Margaret on a conference speech read in full, a list of policies with a very short list of costings and a party that grew to 220,000 members and then discovered what that means
Saturday 10 October, 10.15am, a desk covered in printed pages, a highlighter that has run out and a second highlighter that has taken over with the confidence of a junior minister.
Dear Diary. I am an opponent of the Green Party, and I make no secret of it. My objection is not to trees, which I admire, nor to rivers, which I like to see clean, but to the habit of the party’s programme of treating money as if it were a rumour. This week gave me an excellent opportunity to read their leader’s conference speech in full, and I did so with a cup of tea and an open mind, which is more than the speech did for me.
The Speech
The Green Party published the text of Zack Polanski’s conference speech on 2 October, marked check against delivery, which means the spoken version may differ. According to the text, it calls for a three-year emergency brake on private rents and a long-term national Fair Rents Guarantee, with rent rises capped at the lowest of inflation, wage growth or 2 percent. It proposes taxing the very richest and a windfall tax on bank profits, bringing public services back into public hands and nationalising water. It opposes new North Sea oil and gas drilling, and calls for home energy efficiency and community energy. It also calls for dropping charges against protesters and for deproscribing Palestine Action, and pledges to stand with trans people, migrants and disabled people.
The speech says membership is at record levels, with more members than ever, but gives no figure in the passages I read. It says the party has well over a thousand councillors. It includes the line Vote Green and watch Labour move. I have no quarrel with the sentence as a piece of rhetoric. It is a line with the confidence of a bumper sticker and the policy content of a bumper sticker.
The Missing Column
What I looked for, and did not find, was the arithmetic. A rent cap, a windfall tax, a nationalisation of water and a programme of mass insulation are not small items, and I would have liked to see them in a column with a total at the bottom. In the text as it reached me, there is no such column. I want to be careful: the document is long, I read the key passages and not every line, and it is possible there is a costings section I missed. If so, I withdraw the complaint and ask only that someone send me the page number.
What I will say is that a political party which has grown rapidly, as the Greens plainly have, owes its new members and its voters a clear account of how its promises would be paid for. It is the least that can be asked of anyone who wishes to run a country, and it is a standard that Labour has also frequently failed to meet.
The Other Row
The conference also produced a controversy that deserves a careful account, because it concerns serious matters. ITV reports that conference members backed a motion declaring that Zionism is racism, which is now party policy, despite opposition from the former leader Caroline Lucas and four of the party’s five MPs. It says this does not necessarily mean it will appear in the next manifesto. Lucas, the report says, is not calling for Polanski to step down, but criticised his absence from the vote and said the party must address huge issues. Vivien Lichtenstein, chair of the Jewish Greens, called for him to resign over what she described as a dereliction of duty, and said she was considering leaving the party. Asked directly whether Zionism is racism, Polanski, the report says, did not answer directly, and said that the displacement of the Palestinian people and the genocide is clearly racist.
I will not make a joke about this. It is a serious dispute, involving serious people, and the sources I have are a news report and a party text. I will make one observation as a commentator, which is that a party that grows quickly has to learn how to govern itself before it can ask to govern anyone else. How a leader handles a hard internal vote says something about how he would handle a hard external one.
Green Comedy
My colleagues at prat.uk have been surveying the party for some time, and with a lightness I envy. The Green Party’s complete and ever-expanding abolition index is a list that grows longer with each reading, and I read it as a joke about ambition and not as a policy document. Green Party gains support with pigeons is a gentler piece, with a premise so absurd that it is hard to dislike. And Green New Deal in love with insulation captures something true about an obsession that, to be fair, many households would welcome.
I mention them so that you can see the party is not above being teased, and that a teasing which is fair is a kind of compliment. Nobody writes jokes about parties that do not matter.
Why I Am Not A Fan
People ask me why, as a critic of Labour, I do not simply welcome a party to its left that is taking its votes. The answer is that I believe in governments that can count. I believe in spending that is matched by income, in rules that are enforced and in promises that are deliverable. A party that offers more of everything to everyone without saying who pays is, in my experience, a party that will eventually discover the bill. I felt the same about Labour’s own promises last week, and I will feel the same about any party that makes them.
I also believe in clean rivers, decent homes and a fair deal for renters. These are not left-wing aims alone. The question is always how, and the how is the bit that gets left out of the speech.
Closing Entry
I file for Bohiney Magazine, and my American readers ask whether British politics has its own version of a party that does everything at once. It has several. For a map of the targets that British comedy has pursued over the years, my page on the complete list of targets for British satire is a useful guide, and for a smile to finish the morning, the Daily Squib is excellent company. The highlighters are dry and the pages are scattered. Goodnight, Diary. Ask who pays.
SOURCE: bohiney.com
