Posts Tagged ‘Greens’

The Corbynite rump is now decamped to the Greens. Good riddance

11/09/2023, 11:16:24 PM

by Rob Marchant

It was always going to happen that – as former MP and party stalwart Tom Blenkinsop would likely have it – the entryists would ultimately exit, once they could see the battle for the soul of the Labour party had been lost.

The only question was to where. Would it be the SWP? The Lib Dems? The perhaps ironically-titled “Peace and Justice Project” of the man himself, a man who has famously apologised for numerous dictators and terrorists over his long career?

As a result of some admittedly anecdotal and yet still quite convincing evidence, we can now see.

Last Wednesday my admittedly flippant tweet, the gist of which was that a vote for the Greens was ultimately a gift to the Tories, triggered a deluge of responses from hundreds of piqued keyboard warriors over the next forty-eight hours.


As you can see in the comments, a few were polite; most were not; a few quite unpleasant and a small, unhinged minority – using anonymous or fake names, of course – had clearly been trawling through my historic Twitter feed, trying to dig up dirt, and then accusing me of various misdemeanours ranging from bigotry to much worse.

I had seen this pattern before, of course, but not for some time – my path had not crossed with the Corbynite Twittersphere in recent months. Of course: Labour’s generous poll lead against the Tories was taking all the wind out of their sails. The argument that Corbyn had in 2019 “won the argument”, after the party’s crushing defeat to Boris Johnson and his crew in that year’s general election, had been farcical at the time; it now seems like an invitation to outright derision. Starmer is unarguably doing far better in the country than his predecessor.

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UKIP and the Greens are united by one thing: voodoo economics

17/03/2015, 09:55:30 AM

by Callum Anderson

Just a few weeks remain of the 2010-2015 UK Parliament. On Wednesday, the coalition government rolls its dice one last time, in an attempt to woo undecided voters.

Meanwhile last weekend, Ed Miliband unveiled Labour’s election pledge card at Birmingham’s ICC. The first two pledges – building a strong economic foundation and raising the higher living standards for working families – have sought to serve as indicators of Labour’s simultaneous commitments to fiscal prudence and growing the economy.

Indeed, it is the economy that will decide this election, with Mr Miliband’s Labour set to ask the electorate that famous question: “are you better off than you were five years ago?”

Whilst much of the scrutiny has rightly been reserved for the main three Westminster parties, it is the economic policies of the two most significant ‘insurgent’ parties – UKIP and the Green Party – that serve as the most unknown factor of the election.

So, where do UKIP and the Greens stand on economic policy?

Traditionally, UKIP has positioned itself as a libertarian party. However over the last year, in pursuit of widening its appeal, the party has drifted leftwards on economics, if not in social affairs. The UKIP of 2010 offering a flat income tax is a distant memory. But the result has been the same: economic illiteracy.

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Are we seeing a reverse squeeze?

22/01/2015, 10:26:11 AM

One of the underlying assumptions of polling behaviour is that, like homing pigeons, voters always return from whence they came when general elections come around.

Yes, they enjoy their freedom as they stretch their wings and soar about all over the political landscape, but when it comes to deciding who actually runs the country, they fly back to their familiar coup.

Judging by current polls, however, they’re cutting it fine.

Tuesday’s ICM poll showed a fifth of voters are still saying they will vote for UKIP (11 per cent) or the Greens (9 per cent).

So what happens if the Tories don’t manage to squeeze UKIP and convince a big chunk of disgruntled former Conservatives to return to the fold?

What if all the media beastings of Nigel Farage and his troops in recent weeks end up having little effect? Indeed, what if UKIP’s insurgency is a symptom of a structural change taking place in British politics rather than a cyclical blip?

For Labour, there are two windpipes to choke. Ed Miliband needs to retain those Lib Dem voters who have abandoned Nick Clegg since 2010 as well as stopping the Greens from becoming a permanent fixture on the party’s left flank. The Greens current polling is their best performance in 20 years.

We are at that point in the political cycle where people have started referring to the looming election in terms of weeks, not months. Admittedly there is still time for things to change, but what usually happens during the short campaign is the Lib Dems rise a few points, a result of voter frustration with Labour and Tory to-ing and fro-ing.

What is to stop something similar happening in May, only with UKIP and the Greens (not forgetting the SNP) benefiting instead of the shop-soiled Lib Dems? Indeed, what if reports of Nick Clegg’s demise are exaggerated and the Lib Dems improve their position too? This would put a very big hole in Ed Miliband’s electoral bucket.

All of which is to reinforce the self-evident fact that British politics is now in a highly volatile state. (Hence the proliferation of question marks in this piece).

So much so, that 2015 may well be remembered as the first election where it was the main parties who were squeezed by the political fringe, not the other way around.

 

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