General Election 2017 - Green Manifesto: Openness, compassion and cooperation

The Greens' manifesto must be read as what MPs will stand up for, rather than expect to implement.

At a modest launch, the Green Party put forward its manifesto for General Election 2017. The low-key event aligns well with the party's realistically focused, targeted election campaign.

The party's co-leaders, Caroline Lucas and Jon Bartley, have been at the forefront of calls for a Progressive Alliance and local Greens have worked to unite support behind the best placed anti-Tory candidates across the country.

Their own efforts will focus on a few constituencies, to concentrate on re-electing Lucas in Brighton Pavillion and putting some new Green MPs alongside her - such as Natalie Bennett in Sheffield Central, Molly Scott Cato in Bristol West and Vix Lowthion in the Isle of Wight.

So this manifesto must be understood in that context: these are the things that Greens will put on the agenda, that they will speak up for, fight for and vote in Parliament to defend. Openness and cooperation will be key to that effort.

Openness and cooperation appeared in Caroline Lucas' introductory speech, along with compassion, as the values that the Greens will protect. That theme runs through the pledges the party makes in its manifesto.

The headline pledges for the Greens are their commitment to a basic income trial scheme, a shorter working week and a £10 minimum wage. At the core, there is a lot of crossover with Labour: the living wage, higher tax for the wealthy and support for "small businesses, co-operatives and mutuals".

The party, of course, ranks addressing the environment among its highest priorities. There are commitments to fund a public work programme of home insulation to make energy use more efficient, to end fossil fuel subsidies and replace them with investment in renewables and community owned energy, and to protect green spaces.

There is also crossover with Labour here - who, in particular, have called for local public energy companies, with a focus on renewable energy, to compete with the big energy corporations to drive down energy prices.

The Liberal Democrats also share commitments here, to rolling out insulation, to invest in green energy and, with Labour also, to tackle air pollution and support new energy companies coming in and take on the "Big 6" - with a focus on how these efforts could all boost the economy and be the start of a job-creating clean industry in Britain.

These stand in stark contrast to the Conservatives, whose almost only reference to the environment was to offer its support to energy derived from shale gas - otherwise known by its more controversial name of fracking.

On health, the Greens continue their commitment to fighting against privatisation in, and of, healthcare services. They renew their commitment to passing their NHS Reinstatement Bill that would even restore dental services to public funding.

Their focus on support for matching the status of mental health to physical health matches with the Lib Dems and Labour, along with calling for increasing funding for the NHS and social care.

On other public services, the Greens go further than Labour, calling for energy, water, rail, bus and mail services to all be brought back into public ownership - and for an increase to local government funding to help authorities provide good quality services.

There are crossovers on education as well. Scrapping tuition fees has been committed to by the Greens and Labour - and still has support among Lib Dems. Restoring student grants is a Green and Lib Dem priority.

Restoring young people's benefits is a shared goal across the progressive parties. The Greens stand out on welfare, however, for their headline commitment to the basic income and to rolling out a trial scheme.

The Green Party commitments on house building align with all of the progressive parties and specifically matches Labour's commitment to 500,000 new social rent homes over the next five years. Along with the Lib Dems there are commitments to take action on empty homes and to scrap the Bedroom Tax.

Long shared with the Liberal Democrats, and being newly considered by the Labour Party, there is support for the much needed switch to proportional representation - to make votes matter, by making the votes people cast more clearly represented in how the seats in Parliament are distributed.

And not least there are commitments to the Human Rights Act and to the UK's membership of the European Convention on Human Rights - the Tory attitude to which has made this a high priority concern for liberals and human rights and civil liberties groups.

The Greens have only modest electoral ambitions for themselves. But in the face of the threat of a landslide Tory majority they have stressed the need for a Progressive Alliance - for progressive parties to come together to defend their shared values.

While they may be the most humble of mainstream progressive parties, their approach is grasping best the bigger picture. A Tory landslide would be a disaster - for the poorest, for transparency and accountability, for the values of openness, compassion and co-operation.

Whether a supporter of Labour or the Liberal Democrats, if the Greens are the best placed to defeat the Tories in a constituency, there is plenty of crossover to make voting Green tactically an easy decision.

The same extends in the other direction - Greens can find plenty of policies that align with their priorities in the manifestos of the Lib Dems and Labour. There is a real progressive consensus on many issues.

But it is only through cooperation and working together, by voting tactically and campaigning positively in collaboration with the best placed candidates, that progressives can fend off the latest round of Tory assaults on the rights, liberties and wellbeing of the most vulnerable people in Britain.

Asylum distribution scandal less about immigration and more about inequality

Photograph: The clock tower of Rochdale town hall from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Over the weekend, there were reports of anger at the way those seeking asylum in Britain were being distributed across the country. These people were being sent to the poorest communities, while the richest communities often took not a single person (Lyons & Duncan, 2017).

One town particularly affected was Rochdale, a small town with an outsized history as a progressive beacon. It was the birthplace of the co-operative movement and, against the grain in Britain, supported the Union and the abolition of slavery during the American Civil War (Keegan, 2010; Cash, 2013) - despite the pain of the loss of cotton imports from the Confederacy.

Even in a town with that historical backdrop, there is anger that is framed and understood through the lens of anti-immigration sentiment (Lyons, 2017). But that misses the point, as much of the distracting immigration anger has done so far. The real issue is inequality.

As the figures show, without the funding to match, the burden that comes with caring and including those people seeking asylum is being dropped into the hands of the country's poorest communities (Lyons & Duncan, 2017).

Communities that have already been hit hard by cuts to local government budgets (Butler, 2017) - services have been stretched and funds are scarce. It has been Conservative policy for some time to shift responsibilities away from central government without funding.

All the while, the Right seeks to misdirect the anger at this situation onto 'immigrants' - to those fleeing danger and murder, or the refugees of war. But the figures clearly show the real problem: Britain's wealthiest communities are not pulling their weight or sharing the burdens.

This isn't isolated to asylum. Look at the energy and the environment. Communities, particularly Conservative constituencies, have refused green energy technology, like wind farms, as 'eyesores' blighting their communities (Hennessy, 2012). But where is their outcry against their energy coming from dirty plants in poorer neighbourhoods?

While this unequal distribution of burdens paints Britain in a bad light, . Part of the opposition to the expansion of green energy has been the unequal distribution of its financial benefits (Mason, 2012) and in every community there can be a found positive and charitable support for those seeking asylum from danger.

From Saffiyah Khan, the woman who stood up and peacefully faced a nationalist group when they surrounded a counter-protesting woman (BBC, 2017); to the peaceful and charitable disposition found in communities across the country (Lyons, 2017); there are innumerable examples that Britain has broad shoulders and can make light of its burdens.

But not when all of the burdens are dropped on the poorest communities. Not when the wealthiest communities exempt themselves, sending the unfortunate and desperate somewhere else without even the support funding to match.

It's one rule for conservative Britain and another for everyone else. Like in ancient Athens: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". That adage is not good enough and should be left buried in the past where it belongs.

Conservative Energy Bill changes energy priorities at exactly the wrong time

After a rapid expansion, new community energy projects are in retreat as Europe's governments focus their energies on other problems. Photograph: Solar Panels (License) (Cropped)

Only a month ago, David Cameron, on the UK's behalf, signed the Paris Agreement (ITV, 2015). Those accords, however vague, nonetheless committed Britain and 199 other countries to the reduction of carbon emissions and to work towards a target of zero emissions (Vaughan, 2015).

However today, even as this weekend a senior UN official has praised the agreement for showing that the world can come together (Goldenberg, 2016), Cameron's government is promoting an Energy Bill that is leading the UK away from those goals.

The government's Energy Bill, in the Commons for its second reading, has been criticised for prioritising short term economic gains over the long term picture of sustainability (Lucas, 2016). The bill has been accused of encouraging the pursuit of coal and fossil fuels instead of leaving them in the ground and for failing to address fuel poverty - the scandal that as many as one in ten struggle to afford basic warmth.

That drive towards fossil fuels follows on the heels of cuts to subsidies for community green energy projects, which where allowed to lapse (Harvey & Vaughan, 2015; Vaughan, 2015{2}). Under the Coalition, the Liberal Democrats had encouraged these community projects (Davey, 2013). Their government research showed that community energy projects were sought out by the public to keep costs down, as well as fight climate change and to help in disadvantaged neighbourhoods - making a difference on many social and economic fronts.

These cuts to community energy subsidies and encouragement of fossil fuel recovery would seem to be a drastic change of direction for the government's public stance on energy. However, this disappointing shift in policy would not be the first. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the government had long been undermining its own commitment to clean energy (Monbiot, 2015; Monbiot, 2014), with a previous bill encouraging the maximization of exploitation of fossil fuel resources.

At the time when is there a need not only for clean and sustainable energy but also for a way to take power over the energy we consume out of the hands of big energy companies and despotic states, to increase competition and reduce the cost of energy, support for decentralised clean community energy should be a priority.

Community utilities providers have a proven track record of success in Germany and the US (Thorpe, 2014; Heins, 2015). With community projects still taking their first steps in the UK and the municipal movement in Spain acting as an inspiration across Europe, now is the time to be encouraging communities to get engaged with civic life in pursuit of the common good.

Politics and the Environment in the Age of Political Economy

Big promises have been made on climate change in Paris. Yet it seems that economics has had the last word. Photograph: Paris 2015 #COP21 @CMP11 by Ron Mader (License) (Set on white)

The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 21 (the 21st Conference of the Parties), was the perfect summary of the age of political economics. All of the show and all of the image of action, without much in the way of tangible results.

Seemingly heeding, finally, the repeated warnings about the dire long term effects of failing to address fossil fuel use and climate change, and the deadly outcomes of delay, world leaders have declared an agreement to bring to an end the era of fossil fuels (Goldenberg et al, 2015).

The agreement that comes out of COP 21 makes a lot of promises. It has pledges, long term goals, and regular assessments of progress (Vaughan, 2015). And yet, in true political fashion, these promises come without immediate action and with a number of caveats.

For one, there is some substantial shifting of responsibilities. There is a clause that assures that countries hit by the more extreme weather and rising water levels, produced by global warming, cannot make financial claims against those who have been, and continue to be, users of fossil fuels and big polluters of the environment.

The commitments made are also fairly vague (Monbiot, 2015). A commitment to achieve the global peak use of fossil fuels 'soon', came with not a date in sight. A commitment to a maximum 1.5C of global warming, was without a defined plan and method for achieving it.

And, even as these kinds of agreements are made, they are being made a mockery of by the politics of the day. The reality is that countries like the UK - even as the government welcomes the deal (Whale, 2015) - continue to use fossil fuels, and even to expand their usage (Monbiot, 2014), in pursuit of their economic aims.

In the age of political economy - where the whys and hows have, in all provinces, been subsumed beneath and sacrificed to 'economic efficiency' - attempts to prevent environmental disaster are given a back seat to economics. We must first stabilise the economy, they say, only then can we look to the esoteric concerns of healthcare, welfare and, of course, the environment.

Yet this response is irrational. It excludes facts to create a self-defined box within which political solutions can meet arbitrary targets. A boxed-context, designed to allow an economic solution to be a 'success', on its own terms, to save one party's flagging economic policy and so its political future.

However, none of the problems facing society can be handled piecemeal. All of it is connected and impacts upon the others. If a comprehensive green energy programme is not part of the economic response, that response is no solution. Ignoring or denying facts will not change them.

In the age of political economy, where every decision is hemmed in by a thousand financial interests - each likely to lose out as another gains - comprehensive, holistic programmes are hard to come by. Yet one is needed.

As the French regional elections demonstrated, the old establishment that has held sway in Europe is teetering. Renewing politics means finding a way to break out of the age of political economy where politics has become a world of promises that can be fulfilled only within arbitrary contexts using perceived truths and half-facts.

Without a comprehensive progressive alternative, the discredited system may fall into the hands of extremists with narrow sectarian viewpoints, who will be unlikely to have the breadth of vision necessary to deal with the grave matters, even the climate issues alone, that threaten the future (Lucas, 2015).

Corbyn has brought idealism to the campaign, but needs to show how public ownership can further the pursuit of a just, inclusive and power-devolving society

Jeremy Corbyn MP speaks at anti-drones rally in 2013. Photograph: By stopwar.org.uk (license)(cropped)

Jeremy Corbyn's entry has electrified the Labour leadership contest (Eno, 2015). With people beginning to ask 'what happens if Jeremy Corbyn wins?', it might be a good time to look at what it is for which Corbyn is actually campaigning (Bush, 2015).

Jeremy Corbyn was originally ushered into the Labour leadership campaign as the alternative candidate (BBC, 2015). His job was to open up the debate Leftwards, to ensure that all voices were heard and that the 'electable' candidates had to work hard for the position.

Yet the campaign has been turned on its head by his entry. Endorsements from the trade unions and a popular anti-austerity following have put Corbyn in a strong position. It is now a very ready possibility that he could, in fact, win the leadership election.

That possibility has turned the race for the leadership into a showdown between Old Labour and New Labour, each with their own rival visions of the Left. Old Labour on the one side offering idealistic solutions, so acting as the national destination for those disenchanted with New Labour, on the other side, offering their pragmatic, 'modernising', solutions. (Jones, 2015)

The trouble is that neither side is being particularly radical. Corbyn's stances belong largely to the old Left, though hardly the hard Left (Krugman, 2015), and focus on a more structured and permanent society than the one that is unfolding at present (Harris, 2015) - that is: trade unions, nationalisation and a centralised state engaged in public spending and public ownership.

On the other side, fairly or unfairly, New Labour has been seen as a surrender to Centre-Right political thought. They are seen as a negative force that is too quick to shut down idealism (Watt, 2015; Watt, 2015{2}). They are, perhaps, too cosy with big business and too afraid of public opinion (Martin, 2015), to say anything distinct, other than to maintain a determination to make everything pass through a heavily centralised state.

But society is fragmenting. Democratic politics can seemingly no longer rely on mass support, marching under one big tent banner, that supports a singular centralised state, where power is wielded by the lofty party elite.

Historically, liberals and democrats stood, as progressives, opposed to the forces of conservatism that defended the traditional, elitist, order. Liberals stood in the name of the individual, democrats in the name of the people, or of the community.

As conservatism has, ironically perhaps, evolved in order to survive, it has taken on the cast offs from democrats and liberals as they have moved leftwards. From liberals it has embraced classical liberal laissez-faire economics. From democrats it has taken advantage of populism and nationalism.

All of these elements were once used as a means to rally people against the old elite. Themes that would as unifying rallying points, that could be used to transcend the particular concerns of particular individuals or communities.

But society has moved on once more. Rather than one community united by a singular narrative of economic class, there are dozens, hundreds, of communities with their own narratives - feminist, environmental, civil rights, trade unionist - who do not believe that their cause should be secondary.

Likewise individualism has moved forward. Individuals now support many causes, shifting between them or associated freely with several at once. There is a demand, not just for choice, but also for autonomy and the devolution and decentralisation of power.

These new, fragmented forms of democratic and liberal politics require new forms of solidarity - new ideas that the old approach of the mass party using the power of state to fend of the power of corporations and aristocrats is not set up to provide.

The big question facing Labour is how it can give a community response to a country that has seen community, in all of the traditional senses, collapse? Democracy and socialism speaks of people as fundamentally based on and in communities, based on the importance of ideas like your home town, your social class and your trade. But all of these are breaking down. Permanence is disappearing and with it the conventional anchors for these traditional communities.

How does a Labour party respond to social change that has so undone its means of rallying, organising and leading?

The starting point has be in addressing the fact that Labour's view, of the people as workers, with the state as their protector, redistributor and benefactor, seems to have broken down. That system needs to rebuilt on new themes.

That themes need to encompass Labour commitment to a democratic identity, a community focus and the pursuit of justice on these terms. But it also needs build in both the pursuit of progress and the allowance for alliances and fragmentation. Labour can be a coordinator, not just a director.

The radical new horizons on the Left for democratic socialists mean an inclusive attitudes towards the new and emerging political movements which have begun to get their days in the sun, at least in glimpses. From trade unions, to environmentalists, feminists and the civil rights advocates movement, there are numerous sectional interest groups, all pursuing their own agendas.

Yet unlike conservative sectionalism, it can't be about one group asserting its dominance over the others. Labour has to learn that progress will be, ultimately, about individuals and communities cooperating - breaking down the old powers and supporting the dispersal of it widely across society.

Jeremy Corbyn's campaign is already generating success (Milne, 2015), with Andy Burnham now openly advocating a gradual renationalisation of the railways (Perraudin, 2015). But it won't be enough to call upon the old centralising powers of party and state if they continue to alienate, suppress or exclude diverse movements.

More nuanced answers are needed to the complex issues of a contemporary society that is fragmented, becoming ever more temporary and fleeting. Calling upon the state, public ownership and trade unions to have a renewed role is not a bad thing. But people do need to know how those institutions can face the challenge of an ever more fragmented and decentralised society.

It is imperative that Corbyn's campaign addresses the matter of how he intends to turn these old Left mechanisms from yesterday into the inclusive, power-devolving, radical Left solutions of tomorrow.