It's election season, yaaaaay! Ok, so maybe I'm in a minority of very excited people but this year is going to be like nothing we've seen before. We have an election being contested by TWO parties who've never before been considered big players, alongside the three usual suspects of Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Now, I'm really not a fan of UKIP but I do have to concede that anything that shakes up our political landscape and gets people talking is very interesting indeed.
If you've read my blog before, you've probably gathered that I'm a huge supporter of the Green Party - so much so that I'm a paid up member and candidate for the next election! I'm passionate about their policies and frankly relieved to see someone in British politics genuinely fighting for the wellbeing of ordinary and vulnerable people.
We've seriously raised our profile in the past year, with membership quadrupling in England and Wales (we hit 50,000 members yesterday!) and our polling figures taking us past the Lib Dems, into our highest ever consistent figures. Naturally, with that comes closer scrutiny of our policies and a reasonable amount of hysterical press coverage. That's fine. We know our policies are amazing and we're only too happy to be given the right of reply to defend them. Maybe we need to work on our media strategy a bit, but hey! we're not career politicians with armies of Malcolm Tucker spin doctors telling us how to make bad things sound good. We are a group of devoted, compassionate people who have compiled a set of policies that we have every faith in working for the common good. We don't need spin.
Unlike the other parties, our policies are freely available on our website for anyone to read. We don't hide them away until we can find ways to dress them up. It's all there. In some ways, that's making life harder for us because many of our policies require a huge break away from how society is currently structed, and if you take them out of context, they look a bit... well... bananas. We could just take the policy site offline and, as the other parties do, only tell you what we stand for on our own terms, through cleverly constructed press releases and snappy soundbites, but we'd rather maintain a feature I'm personally very proud of - our transparency and honesty.
So I spend a lot of time talking to people about politics and why they should want to vote for us. The main objections I hear are that "politicians are all the same" and "power corrupts, even if you get into government with the best of intentions. Just look at the Lib Dems!".
This is where I feel we need to make much more noise about a very specific area of policy regarding governmental and electoral reform. We talk about changing the face of British politics, but I don't think many people realise how much we mean that!
PA451 Central Government currently revolves around the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, with the role of Parliament greatly diminished. The most important reform needed to redress this imbalance is the move to proportional representation. This will help to bring an end to the traditional dominance of two political parties in Britain. The central Parliament (House of Commons), elected under the AMS system (see PA305), will be far more representative of the diversity of opinion within the UK. There will be far less chance of an overall Parliamentary majority for one party, and, even without further reform, the resulting necessity for coalition governments would make governments and Prime Ministers much more accountable to Parliament.
and
PA455 A First Minister would also be elected by the central Parliament as a whole, who would be responsible for chairing a committee, the Coordination Committee, of all the convenors of parliamentary committees. This body would be responsible for coordinating the work of the different committees, and for dealing with matters that affect them all, such as the allocation of public expenditure. The First Minister would act as Head of Government, in particular in dealings with other states. The central Parliament would also elect, as at present, an apolitical Speaker, who would act as Head of State (see PA600c).
and of course!
PA307 UK political parties will be funded by the State. Such political funding will be calculated and administered on a regional basis, and funds allocated in proportion to the number of votes cast in the region in the last round of proportional representation elections held across the entire region. Parties would need to exceed a threshold of 3% of the vote to become eligible for this funding.
I know, I know. Your brain has now melted and you just want to go and eat marshmallows. The meaning of all this is actually really simple - we make politics straightforward and actually properly democratic. No more lobbying and influence by large corporations, because political parties will be funded by the state, not from being bankrolled. No more embarrassingly cringe-worthy Prime Minister's Questions, because parliament will be a cooperative and representative body, that actually reflects what the people of Britain think and feel. No more feeling that your vote is wasted or that you have to tactically back the lesser of two evils - everyone's vote counts because everyone can vote for what they believe in.
THAT is how a government should be formed. I think this also says a lot about Green Party credibility. We're not power-hungry. We're not after the ministerial cars and the prestige of getting to say "we're in charge". A Green government would actually redistribute that power so that no one political party holds a disproportionate amount of control. The Prime Minister would be replaced by someone democratically elected by the whole parliament, not just whoever happens to have been leading the party with the most votes at election time.
This is huge. And it's brilliant. It suits everyone, even people who don't share our love of renewable energy or hold the same views on reforming the justice system. Everybody gets represented this way. I said before that I don't like UKIP but that doesn't mean there's no room for a Eurosceptic party to represent the beliefs of British people who don't like being in the EU. Anything that keeps debate open, that keeps questioning and challenging the status quo is a good thing. We're a brilliantly diverse country, and that is as true of our political beliefs as it is anything. If we want to see that taken heed of in the way the country is run, we have to fight to change an archaic and corrupted system, and replace it with something we can be proud of.
If you want to read more of our policies, go to policy.greenparty.org.uk or wait for our manifesto to be published in March. OR find out who your local candidates are and email them and ask to meet up!
PA451 Central Government currently revolves around the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, with the role of Parliament greatly diminished. The most important reform needed to redress this imbalance is the move to proportional representation. This will help to bring an end to the traditional dominance of two political parties in Britain. The central Parliament (House of Commons), elected under the AMS system (see PA305), will be far more representative of the diversity of opinion within the UK. There will be far less chance of an overall Parliamentary majority for one party, and, even without further reform, the resulting necessity for coalition governments would make governments and Prime Ministers much more accountable to Parliament.
and
PA455 A First Minister would also be elected by the central Parliament as a whole, who would be responsible for chairing a committee, the Coordination Committee, of all the convenors of parliamentary committees. This body would be responsible for coordinating the work of the different committees, and for dealing with matters that affect them all, such as the allocation of public expenditure. The First Minister would act as Head of Government, in particular in dealings with other states. The central Parliament would also elect, as at present, an apolitical Speaker, who would act as Head of State (see PA600c).
and of course!
PA307 UK political parties will be funded by the State. Such political funding will be calculated and administered on a regional basis, and funds allocated in proportion to the number of votes cast in the region in the last round of proportional representation elections held across the entire region. Parties would need to exceed a threshold of 3% of the vote to become eligible for this funding.
I know, I know. Your brain has now melted and you just want to go and eat marshmallows. The meaning of all this is actually really simple - we make politics straightforward and actually properly democratic. No more lobbying and influence by large corporations, because political parties will be funded by the state, not from being bankrolled. No more embarrassingly cringe-worthy Prime Minister's Questions, because parliament will be a cooperative and representative body, that actually reflects what the people of Britain think and feel. No more feeling that your vote is wasted or that you have to tactically back the lesser of two evils - everyone's vote counts because everyone can vote for what they believe in.
THAT is how a government should be formed. I think this also says a lot about Green Party credibility. We're not power-hungry. We're not after the ministerial cars and the prestige of getting to say "we're in charge". A Green government would actually redistribute that power so that no one political party holds a disproportionate amount of control. The Prime Minister would be replaced by someone democratically elected by the whole parliament, not just whoever happens to have been leading the party with the most votes at election time.
This is huge. And it's brilliant. It suits everyone, even people who don't share our love of renewable energy or hold the same views on reforming the justice system. Everybody gets represented this way. I said before that I don't like UKIP but that doesn't mean there's no room for a Eurosceptic party to represent the beliefs of British people who don't like being in the EU. Anything that keeps debate open, that keeps questioning and challenging the status quo is a good thing. We're a brilliantly diverse country, and that is as true of our political beliefs as it is anything. If we want to see that taken heed of in the way the country is run, we have to fight to change an archaic and corrupted system, and replace it with something we can be proud of.
If you want to read more of our policies, go to policy.greenparty.org.uk or wait for our manifesto to be published in March. OR find out who your local candidates are and email them and ask to meet up!
