The date has been announced. On 4th July, UK voters go to the polls in what I’ve already disowned one friend for calling the #GennyLex.
I’m a paid up member of the Green Party. It seems obvious to me that mankind currently faces its greatest ever challenge as the clock runs down on our opportunity to repair the damage we’ve done to the planet. It takes, in my mind, a spectacular lack of rationality to disregard the overwhelming scientific consensus, not to mention one’s own experience of the seasons, and maintain any kind of climate change denial in 2024. The only explanation I can find for why Rishi Sunak has been so committed to making the environmental situation actively worse instead of trying to improve it is either his immense personal wealth has convinced him his kids will be okay, or that the situation is so dire that he feels the need to extend that personal wealth even further to make sure his kids are okay. It’s that, or he just hates his kids.
That’s not what I’m posting about today though, not directly. The question I want to answer is what purpose does a vote for the Green Party serve in what is effectively a duopoly.
I have, of recent years, been a committed if reluctant Green-in-the-locals/Labour-in-the-Generals voter. As mouthy and prone to self-aggrandisement as Labour’s Norwich South MP Clive Lewis is, he’s not a bad MP and I’ve been happy enough to vote for him the past couple of times, to maintain a small spot of red in the Norfolk sea of blue. However, this does sit uneasily with my underlying belief that buying into the Labour/Conservative duopoly only reinforces it. I’ve not so much voted Labour, if I’m honest, as I’ve voted not-Conservative. And this behaviour, replicated as it has been across the country, has not given us the Labour Party any of us actually want.
But voting Green? What does it achieve? This is the question I’ve had put to me several times. I’ve had staunch Labour friends tell me it’s a wasted vote, and relatives suggest that a Green Party-led Government would be a disaster – they’re a single-issue party, and have no idea about all the other stuff that needs doing.
Of course, as well as being untrue (the Greens may have started that way, but have come a long way since their beginnings as the PEOPLE Party back in 1973), the point is moot. A Green-led Government is less than a pipe dream, it’s an absurdist fantasy. The Green Party itself never talks in these terms – their aim for the 2024 GE is just four MPs. In my own constituency of Norwich South, the aim is to field a candidate that beats the Conservatives into third, behind Labour.
So what is the point?
You’re not voting for a Prime Minister. Despite the arguments that arise every time there’s a Leadership election in the Party in Government, there’s no sense in which anything underhand is happening when an incumbent Party changes leadership. You didn’t vote for Rishi Sunak to be PM? No, you didn’t. Unless you live in his constituency, you didn’t even vote for him to be an MP. You voted for your local MP, and the Party that has the most MPs gets to choose their own leader. If you don’t get that, you don’t understand how our system of government works. Which is what makes it depressing to see actual MPs rehearse this nonsense argument when they want to win a few points – of course, they do understand this; they’re just cynically exploiting a certain proportion of the public’s slim grasp of reality. I can’t help but think if more people thought of voting in terms of their local representative (actually what they are voting for) instead of who they want in No. 10, we’d have a lot less braindead intelligence-vacuums like Liz Truss and Nadine Dorries stumbling around Parliament. Honestly, you’re not telling me the people of South West Norfolk, rather than being a case of party allegiance, looked at actual Liz Truss and thought “Yep, there’s a safe pair of hands.” And don’t even get me started on Mid-Bedfordshire…
Change takes time. In the case of the Climate Crisis, it’s time we don’t have, but putting that aside, you don’t get to break up a duopoly overnight. If everyone waits until a third party becomes a viable alternative, they never will. That’s the same kind of redundant thinking that sees politicians argue we shouldn’t invest public money in renewable energy sources until the technology is right. If we hadn’t started building cars until the technology existed to build the cars we drive today, we wouldn’t have the cars we drive today. You need a Model-T before you can have a Prius. Likewise, if we don’t fund renewable sources of energy now, they won’t ever reach the level of efficiency cynics are demanding they have. And if people don’t vote for other parties until they’re a genuine threat to the status quo, they won’t ever become a genuine threat to the status quo.
It’s about representation, not control. The Green Party currently have one MP. They’re aiming for four at this election, so what good is four MPs? It’s about voice. Four MPs is four dissenting voices when pricks like Sunak engineer a u-turn in our transition away from fossil fuels, delaying the ban on new fossil fuel-ran cars, using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an excuse to grant new licences for gas and oil extraction. It’s four more dissenting voices when the Conservative Party does nothing about water companies pumping ever-increasing amounts of human shit into our rivers, claiming they need more money to stop it while at the same time announcing huge profits for their shareholders. Of course, Labour have been vocal about this too, but four Green MPs is also four dissenting voices when Starmer wins this election and Labour start making their own excuses for not following through on essential environmental targets. If this is the most critical phase of our window to reverse the environmental damage we’ve caused (and it is), then the more voices we have in the House of Commons fighting for that cause, the better. And four voices might not be much, but it’s better than three, two, one or none.
Sometimes that influence can be direct. Unless something truly bizarre happens, we are looking at a major Labour victory at this election. (Of course, assuming this is exactly what creates low voter turnout and makes the chances of the bizarre happening all the more likely.) But even in that instance, sometimes there are votes in Parliament that run close. And anytime where a government has a slim majority, the votes of other parties suddenly start counting for a lot. Caroline Lucas’ single vote probably never mattered a huge amount, but four Green MPs? That’s a block. A small block, but a block. And that’s when concessions have to be made, deals struck. A growth, any growth, in Green MPs is an opportunity for direct influence down the line.
It’s an advertisement for my vote. Perhaps the most significant reason I’ll be voting Green this election is a declaration of what matters to me as a voter. In a constituency where the Green candidate is aiming for second then, despite appearances, there is value in that aim. It’s a clear message to the Big Two that there’s votes to be had in pursuing a Green agenda. If the Tories do sink to third in my constituency, I want the message to be clear – there’s more to be gained politically from growing up and accepting your responsibility for the environment than chasing the bottom-feeding, thick-as-mince, “want my country back” message of Reform UK. My vote on its own, of course, carries no value. The more people, however, that vote Green in this election – regardless of how many MPs that does or doesn’t result in – the clearer that message. There’s votes in the environment, and the more votes there are then the harder the other Parties are forced to court them.
One final thought: if you still think of the Green Party as a single-issue Party, it’s worth underlining that that issue is increasingly the number one issue we should care about. Heck, even if you’ve bought into the Right’s anti-immigration bullshit, have you considered for a moment that if we stopped actively pursuing policies that ruined the planet, people might be a bit less desperate to get away from the areas at the sharp end of this global crisis?
James Kinsley 