I believe that in 50 years time I will have grandchildren who will ask me “Did you vote for me?”
Today I hope to, by voting for the Green party.
I am not voting for the leader of the Green Party Natalie Bennett to be our next Prime Minister. Nor am I voting because I have been drawn in by the party’s policies of ‘Robin Hood’ taxation, looking after the elderly a bit more or putting the queen in a council house. I’m not even sure that I would want my local Green MP to represent my views in Westminster during the next Parliament. Frankly, I’m not really sure she is up to the job. She is still going to get my vote though and this is why…
The idea that the Green Party, in its current state, should have national polices in a First Past the Post political system, seems a little strange to me. There was one Green MP in the last parliament. Caroline Lucas representing Brighton Pavilion had her chance to share Green policy in a national forum for 5 years whilst representing the views of her constituents. This was a first for the Green Party - this was excellent progress. She wasn’t however called into an emergency meeting of the Cabinet ministers when they were deciding what to do about Bashar al-Assad or deciding funding arrangements for the NHS or discussing Trident nuclear weapons. She didn’t have a say in that - lest we forget.
By voting Green - you are no less putting the country in imminent risk of financial or geo-political meltdown as you are in thinking that doing your recycling every week and becoming vegetarian will immediately halt the march of climate change.
The Green Party and voting Green isn’t about immediate results. And unless you maybe live in parts of Brighton, or Bristol or perhaps Norwich you are more than likely to be on the “losing team” when the votes are counted.
However, like recycling on a very small scale - even when many around you don’t seem to be making the same effort - such proactively is what draws the line between negligible and nothing. You can’t build on nothing but a lot of negligible eventually makes a difference.
Nobody is going to be walking out of No.10 with a green tie anytime soon. The Green Party’s core concept - the environment and sustaining it for future generations - (which I hope they still stand for) is a theme that unlike austerity or immigration or health care, will not ebb and flow. It will only become more and more prominent.
The elephant in the room has still not got everyone’s attention however, and it will be a few more elections yet before vast swathes of the population make determined decisions about their choice of MP based on the threat we pose to the environment.
It currently saddens me therefore that the Green Party have been drawn into a sphere that is not currently one they need to be involved in. Some of the comments in their campaign have at times been like watching an episode of that old programme “faking it” , as they have got a bunch of passionate environmentalists to try and pass themselves off as construction workers or nurses - just by pulling on a bunch of boiler suits or scrubs.
I hope the Green’s were just trying to play it smart. I hope that they aren’t watering down their position as the only party with a core policy that extends the reach of a 5-year term. I hope that their stab at national policy is just pandering to the illogical need some groups have for them to present themselves a legitimate party ready to form the next government.
I’ll be voting green because, in the future, the starkness with which we will look back on these indecisive times with regard to the environment, will be in the same light that we marvel at why it took so long for women to get the vote or for Rosa Parks to be able to take a seat wherever she liked on a city bus.
I’ll be voting green, wearing the same hat I do my recycling in: Making a small, almost insignificant difference now. Waiting for the momentum to gather.
