Green party

The British left is moribund. The Labour party’s ratings are sliding under Sir Keir Starmer, aka ‘Captain Hindsight’, as he struggles to project anything compelling to the electorate. The Liberal Democrats are doing even worse, with poll ratings often down at 5 or 6 per cent. They have given up on liberty — they don’t think free speech is a priority and have failed to query any significant aspect of lockdowns — and on democracy too, via their fanatical effort to set aside the result of the EU referendum. Sir Ed Davey’s major tactic seems to be to copy Sir Keir in being generally non-committal and to shadow his every

Should the Labour party be worried about the Greens? Some Labour activists think so. The Greens have just become the third most popular in British politics, if the latest IpsosMORI poll is anything to go on. The party won eight per cent support in the survey, putting them ahead of the Lib Dems. It’s enough to give even the staunchest Starmerite cause for concern. But the reality is that Labour needn’t sound the alarm. In fact, the very last thing Labour should be worried about at the moment is losing potential voters to the Greens. Why? Because we’ve been here before. In early 2015, support for the Greens went as high as 11 per cent

Jeremy Corbyn – ‘I want a close relationship’ with the EU The Labour leader was Andrew Marr’s chief guest of the day. Marr began by asking for Corbyn’s personal stance on Brexit, something which has proved highly elusive since the referendum result in 2016. Corbyn happily gave the Labour party’s position, but once again refused to be drawn on the issue:   AM: Do you want this country to leave the EU or not? JC: We’re going to put that choice to the British people, and they will make that decision… I want a close relationship with the EU in the future. ‘You don’t know’ who I’m going to negotiate with If

Before David Cameron became Prime Minister in the 2010 election, he was dealt a setback when his old chum Ed Vaizey suggested that Cameron’s wife Samantha might be voting Labour. Although Cameron’s team were quick to pour cold water on the suggestion – and Vaizey in turn backtracked – the rumour persisted over the years. Now that the pair are out of No 10, Sam Cam has finally set the record straight in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph. The fashion designer tells the paper that she never went so far as to vote Labour – but she did sometimes vote Green: ‘But I didn’t always vote Conservative – sometimes I went

In this, as in all things, Paul Keating was right. It was the former Aussie Prime Minister, a Beethoven of political invective, who called his country’s Green Party ‘a bunch of opportunists and Trots hiding behind a gum tree trying to pretend they’re the Labor Party’. Keating’s acid scherzo could apply just as readily to our own Greens, self-appointed conservationists of righteousness. Caroline Lucas, their only MP, has been at the forefront of calls for a ‘progressive alliance’ between left-wing parties. On Wednesday, she wrote to Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron proposing ‘some form of cooperation in a handful of seats to create the best possible chance of beating the

It’s difficult being a Lefty. You come up with principled positions and stances and then people expect you to stand by them. So, spare a thought for Caroline Lucas. Although the Green Party has campaigned for a £10 per hour minimum wage, today the Green MP’s team placed a job advert looking for a press assistant for the not-so-princely sum of £9.23 per hour. https://twitter.com/MitchellAT/status/778192445792194560 When brains at Green HQ clocked the error of their ways — apparently down to an admin error — they came up with a simple work over. Rather than increase the salary to something slightly more liveable, reduce the time by three hours a week: Given that the lucky

Winning the Green Party leadership race on a joint ticket makes Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley the first ever job share at the top of an English political party (the Scottish Greens have been doing it for years by having two co-convenors at the top). The pair won convincingly, picking up 86 per cent of the vote in the first round. Yet whilst the margin of their win was clear, what’s less obvious is how the job share will work in reality. There is, though, one valuable asset that Lucas will certainly be able to offer the Greens. Whilst her predecessor Natalie Bennett might have upped the party’s share of

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Naming the best columnist in Britain is like naming you’re the best Beatles song: it varies, depending on what kind of mood you’re in. But who would deny that Matthew Parris is in the top three? The quality of his writing is, itself, enough to put him into the premier league but that’s just part of the art. What sets Matthew apart is his sheer range, and his originality. You never know what he’ll be writing about, whether you’ll agree with him, or

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Naming the best columnist in Britain is like naming you’re the best Beatles song: it varies, depending on what kind of mood you’re in. But who would deny that Matthew Parris is in the top three? The quality of his writing is, itself, enough to put him into the premier league but that’s just part of the art. What sets Matthew apart is his sheer range, and his originality. You never know what he’ll be writing about, whether you’ll agree with him, or

These days the BBC can’t seem to get anything right. On top of regularly riling Brexit-ers with ‘EU bias’, the corporation has been accused by some — including former BBC pol ed Nick Robinson — of showing anti-Corbyn bias. Now they can add a new one to their list; anti-Green Party bias. Yes, Green Party MEP Molly Scott Cato has made the peculiar claim after the BBC failed to publish an article on her party’s new video broadcast: The video features young children pretending to be today’s politicians — arguing that while other parties are childish, the Green Party are not. As amusing as the video may be, Cato appears to barking up the

If you want an idea of how exhausting this election has been for some voters in marginals, just watch this video of a Green supporter in Bristol West: I profiled the seat, where the Lib Dems are trying to hold off a ‘Green surge’ among middle-class voters, here and I was rather impressed with quite how many leaflets Stephen Williams had managed to produce even before the short campaign got underway. It will be a tough seat for the Lib Dems to hold, even if the Greens don’t win, as Labour appears to be in front currently. But perhaps Williams is trying a new ‘get out the vote’ strategy, in which

At a recent screening of his new capitalism documentary the Emperor’s New Clothes, Russell Brand, the revolutionary who refuses to vote, said he was too angry to say nice things about today’s politicians: ‘When I watch it [the Emperor’s New Clothes], I sort of think come on Russell people really want to hear you say something about the election like Caroline Lucas is lovely, or Natalie Bennett is lovely, or Tom Watson is lovely or Ed Miliband is really trying his hardest, but when I watch this I think “nooo! Justice!”’ However just a week later and the comedian has changed his tune. After Ed Miliband paid a late-night visit to his