant that it can no longer be ignored by any competent public representative. That is the damage we are doing to the environment and the extent of the technological change we need to organise if we and other creatures are to survive the consequences.
So let’s ask the question of how the political parties in the UK have done on the big issues over recent decades. When it comes to war and peace New Labour and the Conservatives failed badly. Both supported a war in Iraq that has proved a total disaster. Hundreds of British people have died because of the chaos it set off. Hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and the surrounding areas have died. Islamic militancy was given a huge shot in the arm. We’ve also strengthened Islamic militants in Afghanistan and in Libya. The only party in England that opposed every one of those wars at the time was the Green party and the Lib Dems deserve a considerable degree of credit for opposing the Iraq war. Labour under Corbyn has shown clear evidence of having learned the lessons. The Conservatives are still blindly following the same counterproductive policies.
When it comes to the economy the dominant event of the past decades has been the financial crash of 2007-8 and the ways it was handled. Labour under Gordon Brown presided over the financial bubble. Brown told us he had put an end to boom and bust. In reality he only put an end to the boom bit and he presided over the biggest ever bust. The Conservatives did worse. They introduced the de-regulation of the city that fuelled the chaotic scramble to invest in worthless financial products. Then, when they formed the post-crash government, they told people like teachers and nurses who had nothing to do with causing the problem that they must tighten their belts and go through ten years of austerity. By contrast those financiers who really did cause the problem were rewarded with £400 billion of free money that was pumped into rescuing the financial system. Ten years on the Conservative governments have failed to introduce any effective controls that might prevent a damaging repetition of the financial crash. The Lib Dems leader Vince Cable did quite well in spotting the emergence of the crash before it happened. He did extraordinarily badly in quietly backing the imposition of austerity on the wrong people and the failure to invest in the changes that were needed. The Greens opposed austerity politics from the start and were asking for increased investment in science and technology instead.
The other economic issue for the UK has been Brexit. The Conservative government opposed it ineptly before the referendum and then championed it ineptly afterwards. Labour campaigned weakly against it and Jeremy Corbyn has repeatedly told us he can deliver a job’s first Brexit since without ever bothering to plausibly explain how this could be achieved. The Lib Dem’s line has been very consistent. They have offered virtually uncritical support for the EU. The only party in England that has consistently said that it wants to stay in the EU but radically reform it is the Green Party.
Then there is the issue of gender politics. Many in Labour started out arguing that women’s rights were a secondary issue to workers rights and many were slow to promote gay rights legislation. They did, however, pass some important pieces of legislation such as the equal rights act. Many in the Conservative Party started out believing that every gay person was a child molester. In their heart of hearts quite a few of them still do. I am old enough to have taught alongside gay colleagues who would have been sacked in the 1980s if they had told their employer openly about their sexuality, because Conservatives made it illegal for a teacher to be gay. Both major parties have tried to do better in recent times and the Lib Dems tended to do rather better at the time. Only the Greens consistently championed women’s rights, gay rights and trans rights and the Greens still have much stronger policies about equality than any other party in England.
So if the Greens have been the political party that has been right most often in the past on the major issues how come they are not doing a lot better in the polls? I think there are two reasons for this. One is the comforting thought that a lot more people like Green policies and admire our stance on issues than vote for us. A first past the post voting system doesn’t exactly help small parties. The second reason is a lot more concerning. It is no good being right on the big issues if we worry people that we are rather flaky on a whole range of small ones. Most people aren’t obsessed by politics. The vast majority have never heard of things like Citizen’s income and are badly put off if they think they are voting for a party with a policy that sounds impractical. On some issues we get that reaction because our policies are necessarily brave and honest. I believe controlling crime and drugs via carefully organised legalisation instead of chaotically funding of gangs and violent crime is a policy that is too brave for most voters but worth fighting for because it would do so much good. On other issues I worry that Greens sometimes seem to be searching out the most radical policies they can find without thinking about whether we have the faintest chance of implementing them or what the impact is on our voting figures. It is hard trying to persuade people on zero hours contracts that we can bring in a four day week. I understand the desire to try and wrestle with the possible future problem of robots replacing work. I don’t happen to think it will happen anytime soon and am convinced it unnecessarily loses us a lot of votes.
Small unessential policies like this seem to me to be putting people off and keeping the Green Party in a small minority. That is a dangerous luxury at a time when the urgency of the biggest problem we have been consistently right about is now seriously upon us. Climate change isn’t just a possible future threat. Erratic weather is happening more often sooner than almost anyone predicted and having a real impact on people’s lives. The arctic ice is at thousand-year lows and that changes the circulation of air and of ocean currents across the northern hemisphere, creating more floods, more droughts, and more high winds. As I write we have frighteningly extreme heat in California, Japan, Sweden, Siberia, and the UK all at the same time. Plastic particles have penetrated every corner of the planet and almost every part of our oceans has been damaged by over fishing, coral bleaching or pollution. Species are being lost every day as we strip away forests and brutalise the environment.
These are circumstances that ought to be ringing alarm bells locally, regionally, nationally and globally. They are issues that ought to be at the top of everyone’s political agenda because if we continue to mess up we will struggle to survive as a species and so will a lot of our fellow species. Focusing on these issues cannot be presented to voters just as a nice little add on that we can think about after the grown ups have finished discussing Brexit, the latest terrorist threat or the economy. We need to get across to voters that the world economy has to look very different and that it is in the UK’s interest to be the first country to be good at organising an entire economy on the basis of the technology that has to be adopted if we are to survive and prosper.
It is horrible to look at the chaos in Iraq and not much comfort to be able to say we told you so at the time. It is frustrating to have lived through ten years of the wrong people tightening the wrong belts in order to help out the bankers and again not much comfort to be able to say that it could have all been so different. It would, however, be even worse to watch Green political voices being side lined whilst a major environmental disaster accumulated across the planet because we allowed ourselves to be dismissed as being unrealistic and irresponsible. We are, in fact, the only realists and the only truly responsible party. We need to focus our campaigning energies more sharply and be a lot better at selecting the policies we choose to promote if we are to avoid being marginalised.