In the announcement says that “I will also be able to dedicate even more of my work to the political frontline, putting the Green case for change in Parliament and in all circles of national political debate.”

This is an extremely positive development despite the fact that Caroline Lucas is clearly the most capable, extra-ordinary green politician.

Lucas currently has the four most difficult jobs in the Green Party. She is a fantastic constituency MP, the sole Party voice in Parliament, the main port of call for the media and the leader of the party.

It’s in her interests and the long term interests of the party that she creates room for someone to take at least one of those jobs off her hands.

It’s been five years since the referendum in the Green Party to adopt a leadership structure.

However, the moment the party adopted that new structure, the discussion on how it should use that structure stopped in order to move on from that debate.

There’s been no real development of the position of leader (and deputy leader) within the party and Lucas’ announcement gives the Greens a chance to do that.

The party will need to decide in September not just who it wants to elect as leader but how it wants to use the leadership position itself.

A collapsing Coalition government opens up new political opportunities, but getting taken seriously as an opposition party out from under the shadow of the Labour Party will be no mean feat in the second dip of an economic recession.

1. That means popularising a clear vision of how we deal with the politics of austerity and a drive to help local parties embed themselves in growing community movements, trade union struggles and opposing the politics of reaction.

2. We live in times where there is a growing confidence on the fringe right. There needs to be a strong voice against the demonisation of immigrants, homophobic bigotry, and anti-abortion campaigning.

3. That means a focus on building a campaigning party that champions the needs of disabled benefit recipients, opposes every local instance of privatisation of our health and other public services, that keeps pushing for real action on climate change in times when it has dropped down the political agenda.

Caroline Lucas has been, and will continue to be, an outstanding and articulate advocate for Green politics.

She needs to be joined by other higher profile Greens fighting their corner, developing new voices and ensuring that in every town and city in the country there is a viable Green group which makes a real contribution to the politics of the area.

Charities are concerned that the changes will discourage the rich from donating if it’s no longer in their interests and The Telegraph reports today the government has accepted the changes in the rules will impact on charitable giving.

Most of us donate money without taking any tax benefit and no rich person will be prevented from donating to charity, only prevented from taking that money out of tax revenue in order to do so. Even with those caveats, charitable giving is in desperate need of reform.

There are over 162,000 charities in the UK. These range from wholesome providers of housing, healing or hope to less obviously charitable organisations. Eton, for example.

The elite school is very keen to show potential donors the financial benefits of handing over their cash.

While there’s no particular objection to people being able to give their own money to whomever they please, it can’t possibly be right that they take that money out of the revenue we use to pay for state education in order to fund Eton.

Goldman Sachs has a charitable organisation with an income, in 2010, of £57 million, although it only spent a little over £6 million of this on “charitable activities” and, according to the Charities Commission, it has no employees. Our current rules say you can reduce your tax bill by giving to Goldman Sachs Giving (UK) while councils plead poverty when it comes to keeping open libraries.

These rules allow the rich to take tax revenue out of the Treasury’s income and decide where it’s spent, whether that’s on something we can all agree is charity or organisations that look a lot less benign, but somehow have wangled charitable status.

I don’t want to see youth projects or medical research denied funding which is precisely why I don’t want to see the rich reducing the amount of tax they pay by bunging money to elite education establishments or having wings named after them in some dodgy institution.

If we lived in a society that didn’t let people fall through the cracks and ensured decent funding for housing, the old, the disabled, and the young we wouldn’t need some of these charities in the first place.

The first step is to ensure that we all pay our fair share in tax and that we tighten up who can and cannot call themselves a charity.

Livingstone attended the meeting and was grilled by London Greens on topics as diverse as domestic violence, the financial system, and the record of Labour councils as well as more traditional environmental topics like air pollution, walking and cycling and incineration.

Although many at the meeting were skeptical when Ken claimed that the election of Ed Miliband proved that New Labour was dead they also appreciated that his environmental record was head and shoulders above that of Boris Johnson.

The Greens formally backed a second preference vote for Livingstone after debating whether associating with Labour would cost them votes by associating with a “toxic brand”.

A number of members pointed out that their experience of Labour was not a happy one and they had no wish for the decision to be misrepresented, as it has sometimes been in 2008, as an endorsement for Labour as a whole.

Others thought the priority had to be to get Johnson out and that Livingstone was the only candidate placed to do that.

After a robust but friendly debate members voted by a ratio of just over two to one to back a second preference for Labour’s candidate.

We were treated to the spectacle of otherwise straightlaced councillors laying into the powers that be.

Some even suggested TfL executives should be charged with corporate manslaughter for their alleged negligence.

While no one can prevent every accident, the fact is a number of dangerous junctions are a genuine hazard to (primarily) cyclists, and neither Boris Johnson nor Transport for London are taking them seriously.

They believe the priority has to be ‘to keep traffic flowing’.

The two recent fatal accidents of cyclists at the Bow roundabout stem directly from the mishandling of the so-called Cycle Superhighway.

You and I might just see a bit of blue paint on the road with no actual dedicated space for cyclists but to Boris and TfL we have a key plank in their cycling infrastructure.

These deaths both occured in the exact same spot where the blue paint stops and the cyclist is dumped into the midst of some of the most feral, aggressive driving you’ll witness in London with no space to call their own.

Boris has refused to address this because it a) means accepting all is not well with his high profile blue paint and b) he is avowedly opposed to anything that he thinks might slow down cars, even if it costs lives.

Cyclists went out last weekend and took part in a ‘tour du danger‘ of the ten most dangerous junctions in London to highlight these hot spots. How many years are these concerns going to be raised with no action taken?

It’s extremely troubling that we have a Mayor and transport authority who have prioritised keeping Red Routes flowing and Olympic routes over the needs of road users who don’t happen to be motorised.

To get the ball rolling I thought I’d make a few suggestions, based on things we already know, that may not abolish capitalism but would at least re-establish a little social democracy.

I’m sure collectively we can come up with something stronger.

1. More Regulation of the finance sector
The bonfire of the quangos saw this government shift away from holding industries to account for their actions and towards trusting in the market. We need a stronger regulatory framework on the financial industry – and one that is genuinely policed, by the police.

We need regulators that are genuinely independent of the banking and financial sectors that have real powers to curb the excesses of unaccountable multi-nationals. This includes paying their fair share in taxes, in full, on time, or else. It should also include real action on tax havens both at home and abroad.

2. Halt the Privatisations:
For the last thirty years successive governments have embarked on a programme of privatising public services. This has left us with numerous examples of unreliable, inefficient, and over-priced services and still the sell-offs and outsourcing continue.

We want value for money, we want public services to be run for the public good and we want public sector workers to have secure employment. The dogma that all public services must be open to the private sector must stop. There should be a moratorium on all PFI and other PPP agreements, they have simply not delivered value for money.

We should begin the process of bringing back into public ownership those privatised industries that are not delivering for the public – starting with the railways. We should end outsourcing as a blanket policy rebuilding inhouse services to create fully integrated health, education and other services that are wholly owned and controlled within the public sector.

3. Real Investment:
A strong economy that serves people’s needs takes real investment. We need an investment programme designed to create skills, provide jobs, increase well being and lower our environmental impact. A low pay, low skill economy will not make us, wherever we are in the 99%, happy.

We should start rolling out a mass home insulation programme, renewable technologies, public transport, pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, urban regeneration, alongside subsidies and incentives for job creation that meets a strong set of environmental and community benefits. We can create worthwhile jobs and increase everyone’s quality of life.

4. Clean up politics:
We deserve a modern, clear democracy where lobbying is transparent and the gravy train of directorships and speaking tours for MPs and Ministers is brought to an end.

We should do away with the pomp and affectations of Parliament replacing them with procedural and financial systems that are up-to-date and easy for all to understand and engage with.

The link between corporate interests and the political class is too strong. Cleaning up politics means cleaning up British multi-nationals and big money. Where our corporations are involved in corruption, criminality or injustice abroad we should hold them to account.

5. Introduce a Tobin Tax:
We should introduce a Tobin Tax on international currency exchanges. The international money markets are too efficient and too fast at what they do, which creates a real risk of an artificially induced financial crisis.

A Tobin Tax (aka Robinhood tax) on these exchanges slows the markets down, creating a limited safety barrier between the real economy and international financial speculation.

6. Equal pay legislation that works:
A fair society is an equal society but forty one years after The Equal Pay Act the difference in wages between men and women is now 15.5%. We need to address this.

Measures to tackle unequal pay include: Flexible working legislation, greater support for part-time and casual working, flexible parental leave and gender pay audits that oblige larger businesses to open their books. We cannot tackle inequalities without exposing them to the light of day.

7. Real fairness at work:
As the government seeks to reduce rights at work to those who have been with an employer for under two years we should be demanding real fairness at work. We should re-examine the anti-trade union legislation and rebalance the law in favour of working people who have real grievances.

Introducing a real living wage would make great strides in reducing economic inequality in this country and would ironically cut the benefits bill which currently heavily subsidises low wage employers.

We should ensure that migrant workers, the disabled and other marginalised groups have their contribution to the economy properly recognised financially and socially. Where immigration laws are used against members of a workforce those laws will be reformed.

The Party opposes the cap on the basis that it is socially divisive. It rejects the argument, put forward by many supporting the cap, that immigration harms the economy, saying rather that it has many positive effects.

The Green Party is for liberalising our current immigration controls to help ensure that individuals are not left vulnerable to exploitation and ill-treatment by virtue of their immigration status.

I said to Camden journalist and blogger Richard Osley:

diversity is something to be celebrated rather than be constantly treated as a problem. The current muddle headed Coalition policy does not even have the backing of employers and will certainly be used to restrict the rights of those who did not happen to be born in this country. To those who argue that migrants can be used to undercut wages and divide and rule I say that the answer to exploitation is not to regulate the exploited but to regulate the exploiters.

Jean Lambert, London’s Green MEP, said

The immigration cap is a dishonest policy which sees migrants treated as the cause of problems they have had no part in. There are serious issues around housing, casualisation at work , and the need for improved public services but we cannot address these by blaming immigration.

The Coalition have not defined the problem that they are using such a blunt tool to solve and that’s why the Green Party is calling for a real review that takes into account the full benefits of immigration rather than simply treating migrants as a problem to be managed.”

The motion reads;

“The Green Party reaffirms its commitment to a liberal immigration policy. Everyone is equal no matter what the colour of their passport.

The Coalition’s policy of introducing an immigration cap restricts people’s rights based purely on their nationality, harms the economy and is not conducive to a free and happy society.

The Green Party is in favour of a real review of border controls that takes in the full benefits of immigration and stops treating those who are not native to the UK as a problem.”

The motion reads:

The Green Party of England and Wales is opposed to cuts in essential local government services.

Conference calls on GPEX [the national executive], within existing resources, to offer support (e.g. policy and external communications support) to Green Party councillors and other publicly elected Green Party representatives not to vote for such cuts, support them in refusing to do so.

GPEW deplores the Coalition Government’s huge reductions in government grant to each local authority but recognises that each local authority has a legal duty to set a balanced budget.

Green councillors will be supported in putting forward imaginative alternatives that will protect jobs and services.

Such alternatives could include the following:

- cutting senior pay for top council executives
- reducing the millions spent on expensive private sector consultants
- cutting down on glossy PR and council spin
- reducing council fuel bills by making schools, libraries and other buildings more energy efficient
- introducing workplace parking levies

Such a stand will facilitate the effective participation of such representatives and members in the local campaigns against cuts which are required, and will provide a lead for other councillors, trade unionists and community activists.

Inevitably they’ve chosen a scale where being on the right takes you up to +100 and being a lefty is -100 but, despite this outrageous bias I think there’s something quite valuable about asking people upfront where they see themselves on the political spectrum.

So the headline news is that 25% of people see themselves as left of centre and 24% see themselves as right of centre. Hurray! We’re winning, let’s move on…

Although another way of saying that would be that the majority of people do not describe themselves as left or right-wing, even a bit.

The other number that jumps out at you is that women are twice as likely to be less certain of their political direction. Seeing as most men think they know everything I guess this fits.

Although, the big thing for me is that so many people simply did not know how to answer the question which, as ever, is probably for a whole number of reasons. Come on, let’s look at the regions (and Scotland, which is not a region but a country).

Would it shock you to find out that Scotland and the North were the most left wing parts of the UK? No? Me neither.

There is an interesting difference between them though in that Scotland’s 33% left, 23% centre and 15% right is not identical to the North’s 31% left, 19% centre and 20% right. The North’s lefties are more likely to see themselves as harder left but, unlike in the North, Scots are more than twice as likely to see themselves as on the left than the right.

While London is to the left of the sea of right wing South surrounding it, it is still the place where a ‘person’ is most likely to describe themselves as on the far right. I bet loads of that is Essex.

I should point out that 2% of the South thought David Cameron was very left wing. Who’d have thought? I guess you can show anything with statistics…

Although I’ve yet to make my mind up about who I’ll be supporting for the role Jenny will be a strong contender for my pick.

It’s no secret that I have significant political differences with Jenny around policing issues, where I think she has always been too willing to see the police’s side of any question.

But I’ve never confused this with the idea that she is unwilling to criticise the police (she is, for example when she was the instigator of reopening the investigation into Blair Peach’s death) or the fact that she is an excellent and radical green politician.

If she is selected by the Green Party, I will be extremely happy to give her my first preference (and probably Ken number two, as long as he behaves).

According to the ever excellent Mayor Watch;

The party will announce its candidate in March following a ballot of all London members.

Jones will be joined her bid by fellow Assembly Member Darren Johnson who will serve as her running mate. Johnson unsuccessfully stood as Mayor in the 2000 and 2004 elections…

In a statement Jones said the capital “desperately needs the green measures that a Green Mayor would introduce for a cleaner, safer city. Whether it’s cleaning up on air pollution, investing in public transport, increasing the supply of affordable homes, or keeping the police local, Greens deliver on their promises and work for the whole of London.”

For me I’m going to wait and see who else announces their intention to run before making up my mind on who I’ll be supporting for my first preference (Greens use STV in internal elections) and I’m hoping we’ll have at least one or two more high quality candidates to choose from to make the race truly competitive.

Certainly one of her strengths will be that she knows exactly what is expected of a Green Party Mayoral candidate and, as a disciplined and intelligent campaigner, would be a safe pair of hands for the role in my opinion.

I mentioned in passing high profile Punjabi governor Salman Taseer who was an outspoken advocate of the reforms. He was the focus of much bile and criticism from the religious right.

Today he was murdered.

Shot by a member of his own security detail.Pakistan is in crisis.

Caught in a vice like grip between the West and the East, between democratic values of equality and tolerance and murderous religious fundamentalism.

The government is both violent, weak and split. The economy is in a poor state and much of the country is still suffering badly from flooding. These are not happy times.

Although Taseer and Shahrbano Rehman, the outstanding woman moving the amendment, are both members of the ruling party the government has been at pains to distance themselves from the proposals and, it seems, that numerous death threats against themselves and their supporters have been ignored by the authorities – leaving reformers exposed.

But while the government has taken no action against leading religious figures condemning Taseer and Rehman it seems that one man did react.

After Taseer’s guard shot his charge dead he handed himself in. “The police guard who killed him says he did this because Mr Taseer recently defended the proposed amendments to the blasphemy law. This is what he told the police after surrendering himself.”

Just a few days ago Taseer had spoken at a rally commemorating the third anniversary of the death of Benazir Bhutto at the hands of an assassin.

There are strong forces for progress in Pakistan, but they have a huge mountain to climb. Meanwhile, good and principled people like Taseer are dying.

Critics add that the law is used to persecute religious minorities or to pursue vendettas.

Reports indicate that the strike, called by the religious parties and supported by a number of industrialists, had a wide ranging support closing down most major cities and public transport.

The proposals are being brought by Shahrbano Rahman, right, a founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan who was present when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

Rahman may be a member of the ruling party but she is a strong advocate for human rights and has previously brought the Women Empowerment Bill, the Anti-Honor Killings Bill, the Domestic Violence Prevention Bill, the Affirmative Action Bill and the Hudood Repeal Bill as well as the the Freedom of Information Bill and the Press Act that opposed the arbitrary arrest of journalists.

Her bill seeks to eliminate the death penalty, criminalize incitement, and penalize false accusations. The government has distanced itself from her proposals although the governor of the Punjab Salman Taseer has been an outspoken advocate of the reforms.

Protesters demanded the death of Aasia Bibi, right, the first woman to have been sentenced to death under the law (in November), who fell foul of the law for her Roman Catholic beliefs. One leading campaigner said he’d give 6,000 dollars to anyone who killed her.

Since the law was enacted in 1986 1,060 people have been charged under the blasphemy law including 133 Christians, 450 Muslims, 456 Ahmadis and 21 Hindus. While executions are not carried out around thirty people have been lynched due to these prosecutions and it is thought that seven “committed suicide” while in police custody.

Rehman said that it was necessary to “remove the teeth and infamous use of the blasphemy laws, but to understand the way forward for our society, as minorities remain the most exploited members of society… We need to seek out a way of removing these laws from the statute books”.

Politicians like Rehman, whose Parliamentary track record is excellent, are fighting a dangerous battle to try to push their society forwards. She’ll be more than aware of the murderous track record of the religious forces and the military that are ranged against her – but yet she carries on anyway because of a deep commitment to human rights.

It’s a shame that her struggle has not received more attention in the Western press, because Pakistan is a central political player on the global stage. Arguably anyway that Pakistan tips could see whole sections of the world follow.

If they are moving forwards on women’s rights, religious freedom and against corruption then it could potentially help those in other nations who are also engaged in those struggles.

The moment I hear someone use the phrase I know with absolute certainty that this is not a ‘normal’ person but a political activist.

I’ve never heard any member of my family use the phrase, any of my non-activist friends nor come across it in everyday conversation, even when discussing the government.

The *only* time I hear it in use is from committed political activists. The phrase ConDem simply serves to create an internal language for the left that excludes those we’re seeking to bring in.

It’s effectively the equivalent of the right’s ZaNu-Labour that tried to draw similarities between Mugabe’s regime and Brown’s.

Its sole useful function is that it allows you to identify people who are going to be against the government no matter what happens, effectively ruling them out of any rational debate.

For me, ConDem is very much like the phrase FibDem. Whoever came up with it can feel rightly smug about a nice turn of phrase, but the moment it goes into your everyday language it’s just lazy and childish. These pieces of jargon seek to deepen the tribalism of the situation at the expense of reasoned analysis.

Don’t get me wrong, some people love it. Just as some people like screaming the word ‘SCUM’ at the top of their lungs on demonstrations. God bless them all I say, but I hope it’s worth bearing in mind that while the name calling is an easy way of making one part of the movement feel warm and cuddly it simultaneously makes another part of the movement wince in embarrassment.

Where it’s a question of semantics why adopt jargon that adds nothing to your point but creates a barrier to potential allies enthusiastically embracing your ideas? Even if it’s only 5% of people who end up labelling you as dogmatic, that’s 5% of people that we want, that we’ve lost.

Obviously there’s no neutral way of speaking and we all have dialects and idiosyncrasies that some will like better than others, which is one reason why political and cultural diversity is a good thing when you’re trying to build a movement, but I’m not quite sure that’s the same thing as using language only a clique relate to.

It’s not simply that Osbourne scaled back the plans of building new affordable homes by 30%, there has been a general assault on rights and benefits that will lead to misery and homelessness.

The ending of Secure Tenancies for council house tenants is the end of an era. The post-war settlement that created affordable homes for working people was a massive attack upon one of the great divides in society – decent housing.

As council houses have been gradually sold off the stock has more and more become a backstop to house the most vulnerable in society rather than ensuring the majority have somewhere decent to live.

Those secure tenancies were there to give the poor stability and reassurance, a firm base upon which to build a life. These moves entrench the shift towards using council housing as emergency, short term accommodation – a shift already well underway with the breakup of council housing stock a the growing use of ‘Social Landlords’.

As the Telegraph reports there is also a new rise in rents; “new council house tenants face a steep hike in living costs, offering intermediate rents at around 80 per cent of the market rent.”

The attacks on housing benefit have been signalled well in advance and we know they will lead to both a new wave of homelessness and an exodus from high housing areas, like London, which already suffer from a lack of essential workers unable to afford high rents and/or mortgages. Indeed this feeds into the benefit cap of £500 a week per household as a family living in a high rent area will find it very difficult to cope with rising rents.

The Citizens Advice Bureau, in a hard hitting press release condemned the CSR and pointed to the that;

Housing benefit has already been cut back and the extraordinary decision to raise single room rate to 35 year-olds will lead to an explosion of homelessness, and will hit single working people on low incomes as well as the single unemployed. The measure to restrict contribution-based ESA to 12 months betrays people who have paid contributions all their working lives and become sick or disabled.
…
They told us that their top priorities for the spending review were simplification of welfare benefits, free to use government helplines and affordable housing. We welcome the announcement that the welfare benefits system will be simplified to make it easier to understand and navigate. In the meantime we urge the government to maintain and continue to improve service standards and ensure the new system is designed with the needs of service users in mind.“

The single room rate, which I’d not even been aware of until the CSR, will mean that under-35s will only be able to receive housing benefit if they are living in shared accommodation. So if you’re currently working for the public sector and living in a small flat a redundancy notice will mean you’re out on the street as well as out of work.

The National Housing Federation warned that 1.7 percent of jobs in the construction industry could be lost.

Remember kids,Nick Clegg says the cuts are fair, and I quote “the review is one that promotes fairness, underpins growth, reduces carbon emissions and localises power.”

On Friday night at close of counting there was just 40 votes between her and incumbent right wing Mayor, Kerry Prendergast, with Prendergast in front. Counting was then suspended while the ‘special votes’ came in (votes from embassies, delayed postal votes and others).

The final vote today, Wednesday, was 24,881 to Celia and 24,705 to Kerry.

This comes on top of an already good set of results in the local elections across New Zealand for the left and for the Greens, although it’s beyond me to do the number crunching because candidates don’t use party descriptions, making a proper analysis the preserve of those with a far more in depth knowledge of local politics than I have.

Prendergast was running for her fourth term as Mayor and had a generally good reputation, which made her a tough opponent to beat.

In Celia’s victory speech she described her success as “the ongoing evolution of Wellingtonians’ existing commitment to a resilient, cosmopolitan and beautiful city, a continuation of some trends to a cleaner ocean, renewable energy and protected biodiversity, and definitely a city where there are quality jobs and worthwhile businesses.”

The broad based campaign which focused on transport, technology and communities drew in activists and organisers well beyond the Green Party itself. She also said that her election showed “the Greens can be a credible force in governing communities”.

I know anything that causes mild inconvenience is always treated as a gross affront to our human rights and anyone exercising their actual human rights is to be automatically denounced as selfish and evil -but I still support the strike.

Is it because I’m a godless communist? Well, yes and no. Certainly being a godless communist helps if you’re going to oppose the press, the government, the Mayor of London and just downright, globally accepted, common sense. However, there is some common sense on my side too.

The rail unions RMT and TSSA (the latter of which is neither run by nor bossed about by Bob Crow) are staging another 24 hour strike against the proposal to reduce staffing levels on the tube.

Transport for London have called the strikes “pointless” because there are no proposed compulsory redundancies and no threat to staff wages.

But the Tube workers are striking for safety, not financial advancement – and frankly I’m not the only person who thinks that protecting safety on the tube is far from “pointless”.

If this strike wins it will benefit Londoners in an extremely direct way. Not only will the plans to undermine staffing levels reduce customer service on the tube, making life more inconvenient permanently, not just just for one day – it will also directly cost lives.

Maybe someone you know, maybe you or maybe a stranger – but lives none the less.

Once again it is the unions that are the only barrier between the interests of the public and the interests of the wealthy.

Once again the press and the government will denounce the strikes, and complain that each strike costs us money… but then that’s the only thing that has any point for them, and we have the choice to accept or reject those values in favour of something better.

So what’s to account for the rise which, like in Sweden, does not seem to have effected other parties to the left of the centre?

One explanation is that the new right-wing coalition’s decision to extend the life of existing nuclear power stations has hit a nerve in a nation that has had a vibrant anti-nuclear movement for many decades.


The current ruling Tory/Liberal Coalition (CDU and FDP on the graph) is polling at 34% to the SPD/Green 48%, or 58% if you include the Left Party.

Others point to a fresh way of doing politics – they have the first Turkish (joint) leader of a political party and they have refused to get bogged down as an alternative to the Left Party, having been willing to deal with the parties of the right when it suits them.

That’s certainly not to my taste, but it’s quite possible that this has allowed them to eat into the CDU’s vote as well as the SPD’s.

Ironically the CDU’s backing for nuclear power has put a stop the potential deals between the Greens and the right so they’re getting the best of both worlds – looking open minded and willing to work with anyone, whilst the right has cut itself out of the picture.

Another theory is that with hundreds of thousands out on the street mobilised for an issue that the Greens claimed as their own years ago that surge of anti-government protest has fortuitously fallen in the lap of the Greens. Der Speigel think this might cause as many problems for the Greens as it offers opportunities, as the party is no longer simply a party of protest.

Who knows whether this will last or becomes a deeper long-term trend but it is becoming clearer that across Europe the centre simply is not holding. But the ground hasn’t always shifted towards the traditional far-right or far-left parties either.

However, since then there has been little discussion of how to implement the new system, I believe in order to help heal some of the wounds and concentrate on politics, funnily enough.

That’s all very sensible but the fact is with poorly contested elections the party has essentially allowed inertia decide for it what we want from our leader.

I’ll get out of the way right now that Caroline Lucas is a superb politician and that I’ve taken a decision not to publicly back either deputy candidate (Adrian or Derek). So this post is not about them but about the roles they seek to fill.

What this post *is* about is whether our reluctance to talk about what we want from our leadership team has left us in a situation where we use the posts simply to raise the profile of our two candidates best placed to win a Parliamentary seat. I’m not sure that’s what they should be for.

Two years ago we elected Caroline and Adrian not just on the basis of their excellent personal qualities but also on the basis that we wanted them to become MPs and the added national media profile of these positions undoubtedly helped. We were right at the time, I think, but this shouldn’t be the ongoing model which would end up prioritising two Parliamentary seats above the rest of our work.

Now Caroline is elected, for example, there is a good case that she definitely should not be the leader so that we do not become a one person party.

Caroline’s role as MP gives her the highest profile in the Greens regardless of internal position and if Adrian had run for leader with a new running mate, for example, we’d have upped his media profile and given the job to someone with time to do it. Heresy you say!

The facts are that Caroline is a very busy person. She’s being excellent in her constituency, in the House, in the press, radio and on TV. As someone who provides inspiration to party members she is absolutely second to none. However, in terms of day to day party leadership we’re far less well served. Politically, organisationally and in simple terms of having time to just listen to party members across the country she just does not have the time.

I think it’s strange that we took such a radical shift in our structures and then devoted no time afterwards to making sure they actually worked for the party in practice.

Perhaps the bigwigs have discussed it, but not with us if they have. I think we need to start exploring some of these questions, although I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers.

Do we have a leadership model where local parties and activists think they are taken seriously? Has the role of leader and deputy changed in wake of the election? How do we support Caroline in her phenomenally difficult task? And of course how can she ensure that what she’s doing is what the party wants of her?

This is also a debate the Green Party needs to have right now.

——
A longer version is at The Daily (Maybe)

No, not the sort Ministers stuff into their crack pipes, the grass in Hyde Park of course.

The demonstration, which eventually attracted over a million people, making it the largest mobilisation in the history of the UK, was to be cancelled because the grass issue may also mean…

People can get crushed, people can break their legs – there are a lot of things that happen at this time of year and it would be very unwise of us to take such a risk

That, as an official statement, reads more like a local mafioso saying “Shop windows can get…. broken… if you’re not careful.”

This all flooded back to me when I saw that Boris Johnson had made these comments about the eviction of the “Democracy Village” camped outside Parliament.

I think it’s wonderful that as a city we can protest. But it is nauseating what they are doing to the lawn.

Quite correctly Johnson has identified that democracy is a lovely idea, but not when it comes at the price of a nice bit of the green stuff. You need to pamper your pampas, after all. (Evening Standard has pics of the great grass massacre, here)

However, while I have little sympathy for the argument that grass has more rights than people, I am slightly more concerned about the rights of individuals to permanently rob everyone else of common land.

It’s not simply the uber-hierarchical model of moralising protest that Brian Haw typifies, it’s also the fact that if you’re opposed to, say, privatising public property, you shouldn’t then claim personal ownership over common land yourself.

These protesters made the Square unusable for everyone else, and they hoped to do this on a long term or permanent basis. Is that democracy or simply giving yourself property rights over land that was held in common? Is it wrong for the State to sell off public property but ok for a self-appointed group of randoms to rock up and claim our land for themselves?

Even those poor little blades of grass were part of the common treasury until this small squad of elitists squatted on them. I’m not entirely sure I 100% approve.

I’m certainly not saying that these issues are not complex and, usually, require some sort of negotiation but I am saying that democracy is not just about everyone being allowed to do whatever they like, no matter how anti-social.

I’m all for attempting to understand Moat’s motives but some have bordered on sympathy.

Empathising with a perpetrator of domestic violence without any but the most cursory nod towards the victims of that violence is to place the importance of Moat’s feelings above those of his victims.

However, Cameron has asked Facebook to remove Moat fan pages where tens of thousands have signed up to say what a “legend” the killer was.

Facebook, I think rightly, refused to take the page down – although their inconsistency on what they censor is frustrating. You can’t ban these ideas, you need to argue against them.

The fact that large numbers of men and women are leaving supportive messages on the page speaks to something that many people never see spoken out loud, and it’s an opportunity to look facts in the face. A few examples of posts left by women on the site include;

• love got the better of you moat, RIP x
• His head went, simple as that, anyway he had a fucked up childhood, his baby mom was messing with his brain while he was serving a sentence. them man up newcastle there heads are all fucked, beer drinking steriod taking dudes. Never the less rest in peace Raoul Moat I don’t think you are a legend, but a man whos’ heart is torn and whose integrity was no more, R.I.P.
• RIP, guess it all just got too much for you man :/

The fact that people can say things like “love got the better of you” in response to Moat’s killing spree is a product of the way the media focused its attention on an “exciting” movie-like narrative without once giving the thing its proper name – domestic violence.

If you’re ex-partner beats you or tries to kill you it is not because “love got the better” of him but because he’s a violent misogynist. By turning Moat into the central figure of an exciting man-hunt media circus the press inevitably gave him a more glamorous appearance than he deserved.

While there may be lessons to learned it is the extraordinary behaviour of the media that needs to be under the spotlight. Hyping up a sad little man into a hero while cavalierly putting his life, the lives of the public and the police in danger, is beyond excuses.

But back to Facebook for a moment – the reason it works is by harnessing the enthusiasms of the general public. Cameron is opposed to that when they express ideas he doesn’t like, but this comes just a week after Cameron hoped to harness the site for his cuts agenda.

The fact is you can’t have it both ways. If you want to use social networking you have to understand that it works because it is unfettered, and if you start banning groups because you think they’re distasteful – guess what – some people might find laying off public sector workers a downright disgrace.

See also Obsolete, Organized Rage, Green Reading, Doc Richard, The F Word, Richard Osley, Martin.

The law, which was introduced by a “delegation for the rights of women” criminalised women who choose to wear the “wrong” clothes.

If the senate passes the law it will be illegal to wear a full face-veil and you can be fined and forced to go to citizenship classes. It’s also a crime (rightly) to force someone to wear a veil, including your children.

The fact that there is no distinction between criminalising someone who forces a woman to wear a veil and criminalising a woman who wants to wear a veil is a complete disgrace, but the worst of it is that this law had almost no opposition in Parliament.

Obviously the right voted for the measures but the left just gave these racist measures a free pass either voting for them or, more often, abstaining. Just one Parliamentarian voted against, just one. Daniel Garrigue.

Garrigue is a former UMP (Tory) member who resigned the whip in 2008 citing undemocratic processes in the party, some tax law I know nothing about and disagreeing with his party’s support for Nato.

On his blog Garrigue explained that he’s happy for there to be laws against people forcing others to wear the veil and for a law to prohibit the veil on the grounds of security in particular places – but in general he sees it as a massive restriction of liberty, which it is.

He believes there is a climate of racism growing across Europe and this law will legitimise the National Front. The stunning thing is that he is the only one of the lot of them that accepted these blatantly obvious arguments.

This law will entrench the ever deepening racism in French society and embolden the Islamophobes across the continent, not to mention criminalising women for daring to wear what they like.

I thought it might be useful to give the results for May at the same time.

They need to be taken with a small pinch of salt though as people had three votes in May and the Lib Dems and Tories only stood two candidates in May.

The much reduced turnout of 25% compared to 58% in May is only to be expected as the General Election boosted turnout all over. Interesting that it didn’t make a massive difference to the actual vote proportions though, apart from the dreadful result for the Tories.

This result is a real blow to the BNP who are already feeling like they are being pulled downwards, back into the sewer that they came from.

If even ‘high profile’ members like Barnbrook can’t hold onto a council seat what hope for the future? Ho hum!

One last word, well done to UKIP for standing this time, but they could have tried a bit harder to filtch some of those hard right votes couldn’t they? It could’ve made all the difference.

As always with Liberal Conspiracy there was a bit too much of a focus on ‘framing’ and ‘narrative’ for my tastes, but I’m not criticising that – it’s just I find that kind of language a little bit alienating.

Some people were talking about using anecdotal “stories” that help personalise the cuts and demonstrate the effect they have on people’s lives. I think there is value in that, but it can only go so far.

The problem is that both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives are happy to admit that cuts are painful and cause hardship – this is not contested.

What is contested is whether the cuts are necessary. That’s economics, not story telling – which may help illustrate your point, but it cannot be the point your making.

What we need to articulate in a more accessible form is the case against cuts, which is broadly a debate between the economics of Hayek and Keynes, certainly in the mainstream of the debate.

However, in ‘our’ camp we have three different approaches to this question.

First we have the approach that the cuts are too deep, too soon, but deficit reduction along these lines is inevitable. These people want to slow the cuts, and ensure they don’t hit critical services.

Second we have those who oppose cuts as a deficit reduction measure on the basis that we can use equality and growth to combat the crisis. Savage cuts will wreak the economy, at a time when we should be investing, boosting jobs and raising extra funds from progressive taxation and schemes like the Robin Hood tax. These people argue that cuts full stop are bad for the economy, that laying people off as the dole queues grow is a recipe for a vicious cycle of decline.

Lastly we have anti-capitalists. This group steals arguments from the other two but essentially places the blame for the crisis on the economic framework itself and seeks to challenge that in a more fundamental way. Splenetic venting about bankers and fat cats is part of that, but it actually goes far further. The crisis was not caused by Leaman Brothers or Freddie Mac but the priorities of a system where profits come before people, and the millions come second to the millionaires.

Actually many people are mix of the three, but I think the categories stand.

How to find a unified voice then? Well it’s not as tricky as it sounds as long as you don’t expect everyone to sing from the same hymn sheet all of the time.

As of right now there are probably hundreds of campaign groups set up, formally or informally, up and down the country to defend local communities against specific cuts. All these groups will be alliances and, on the whole, they are an embryonic eco-system of resistance. Bloggers can be part of linking those campaigns, putting them in touch with each other and creating a more conscious movement against the cuts.

Those campaigns will be providing the arguments on the human cost of the cuts, these are useful for us all to remind us what we are fighting for. What that network of citizen journalists and campaigners should be doing is providing a digestible economic alternative that shows not just why cutting public services in dangerous and painful, but also why it is the wrong economic strategy. They can also provide resources, some fun some serious and weighty, that are useful campaigning tools that can be used and adapted across the country.

To my mind this approach needs to be supporting those resistance campaigns from the bottom up, rather than attempting to create a national army of clone campaigns under the auspices of a central command. I don’t think that will work and it’s not necessary because those community groups are already springing up ‘organically’.

The left Keynsians and the anti-capitalists (I hope you forgive the crude generalisations there) can actually unite pretty easily on this and the wet left who think cuts are being managed poorly will find it harder to fit into that framework than they will when they become involved in the local campaigns to defend specific services. We can’t play to the lowest common denominator so they’ll just have to catch up.

It’s going to be a Oona King vs Ken Livingstone stand-off with the winner to be decided at the Labour caber tossing contest late September.

I’m interested not just because I’m a nosy buggar, but also because a) I live in London and so I’m curious as to who hopes to rule over me and b) we get a second preference in the Mayorals which, last time round, the Green Party officially recommended using for the Labour candidate.

If Labour select Ken I’m confident we’ll repeat that happy experience, but if they select some bomb loving politician-for-the-sake-of-it then I doubt London Greens would be shy about publicly critiquing the lack of progressive credentials in Labour candidate and we may well have a less supportive stance.

The two hopefuls are like chalk and cheese in many ways. King spent her time in Parliament as an ultra-loyal speak your policy machine while Livingstone has been a thorn in Labour’s side for decades.

King has always been eminently ignorable and defeatable while Livingstone is a formidable customer, who walks the walk and is able to defeat real opponents both internal and external. He took on all comers, including Labour’s Frank Dobson, to win the Mayoralty in the first place. His medal cabinet is unique in British politics, King on the other hand is “fresh” and essentially untested.

Oona says of her candidacy

We can’t kid ourselves that we can beat Boris Johnson by using the same rhetoric or policy platform that failed last time. We need fresh new ideas. We need an honest conversation with London based on our values and aspirations – that’s what this site and my candidacy is about.

It’s nice to hear she’s going to single-handedly overturn Labour’s entire policy platform, but her website gives little indication of in what way she intends to this. Does she mean she’s going to reverse policy on transport and the congestion charge? Will she issue all Brazilians with bullet proof vests on the tube? What?

It’s not that the Greens agree with Ken all the time, but he’s a serious politician who we can work with on friendly terms and with whom we genuinely do share a great deal of political ground. The same cannot be said for King whose track record of coalition building does not extend beyond the Iraq invasion.

It’s good that there’s a choice and quite rightly I don’t get a vote in Labour’s selection process, but I will get a say in whether the Greens recommend a second preference for Labour in 2012 and that rests entirely on who they pick as their candidate.

The papers do not record whether the fox’s friends filmed the incident on their mobile phones, or whether the fox had arrived in London from Poland in a secret compartment in a lorry.

Whatever the ins and outs of the case, and let’s assume it’s all true, this would make it an extremely rare occurrence.

The Guardian tells us that “Vulpes vulpes has long fascinated and repelled us”, which is news to me. Who is this “us” who have long been “repelled” by beautiful urban foxes? Bed wetting Guardian journalists no doubt.

The article ends with a list of ways of “off foxing the fox” which are basically a number of ways of moving the fox into your neighbour’s garden.

Thankfully the Guardian’s eco-wing has a better article by the sainted Terry Nutkins which a) casts doubt on whether this was a fox at all and b) reminds us that foxes not go out of their way to harm humans, the harm is purely a one-way process. Well worth a read.

The BBC reports that the authorities went and found a fox and killed it in retaliation but they also quote a fox expert, John Bryant, who says that a fox attack of this kind makes no sense what-so-ever.

Whatever really happened in this case I’m concerned that, in typical knee jerk fashion, we may be facing a reprisal fox cull which will make no one any the safer but do yet more to purge our cities of some of its most delightful inhabitants.

McDonnell comes in a straight clear red, softened by his personable and thoughtful style while Abbott is more of a free thinking leftist who often does not conform to type. In other words she’s not as left-wing as McDonnell, but then again it would be hard to live up to his impeccable, mace wielding, credentials.

Well, I say impeccable…

But he’s been consistently opposed to electoral reform on the basis that Labour might seats and he’s also supported odd EDMs on homeopathy and voted for the Digital Economy Bill but these aside he’s as sound as a pound.

The objections most often aired about Abbott tend to revolve around two things. First that she’s on TV a lot and second that she sent her kid to a private school. Having heard Ed Balls on Radio Four yesterday I’d say that someone who is capable of being in the glare of the media without collapsing into a blubbering ridiculous heap is probably an advantage.

The school thing is less fortunate although quite why this as been elevated to the status it has been as opposed to the way, for example, Jon Cruddas voted for the launching of an illegal war that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands is quite beyond me. I’m pretty relaxed about candidates that are not 100% on message, and I’m certainly repulsed by the idea that to be on the left you have to be a moral paragon.

If we compare the left’s challenge this time to last time’s dress rehearsal we see differences and similarities. We’re obviously seeing a more open field rather than the coronation of Brown. We’re not seeing an associated deputy election, at least I hope not. However the attitude of McDonnell’s supporters is surprisingly similar.

Last time McDonnell’s allies chose belligerence as their coalition building tool of choice. They poured poison over both Michael Meacher, who they described as fake left, and bile over deputy leadership challenger Jon Cruddas who they simultaneously insisted had to back McDonnell.

This time it’s Abbott who is being accused of being fake left, despite the fact that she backed McDonnell’s campaign last time around. I don’t think this sort of heat will do anything except make it impossible for McDonnell to get onto the ballot paper – and he deserves to be there.

Whatever the outcome I hope that one of them is on the ballot paper, although I suspect it is extremely unlikely that either of them will be able to make a truly significant challenge for the top post simply because they represent a Labour Party that does not exist – and maybe never did.