Can the Green Party change tack to become a real force for change?

Written by David Taylor

There are any number of nautical cliches to describe the present position of the Green Party – becalmed, all at sea, in the doldrums, rudderless etc – as the present leadership seem to have learnt nothing from the missteps and strategic errors of the recent past. 

These include losing members over the alliance with the Lib Dems, supporting adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) antisemitism definition, failing to defend party democracy in the face of attacks by extreme transgender activists and presiding over the Holistic Review which has centralised control so a small group make all the key party decisions. This is by no means a complete list !

The 2019 General Election result caused despair amongst progressives. A triple whammy – Johnson won, Corbyn gone, Brexit done. But morale now seems to be on the rise and the widespread lethargy and indifference fading away. There is even a glimmer of hope in the Green Party as from 3rd - 31st August the leading positions in the party are up for election so party members will have the chance to vote for change. Another bright note could be that the Greens have become the leading party on Brighton Council. But Oh, the irony !

The prize comes due to Labour councillors being suspended or resigning the whip after allegations of antisemitism, such as condemning the oppression of Palestinians or stating the obvious - that Jeremy Corbyn was the victim of an orchestrated smear campaign. If the Green Party leadership had had their way at the 2018 conference, the IHRA definition of anti-semitism would have been adopted by the party and it would be the Green councillors who would have to keep silent on the actions of the Israeli state or be suspended.

In the event the leadership panicked when they saw the way the wind was blowing and remitted their motion. Loud applause from conference for speakers opposing the motion, mainly Jewish members, was followed by a standing ovation for Shahrar Ali after his blockbuster of a speech. A link to his speech can be found here.

The Labour Party experience shows that this issue cannot be dodged. No amount of concessions were ever going to stop the attacks on Corbyn as the object was simply to get rid of him. When he did apologise the apology itself was taken as an outrageous affront and further proof of his pandering to his antisemitic supporters. 

Shahrar Ali says that Israel must “be held to account for its unconscionable actions against the Palestinian people”. He has seen the Green Party become increasingly timid, or completely silent, on the matter while he himself has been subjected to racist slurs and malicious attacks.

Shahrar is standing in the election and says if elected as Green Party Leader he will continue to “speak for the rights of the oppressed against their oppressor in the best tradition of the Green Party” Shahrar looked back to 2015 when he was last a member of the Green Party leadership team and the party won a million and a quarter votes - because it had a vision. He says we need to be bold and unapologetic in talking, not just about reform, but about an ecosocialist transformation of the economy including redeployment of arms manufacturing towards wholesale renewable energy infrastructure.

Shahrar has been working to build solidarity on the ground in minority communities and for Green supporters to get more involved with Black Lives Matter. So the question is – can we move beyond our comfort zone and elect the first BAME leader of a main UK party ?

Theo Simon is standing as Trade Union Liaison Officer (TULO), a post which the GP leadership proposes to abolish. Theo says “the proposal to get rid of the TULO post is a huge political and tactical mistake. Our connection with organised Labour has probably never been more important to build on than it is now, as I believe will become apparent over the coming months. We need to leave our comfort zone and engage with the daily reality of people`s workplace struggles and the rapidly increasing membership base of our unions. We have a dog in this fight ! 

At the 2018 Green Party conference Theo proposed the motion “for a renewal of GPEW`s democratic structure” to address concerns that a unhealthy culture had arisen within the party. He was able to rally co-proposers from every side of the opinion spectrum in the Green Party including Dr Rupert Read, Shahrar Ali, Beatrix Campbell, Judy Maciejowski, long time GP exec member Dee Searle, veteran anti-nuke campaigners Linda & Brig Oubridge, Land magazine editor Dr Mike Hannis and over 60 others.

The motion was prompted by the actions of extreme transgender activists, which have caused many decent and tolerant members to leave the Green Party and has been a toxic distraction from more important matters. It was high time that the problem was addressed before even more harm was done and Theo Simon deserves our thanks for stepping up to the task despite the atmosphere of legal threats and intimidation surrounding the issue.

Theo is described as “a folk musician and general election candidate” - a rather understated summary ! As the 2015 General Election candidate for Somerton & Frome he said he was aiming for a 10% share of the vote. As the previous Green vote was zero this was thought to be just talk but, after a brilliant campaign, he walked the walk and secured over 9% ! I first met Theo when I was involved in booking groups for gigs and we were always guaranteed a sell out with his group Seize the Day.

They would have risen to great heights by now if Theo hadn`t been so committed to the planet and to Social Justice. Whether standing with Palestinians and Jews in Ramallah resisting Israeli occupation, being arrested at Hinkley C protests or dashing down to the Isle of Wight to back the Vestas workers who were occupying the site against the UK`s only wind turbine factory being moved to the USA - he always put the fight first. As for the music – you can hear it on https://seizetheday.org/.

There is precious little time left for the changes needed if humanity is to survive on the planet. This election may be the last chance to put the Green Party back in the game, able to play a significant part in the fight for radical change. If we take this opportunity to elect Shahrar Ali as leader, Andrea Carey-Fuller as deputy leader with proven campaigners like Theo Simon on the team, we may just be able get the Green Party back on track.

David Taylor is a Green Party activist, former election candidate and a branch chair of Unite the union, and a Green Left Supporter

Vote for Change in the Green Party Leadership Contest

I joined the Green party in early 2006, a former Labour party voter and supporter, though never a member, disillusioned with the decision to participate in the invasion of Iraq, and much else that New Labour represented. I had also become increasingly alarmed by climate change, and had discovered ecosocialism, which I thought the Green party was best placed to promote. What I found was, although somewhat disorganised, a decent party, which genuinely seemed to want to do politics differently, ethically and democratically. A sharp contrast to Labour, for sure.

Over the years though the party has embarked on journey away from the principles that I found so attractive. It probably began with the move from principle speakers to leader (or co-leaders) in 2008. I voted against the move, but accepted the result, seeing that it might get us more media attention, which was largely how it was sold to the membership. But the party did seem to be heading off on a different trajectory though, from that point.

In more recent years I started to hear more and more disturbing stories about the inner workings at the top of the party. In 2016, reports emerged of local Green parties being leaned on by the leaders, Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley, at that stage, to stand down from a by-election in Richmond, in favour of the Lib Dem candidate. The chair of one of the local parties involved, Kingston, was forced to resign after he revealed details about a £250,000 donation made to the Green party on the condition they did not stand in Richmond. This was used to pile pressure on the local parties.

In 2018, a story was published on the Left Foot Forward website, accusing Shahrar Ali, a former co deputy leader of the party, and a candidate at the time for leader, of antisemitism. The piece was written by the new editor of the site, and recently resigned Green party member, Josiah Mortimer. It featured a selectively edited video of a speech made by Shahrar Ali, which was eventually restored to its full, complete length. Was this an attempt to smear Shahrar Ali? It certainly looked like it.

In 2019, I was shocked to hear that a senior member of the Green party, at the behest of the Campaign Against Antisemitism group, had used the party’s internal complaints procedure, against Shahrar Ali. The complaint was eventually dismissed, but why did this prominent member use the internal complaints system like this? A question unfortunately never answered by the member concerned.

I got to thinking that something wasn’t really right with what was going on and started to dig deeper into things as best I could. I found that people who knew about the machinations of the party’s leadership, were only willing to speak to me about it anonymously or privately. 

I contacted a former employee of the Green party, about the antisemitism complaint brought against Shahrar Ali. She did not want to go public with what she knew, but agreed with me privately when I suggested to her that ‘there is something rotten at the top of the party.’

Later in 2019, a member of one of the local parties involved in the disastrous Unite to Remain electoral pact with the Lib Dems (and Plaid Cymru) I was in touch with, told me that the national party had side-lined their party from the decision to not stand. The local party did not want to be associated by the Unite to Remain pact. Shades of the Richmond by-election.

I watched with dismay as Natalie Bennett in 2019, was given a peerage, as part of Theresa May’s resignation honours. The decision was made by the small group around leadership, with no say from the wider membership. If I’d had a vote, I probably would have voted for Natalie, but that is not point, this is all part of the undemocratic nature of the party’s hierarchy. 

London Green Left blog has also learned that Rashid Nix, the equalities and diversity co-ordinator on the Green party executive (GPex), is taking two senior London Green party members to an Employment Tribunal for racial discrimination. As well as an internal victimisation case. This after the two members concerned walked out of a judicial mediation meeting between both sides of the dispute.

Whilst waiting for the internal process to begin, a story was published on, yes you guessed it, Left Foot Forward, written by Joe Lo. Both Lo and Mortimer were writers for the Bright Green website prior to Left Foot Forward. The piece looks like a crude attempt to smear Nix’s name. A tactic we have seen before used against Shahrar Ali by the same website.

Finally, someone did go public. Dee Searle, a former GPex member, who has now left the party, wrote a piece for this blog which sheds a shocking light on what goes on at the top of the Green party. It says that a small clique around the leaders and Caroline Lucas’s office, take all the decisions, are democratically unaccountable and has ‘become more ruthless and less tolerant of genuine discussion.’ I urge you to read this post, and also the comments below it where others corroborate what Dee Searle has written from their own personal experiences.

It saddens me deeply, that this is what the party has come to, but members have perhaps one more opportunity to free the party from its controlling clique, and put the party back on a decent pathway. This year’s leadership and deputy leadership elections are that opportunity. Please use your vote wisely.

I will be first preferencing Shahrar Ali for leader, and Andrea Carey-Fuller for deputy leader, who I know to be decent people, and great campaigners, but whoever members decide to vote for, please do not vote for the incumbents. The Green party needs to change, and it is in your hands if we are to have a party we can be proud of, once again.  

Voting is from 3 to 31 August.

Can the Green Party be Saved from its Leadership Clique?

Written by Dee Searle, who is a former member of the Green Party of England and Wales. 

Earlier this month the widely respected campaigning journalist and writer Bea Campbell left the Green Party, citing bullying, authoritarianism and narcissism among radical transgender activists.

Campbell’s description of the impact on the party of what she calls the “extreme trans dogma” that transwomen are women; transmen are men - at the expense of women’s rights and safety - is pretty shocking. Unfortunately, it’s just one aspect of a much wider and deeper crisis in the party. 

The party claims to do politics differently but in practice acts pretty much the same as other political parties. It is riven with internal tribalism; allows key decisions to be taken by small groups of well-connected members; prioritises electoral success over radical environmental campaigning; has a dysfunctional, partisan disciplinary system; engages in some questionable employment practices; and has become a platform for those with political or professional career ambitions and/or who want to advance a particular strand of identity politics. 

Most Green Party members bask in Caroline Lucas’s speeches and/or focus on local activities, oblivious to machinations at national level. However, in my four stints on the Green Party Executive from 2015 to earlier this year, I’ve witnessed the party become more ruthless and less tolerant of genuine discussion. In addition, as an ordinary, elected, Green Party Executive (GPEx) member, I was powerless to make any real difference because the big decisions are taken by the Administration and Finance Committee and/or a group around the leadership and Caroline Lucas’s office. 

This is why I took the sad decision to leave the party in June, after almost seven years of active membership. In addition to GPEx membership and almost daily involvement in national or local organising, I’d spent three years as Chair of Camden Greens, and stood for the party in local council and London Assembly elections, and in Tottenham during the 2015 General Election, when our small, last-minute scratch team achieved our best ever result there. 

Many of the Greens’ troubles stem from the decision taken by the party in early 2016 to prioritise winning local council elections under the Target to Win (TtW) system. The rationale was that we desperately needed a second MP to support Caroline and the way to achieve that was to first win control of a local council as had happened in Brighton. The flaw in this logic is that Brighton is atypical of pretty much anywhere else in England and Wales. Plus, there is only one Caroline Lucas! 

At surface level it makes complete sense for a political party to focus on winning elections. However the underside is that pretty much all of the party’s resources were devoted to developing and maintaining a national election machinery, with no funds left for issue-based campaigning. 

Field offices were established and regular “campaign” schools (in reality elections training) held to enforce the rigour of TtW. Local parties selected to pursue TtW must work only in target wards, with activities limited to door knocking and repeat newsletter deliveries (no street stalls allowed). Newsletters and other publications can only include material on local issues and not cover wider politics, such as the climate emergency or Brexit. 

This concentration of resources on elections goes a long way to explaining why the Green Party is often missing from the big political debates. It’s not just that there are few of us and the media is biased towards the big parties: we actually don’t have much substance to contribute. 

At an internal review of the 2019 snap General Election manifesto, it was revealed that genuinely radical climate mitigation policies developed by the party’s Climate Change Policy Working Group had been removed by a small group around the leadership team and Caroline Lucas’s office because they weren’t vote winners. Yet the election was being held against a background of almost daily revelations about the gathering pace of climate-related environmental calamity. A squandered opportunity to step up campaigning pressure if ever there was one. 

The creation of the manifesto was a microcosm of so much that is wrong with the party. GPEx Publications Coordinator and Policy Coordinator (both roles elected by the membership) were excluded from substantive input, which is slightly odd for a policy-heavy publication. The manifesto was finalised by the group that had removed the climate policies. Green Party Regional Council (which was the body with official sign-off responsibilities) was given around 24 hours to approve an 88-page document. This enabled the leadership to insert favoured commitments (such as transgender people being able to change their legal gender based on self-identification, which is not Green Party policy) and weaken inconvenient ones. 

The party has not published a full internal review of its 2019 General Election campaign, despite the fact that it spent far more than on any previous election (£409,475, according to the Electoral Commission) but was still way behind its best showing (2.7 per cent of the vote, compared with 3.6 per cent in 2015) and didn’t achieve its stated aim of winning a second seat. 

Of course, it’s not unreasonable for a radical political party to underachieve in elections nor to avoid washing its dirty linen in public. What is more worrying is that these unaccountable actions have become the norm for the Green Party, where even those in elected governance positions are unable to hold the decision-takers to account. Instances where GPEx members have been blocked from raising concerns range from the use of social media election ads quoting comedian Jimmy Carr (notorious for tax evasion and a stage show that includes rape jokes) and a woman posing in bra and knickers, to a staff member being summarily dismissed and denied access to union representation, and a court finding of race discrimination in recruitment practices. 

The Greens are supposed to stand for a better kind of politics, based on transparency, integrity, decency and, above all, selfless campaigning to protect our planet’s natural and human resources. The party has no monopoly over environmental politics. Following success by Europe Ecologie Les Verts (an environmentally-focused green party) in France’s local elections, some Extinction Rebellion groups are looking at setting up their own political wing to fight the London Assembly elections and beyond, and there are rumblings elsewhere of setting up a new ecological party. 

This may all come to naught. But if those taking the decisions at the top of the Greens have misjudged the wider mood, they risk leading the party into oblivion. A salutary thought for candidates in the forthcoming leadership and GPEx elections.

Interview – Shahrar Ali Candidate for Leader of the Green Party

Shahrar Ali the Green Party’s Home Affairs spokesperson talks to Green Left’s Mike Shaughnessy about why he is standing to be Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Tell me a little about your background and why you joined the Green party?

I joined the Greens some 18 years ago now – after doing a stint in the European parliament as a researcher and being mightily impressed with the work of Green Group MEPs. I was drafting briefings on science and technology options for policy and researching into environmental risk of GMOs. I had already been campaigning to halt the spread of GMOs into the environment in the late 90s and it was great to be able to make a small contribution towards adoption of a precautionary principle and successive moratoria across Europe. 

My background is in education and I have been a lifelong advocate of affordable lifelong learning – having taught at WEA, City Lit, Birkbeck and as a founder member of a philosophy school set up to help buck the stem of private HEI colleges. I currently work in medical education and have been part of a team involved in some of the challenges of providing student medic support in COVID environments. 

It’s fair to say I really took to the policy, ethos and campaigns of the party – having stood in some 20 plus local, regional, parliamentary and European elections. I’ve written two popular election books in Green politics and was Deputy Leader of the party 2014-16, at the time of the Green surge. However, I feel deeply frustrated, as I know others do too, at our lack of organisational focus and electoral progress.

If you are elected as Leader, what will be your priorities?

Climate Justice.

Ten years is the time remaining for the Green Party to play a meaningful role in securing the transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to a net zero carbon economy by our target date of 2030. Globally, it is the poor and those least responsible for climate change who are most suffering their harmful impacts – deforestation, disease, malnutrition, food insecurity – today. 

We should be front and centre of this battle for the future of our country and of our planet and all the beautiful species and nonhuman animals we share it with. Yet our political communications do not convey how we can achieve our own 2030 net zero target and our leadership team appear subdued. 

My priority number one would be to fix this by helping to consolidate and energise the party internally and externally. As the Party’s primary spokesperson I would be bold and unapologetic about our vision and the system change required to do what’s scientifically necessary to avert climate catastrophe. 

Shahrar Launching the UpRising Environmental Leadership programme in 2018

What can the Green party do to get more support from BME communities? 

We need to be reaching out by all necessary means – vocalising and campaigning to combat the daily oppression and lack of opportunity faced by BME communities. I have been campaigning for years for the rights and wellbeing of these communities against successive governments’ hostile environment policies – from Guantanamo, the Windrush scandal and Islamophobic Prevent to stop and search and racist van slogans. 

·       I’m a regular speaker on anti-racism demonstrations for the party, especially against the rising tide of xenophobia. 

·       In 2015, I launched the Party’s first BME manifesto in an attempt to broaden our appeal. 

·       I’m active in building BAME community leaders such as the launch of UpRising’s environment leadership programme. 

As the first BME deputy leader, I well understand the impact that having an ethnic visible face has and can continue to have on the increased credibility of our party. I’ve had many conversations with voters who felt they could vote for us as a result. The single most important thing we could do to reach out to those communities would be to elect a BME leader – now. 

Nor can we be seen going round the media studios singling out Muslims by calling for the banning of halal meat that resulted in public condemnation from the Muslim Council of Britain and our own Greens of Colour, two weeks before the election. 

At a time when Black Lives Matter has taken on momentum and systemic racism is being confronted like never before, it simply is not enough to present our solidarity with a white face. We have to mean it in action, on the ground, in our Local Councils and our neighbourhoods. I believe that local party members should be given the training and support they need to get more involved with the Black Lives Matters movement and mobilise for the delivery of the concrete anti-racist policies BME communities are campaigning for. 

What is your opinion of the electoral pact between the Greens and Lib Dems at last year’s General Election? 

This was a total disaster. If it wasn’t bad enough to cause wholly avoidable conflict internally, we also upset core Green voters, nationally. One of our co-leaders was a benefactor of a pact and this was cited as a reason for “Green Party losing members over their alliance with Lib Dems”. 

Nor can we be proud of an election result in which the Green Party once again failed to achieve any significant breakthroughs, and lost our deposits across vast swathes of the country. Compare and contrast this record to the party’s record when I was last a member of the leadership team. In 2015, the Green Party won over a million votes, and kept our deposits in 123 seats. In 2019 the Green Party won 800,000 votes but only kept our deposits in 31 seats. 

What I really can’t fathom is, how, after the disastrous failed experiment of Progressive Alliances in 2017 we tried a variation on the theme some two years later. Our current leadership supported these initiatives through conference both times; and here’s a reminder of just how badly we managed to squander our hard-won political capital. 

It is likely that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism will brought back to the Green party’s autumn conference for adoption. You have been a vocal critic of this definition, can you explain why? 

Anybody who looks at this definition with intellectual honesty, and studies the history behind it, will see it for what it is: a cynical attempt to restrict legitimate criticism of Israel which would also have a chilling effect on free speech and is actually beginning to succeed in that. 

Greens are anti-racist to their very core, fight anti-Jewish racism to the last, and should have no truck with this definition, especially because of the prevalence of anti-semitism smear campaigns against known lifelong antiracists based on adoption of this definition. 

Our leadership have not exactly covered themselves in glory regarding the means by which they would seek to adopt this definition and I believe that is because the grassroots members understand as I do. You can hear this for yourself if you playback my speech to 2018 conference where we averted a late motion by the leadership to adopt something like the definition. 

The final agenda to the planned Spring 2020 conference, which had to be cancelled due to lockdown, had a motion, to the contrary, which would have seen the Party firmly reject the IHRA definition and another from Les Levidow reaffirming our support for BDS (which the definition would prohibit). The leadership-sponsored motion was ruled out of order, as was a wrecking amendment to my motion. I have already begun the process of submitting my motion to next conference so we can state our opposition to the IHRA and move on. 

I have survived numerous attacks upon my character. Members rightly condemned such attacks at the last leadership election. Still I was subjected to an antisemitism complaint from the CAA sponsored by a party member and that, too, was dismissed. 

We must not repeat the mistake of the Labour Party, either under Corbyn or Starmer, of capitulating to this definition. It has resulted in internal strife then injustice against anti-racist campaigners. The Campaign Against Antisemitism, whose staff member boasted about destroying Corbyn’s election in the most despicable terms (“slaughtered”), is currently the subject of a Charity Commission investigation referred by myself, “Charity faces election bias investigation”. We must clean up our politics. 

In all my actions around this topic, I’ve been driven by the urgency of wanting to hold Israel to account for its unconscionable actions against the Palestinian people. Year after year Israel has added to its international violations, lately with their annexation plan, and I have seen the Green Party become increasingly timid, or completely silent, on this matter. As Leader, I will continue to speak for the rights of the oppressed against their oppressor in the best tradition of the Green Party.

How do rate the government’s handling of the Covid 19 pandemic? 

Where to begin with the missteps and mishaps? Late lockdown; no PPEs for NHS and Care Homes staff; moving frail elderly into Care Homes without testing them – resulting in 25,000 early deaths. No plans for a safe return to schools; no testing capacity to meet the needs to regularly test all key workers; no Test and Contact Tracing programme at community or local level. 

In other words: criminal negligence on an unprecedented scale. Not to mention misplaced loyalty in Cummings! 

As we know Covid deaths disproportionately impact BME communities and the real issue is structural inequality – see my BAME life chances, inequality and death. 

We should have been far bolder about the opportunity for making system-wide change during lockdown – about our overconsumptive lifestyles, about UBI and economic overhall.

How do you think the Green party should position itself electorally in the immediate future? 

I’ve not seen our report from the last election results to enable us to have a better informed conversation. Why isn’t it published yet? If elected, I will make sure that all our members are sent a copy to discuss and learn from it in their local parties. There is not enough accountability nor transparency in the Green Party and we all deserve better. 

Still our electoral positioning is clear: true Green. With Corbyn gone and Starmer in post, our socialist credentials will shine through more brightly. Our environmental appeal is across the board. Let’s not sell ourselves short. 

On electoral reform, Molly Scott Cato is justifiably furious with Labour’s refusal to consider scrapping FPTP. Local party members can make the case for PR by targeting Labour Party constituencies and affiliated organisations as of priority. Labour will struggle under FPTP as it would need to secure an additional 124 seats – and that is not taking into account any potential boundary changes which will favour the Tories even more than they are now. 

What is your vision for the Green party over the next few years? 

When we are interviewed about the economy we should be talking about an ecosocialist transformation, not simply reform. When we are asked about jobs we should be talking about redeployment of arms manufacturing towards wholesale renewable energy plant production. When we are asked about injustice, we should be making the link to the millions of families in the UK living on the bread line and the starving populations of the world who are dying as we speak, due to agricultural intensification, capitalist injustice and climate degradation. 

As a party of radical and transformational change we are simply not conveying these messages. We have become much too timid and risk averse. I will be bold and unapologetic instead. 

Let’s move beyond our comfort zone and elect the first BME leader of a main UK party, too.

Green party members will be voting from 3-31 August.

Website

www.electshahrar.co.uk

Facebook 

https://www.facebook.com/ShahrarAliGreenParty 

Twitter 

https://twitter.com/ShahrarAli

Does Anyone Believe a Word Theresa May Says?

It would be comical if the UK government and prime minister were not such a shambles at the moment, at this crucial stage for the country. As we approach what is probably the most critical period for Britain since the end of world war two, Theresa May appears to have no idea as to how to look after our interests, and to make matters worse, she seems to think she can just bluff her way through as the impending national crisis looms. She is making it up as she goes along.

It is now more than two years since May succeeded David Cameron as leader of the Tory party and prime minister. Cameron wasn’t a hard act to follow, as he whistled his way out of public life after setting in motion events that have led to this pass. Lazy, dripping with privilege and arrogance, it should have been easy to impress by comparison, but May has flunked it.

Yes, she was dealt a difficult hand with the result of the Brexit referendum, but she has played it all wrong, with a series of strategic mistakes. The country was crying out for someone to bring us together, but May just furthered the divide with her ill judged rhetoric and no discernible plan. She triggered Article 50 before she had decided even remotely how we will leave the European Union (EU).

May attacked the 16 million remain voters as ‘citizens of nowhere,’ insisted that 'no deal is better than a bad deal’ and failed to give guarantees to the 3 million EU nationals residing in the UK , that they would be allowed to stay here. Even Brexiters like Michael Gove said that giving such a guarantee would be ‘the decent thing to do'. No they were held as bargaining chips in the opening round of negotiations which inevitably led to a lack of goodwill on the part of the EU.

Then May called a snap general election, after previously ruling it out, pursued the hardest of Brexit language during the campaign, and promptly lost the Parliamentary majority that she had inherited from Cameron. To salvage something from the disaster May was forced into bribing the bigots of the Democratic Unionist Party to cling onto power by her finger tips. A series of bad calls, quite unprecedented in UK politics, to my memory.

But more than the incompetence it is her untrustworthiness which the most shocking aspect of May's reign. She began by saying that she would tackle the ‘burning injustices’ at play in the country, but is there even a shred of evidence from the last two years that she meant it? No.

May then took to prefacing anything she said publicly with ‘I have been clear…’ before going onto say something that is anything but clear. In December last year, she agreed to the EU’s back stop position on keeping the border open between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but seems to be breaking that commitment, saying it is unacceptable now.

Jean Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, revealed this week that May had been the one who suggested that we could stay in the transitional period for longer than planned after our formal Brexit. May denies this, but with her track record, I know who I believe.  

In 2009, May told her constituents in Maidenhead "we must say no to a third runway at Heathrow", but approved the expansion just after becoming prime minister. At about this time she called in the decision to go ahead with the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station, only to change her mind and give it the go-ahead.

Simon Wren-Lewis, a professor at Oxford University and a leading economist, strongly denied the prime minister's suggestion in Parliament on Wednesday, that he had said (in a chapter he wrote for a book, titled Economics for the Many) that the figures in Labour's last manifesto ‘did not add up’. The claim appeared to be ‘a deliberate lie told to gain political effect’, he said. The facts are easily checked, but May just can’t seem to stop herself from making things up.

May told the Tory party conference earlier this month, that austerity is over, but who has any confidence that is not just another fabrication?

We know that most politicians are a bit slippery, but when the prime minister tells blatant lies, it is no surprise that the public concludes that you can’t believe a word May says, and become disillusioned with our democratic system in general.  

I will leave you with Captain Ska's Liar, Liar.

May’s Charm Offensive to Labour MPs Smacks of Desperation

Theresa May’s piece in The Observer on Sunday, was ostensively aimed at Labour voters, with talk of antisemitism, threats to national security and the deselection threat to ‘moderate’ MPs, as evidence of Labour being unfit to govern. This narrative has been running for some time in the Tory supporting press, a smear campaign no less, of what May refers to as the ‘Jeremy Corbyn party’. But more immediately, she needs to win over ‘moderate’ Labour MPs to get her Brexit deal though Parliament, rather than voters.

In the Tory party in Parliament the numbers just don’t stack up for May’s Chequers Brexit plan, so she is really appealing to Labour MPs in thinly veiled code with The Observer piece. There is said to be up to 80 Tory MPs who are ready to vote against the Chequers plan, although some estimates put it as low as 20 in the end game. I suspect there are more than twenty. These MPs are from the hard Brexit wing of the Tory party, and probably prefer no deal at all, to the prime minister’s plan, even before the European Union (EU) starts chipping away at it, which it is sure to do.

What the most pro-EU Tory MPs will do, maybe a dozen or so MPs, I’m not sure, and it probably depends on what final deal May brings back to Parliament, but they might go along with it - perhaps. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) might well prefer a no deal scenario, as I think they want a hard land border with the Republic of Ireland, so May has to find a way of keeping them on side, which she has so far. She really has no other choice though, or the numbers in Parliament become even shakier than they look now.

There are 316 Tory MPs at present, with 10 DUP MPs sustaining the government, a total of 326. 326 is the magic number for a majority in the House of Commons, but one MP is the speaker, and seven represent Sinn Fein, who on principle take no part in the British Parliament historically, and show no signs of changing. This effectively reduces the number required for a governing majority to 318.

Labour has 257 MPs, excluding 6 who have lost the whip or are self declared independents. The Scottish National Party has 35 MPs, the Lib Dems 12, Plaid Cymru 4, and the Green Party one, and two other independents. An ‘opposition’ total of 317 MPs, who mostly look likely to vote against the prime minister’s Chequers plan. If this is the case, then it will take only a handful Tory hard line Brexit MPs to defeat whatever the government ends up with as a deal with the EU.

But as I say, I am pretty sure that more than 20 Tories will vote the against the government, and perhaps as many as 30 or so, and it could be even more than that, so May needs twenty odd votes from elsewhere at least, and Labour, together with its ex-MPs, now independents, is surely where May is hoping to get them from. It is not clear to me whether these independents will support the government though, as some may prefer a no deal scenario, so I don’t think these MPs can be taken for granted by the government.

The other target will be disaffected, and pro-EU Labour MPs, of which there are many, but from public statements from MPs like Chuka Umunna, they have expressed opposition to May’s proposals so far. It is possible that the EU will propose something more to their liking, but that might mean even more that 30 or so Tories rebelling.

Pro-EU Labour MPs will probably prefer to vote May’s plan down, so that Parliament could then manoeuvre to get no Brexit rather than no deal. In other words, postpone Article 50. This in turn might lead to a second referendum, which may see us remain in the EU. That is a more attractive prize to these MPs, even if they are nervous of Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister. 

There is a cultural resistance amongst Labour MPs to the Conservative party too, not to mention an instinct for self preservation, that will make many recoil from supporting the government. Defeat for the Tories may lead to a general election giving Labour the chance to make a better job of Brexit than the Tories are ever likely to do.

May’s tactics look to be a forlorn attempt to square the Brexit circle, and is almost certainly doomed to failure.   

EU Calls May’s Bluff – Time to start Stockpiling Tinned Food?

The European Union (EU) has been consistent in the two and a quarter years, although it seems like longer, since the UK referendum vote to leave the EU. They stated what their red lines were: a workable solution to keeping open the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic and maintaining the ‘four freedoms’ of free movement of goods, services, capital and persons within the EU. Yes, the negotiations on Brexit, if we can call them that, have been couched in diplomatic language, but the EU’s position has not changed.

Indeed, on Northern Ireland, the UK agreed to the ‘backstop’ arrangement for the Irish border in December last year, but now wants to renege on this it seems. The EU summit in Saltzburg, Austria, appears to have displayed the utter frustration of EU nations with Britain’s delusions of grandeur, where prime minister, Theresa May was told in no uncertain terms that nothing the UK has come up with so far, is even close to addressing our Brexit relations with EU when we leave.

It was always likely that push was going to come to shove this autumn, as substantive agreement really needs to reached by the EU summit on 18 October, less than a month away, for the EU to deem it is worth holding a special summit in November, to finally make an agreement.

After farting around for over two years the British government, wasting everyone’s time with ludicrous plans, has now been put on the spot. Do we want a deal or not, appears to be the exasperated message from Europe?

Maybe we don’t want a deal, and should fess up and tell the EU this, because even a Canada style free trade agreement (no tariffs on trade) is not on offer unless the no border in Ireland issue is resolved. Certainly some people prefer the World Trade Organisation default position on the right of the Tory party and perhaps elsewhere.

This scenario would almost certainly cause a recession in the UK in the short term, eventually the UK may recover, but this will take several years, maybe ten, before we get back to anything like the situation we have inside the EU.

Some Brexiters even agree with analysis, Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks it might take fifty years for Britain to see the benefit of leaving the EU, so why is this so desirable? The rather vague slogan of ‘taking back control’ is the only justification that they can come up with. But what does this mean in practice?

Allowing US businesses to run the NHS? Eating fluoridated chicken and hormone pumped beef from the US? Allowing Genetically Modified crops to be grown in the UK? Reduced employment rights for workers? Reduced protection for our environment? Some freedom that.

It is not as though immigration will stop, or even reduce to the fabled tens of thousands when we do leave the EU. Britain is apparently trying to recruit Jamaican nurses to work in the NHS, and other sectors will need to do similarly, if the country is to function properly. After the Windrush scandal, why anyone would want to come to Britain is an open question, perhaps we will have to bribe them handsomely?    

Anything could still happen, we might crash out, we might compromise enough to get some kind of deal with EU, we might have another referendum and vote to stay in the EU, we might have a general election which if the Tories lose, could be a game changer.

But the way the Tory government is riven with division, but still clinging onto power, I now think that the most likely scenario is crashing out of the EU, which I didn’t think would happen. I thought sense in the end would prevail, and some sort of compromise would be reached. It looks like I was wrong.

So, start stocking up on tinned food and lock all doors and windows on 29 March next year. We are in for a bumpy ride.

Bookmaker Makes it Odds On that Teresa May will be Deposed this Year

Betway have slashed their odds on Theresa May being deposed this year, from 5/4 to 4/5. Three other UK bookmakers are offering short odds or evens that Theresa May will be gone this year. Sky Bet is offering even money with William Hill offering odds of 11/10 and Corals 5/4, at time of writing. You can get more generous odds from Paddy Power who divide 2018 into four quarters, with quarter 1, the shortest odds at 5/1. But given that rumours are circulating that the local elections results in May will be so bad for the Tory party, that this will trigger a challenge to the prime minister, quarter 2 may be a better bet, at 6/1.

Discontent is growing with May, amongst the party’s MPs, with more of them publicly calling for her to up her game or go, although some have stuck to the line that now is not the time to change the prime minister. Rumours also suggest that close to the 48 MPs needed for a vote of confidence in May, have submitted letters to the 1922 committee chair. Patience appears to be running out with May over domestic policy drift and in-fighting over the exact terms of the UKs exit from the European Union (EU).

May has only survived as long as she has since last June’s disastrous general election, when she threw away a ruling majority, because Tory MPs couldn’t agree on a successor and they worried that a general election might follow, which they would lose to the Labour party. This calculation appears to be changing though, with the feeling spreading that nothing could be worse than May carrying on for much longer.

But something else has changed too. The most hard-line Brexit Tory MPs have been supportive of May, as she talked tough on the exit negotiations. But her concession just before Christmas of paying a £39 billion ‘divorce’ settlement to the EU, and caving in by agreeing to in effect staying in the European customs union (and possibly European single market), to get an agreement on the Irish border, has caused a re-think. Leading hard-line Brexiteer, Jacob Rees Mogg has said May’s plan would leave the UK as a ‘vassal state’ of the EU.

Theresa Villiers, a former minister and also from the party’s hard-line Brexit wing, said that the UK appears set to remain in the EU 'in all but name.' This was sparked by the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, speaking at the Davos conference last week, saying the UK’s trade relations with the EU would change only “very modestly” after Brexit. The hardliners are feeling betrayed, and now may be convinced that the only way to secure their demands of a hard Brexit, is to replace May with someone they view as ideologically sound on the matter.

This is certainly the most serious situation for May’s leadership that she has faced, and it is starting to look like the beginning of the end. May might conceivably survive a vote of no confidence, but even this may not be enough to save her. She might be so fatally damaged by the result that she is forced to resign.

In 1990, under different rules, then Tory prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, won the first round of a leadership challenge from Michael Heseltine, only to resign a few days later. The Tories can be pretty brutal with a failing leader, and May is definitely failing.

If a hard-line Brexiteer wins the Tory leadership this could throw the whole process of Brexit into even more disarray than it is. The minimal progress achieved so far in the negotiations might be reversed, which is an alarming prospect for anyone with the good of the country at heart. It would likely tear the Tory apart at the same time, but that is of scant concern.

If there is one thing that gets the Tories going it is Europe, and it looks like they are going to take a chance with our future by casting the country into chaos, over their ideological obsession.

Let’s hope that this also leads to an early general election, where the stable can be swept clean, and this most self-indulgent of parties are ejected from office, for the common good.

The Tories are trying Wriggle Out of Responsibility for Grenfell Tower Disaster - Don't Let Them

Speaking on 19 June 2017,five days after the Grenfell Tower blaze, the Chancellor Philip Hammond said; "My understanding is that the cladding in question, the flammable cladding which is banned in Europe and the United States, is also banned here..."

At prime minister’s questions in Parliament on Wednesday, Theresa May said her “understanding” was that the cladding that has failed the test “was non-compliant with the building regulations”.

She said as well as identifying who was responsible for the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower, the public inquiry would also need to look at “why it is that over decades, under different governments and under different councils, material has been put up on tower blocks that is non-compliant with the building regulations”.

Both of these statements from the most senior members of the Tory government are at best misleading, at worse completely untrue. I’m not saying they are lies, because that would require some evidence that Hammond and May knew what they were talking about, which I’m unsure of at this stage.

The statements are factually wrong though, according to experts in the field.

Barry Turner, director of technical policy at the Local Authority Building Control, told the Local Government Chronicle (subscription) that the document the prime minister referred to, Approved document B, was guidance, not a legally required regulation.

In addition he said Mrs May’s comments left out a crucial part of the guidance that allows use of a flammable cladding if it passes a “composite” test that includes other components surrounding the cladding, such as insulation.

Mr Turner said: “Within [the government’s] own guidance they’re very conveniently forgetting the paragraph that appears before the one they are quoting which allows an alternative method of testing a complete cladding system.”

Mr Turner said it was not surprising that cladding on all 137 tower blocks tested so far had failed as the Building Research Establishment (BRE) was carrying out a different test to the one specified in the guidance.

The tests being carried out for the government by the BRE are only testing cladding and do not take account of any other fire safety measures, such as flame retardant insulation.

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, has also said that it is “possible for buildings to be safe with that cladding in certain circumstances”.

Interviewed on BBC Newsnight on Wednesday he said: “All of this cladding has been fitted according to the rules that were in place at the time, according to the rules that were presided over by government.”

Lord Porter, Tory chairman of the Local Government Association, said fire safety tests on cladding from high-rise buildings were flawed.

He criticised the tests for focusing on the core of the panel - rather than the panel as a whole.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that "isn't the right thing to test", adding: "The government needs to listen to a wider set of opinions and not just the experts they have got."

So, the test they are doing on the Grenfell Tower cladding alone, doesn’t prove that the cladding was fitted against building regulations, it depends on the insulation used and other materials used that make up the whole construction.

But these regulations should have been tightened up, by the government, after an earlier fire at a residential tower block.

In 2009 a fire took hold in flats at Lakanal House in London which saw six people die. Following an inquest into the fire the coroner made a number of recommendations to the government and to other organisations like the London Fire Brigade and Southwark Council for how similar fires could be avoided in the future.

The recommendations made to the government in 2013 included:

‘Reviewing Document B (fire safety) of the Building Regulations to ensure that it is easily understandable and give guidance to those who are responsible for maintaining tower blocks, as well as building them.’

“Four years on and no review has been completed despite assurances from former housing minister Gavin Barwell, who is now Theresa May’s chief of staff,” reported the Telegraph.

The BBC reports that leaked letters from the All-Party Parliamentary Fire Safety Rescue Group to the government show that it repeatedly warned four different housing ministers that action needed to be taken on fire safety regulations.

One of the letters to the government says:

“Surely however when you already have credible evidence in 2012 to justify updating a small but important part of the guidance in the Approved Document, which will lead to saving of lives, you don’t need to wait another three years in addition to the two already spent since the research findings were updated, in order to take action?

The government says the work is still ongoing.  

Today, the BBC and the Times reported having seen documents showing that the original cladding specified for the Tower had been a zinc cladding with a fire-retardant core, but in 2014 this was changed to ACM cladding with a PE core to save £293,000 and to allow a change of colour. However, the BBC point out that ‘both types of cladding have the same official fire rating’ (it is not clear what is meant by the word ‘official’).

The motives of the local authority, Kensington and Chelsea, in changing to using this type of cladding are reprehensible then, saving money and making it a nicer colour when viewed from outside, but appears to be within the law as it stands.

But in the end, why did the government not amend the regulations when they had been warned that this needed to happen? Uncaring and incompetent, which just about sums up this Tory administration.

Come to the ‘Not One More Day’ protest in central London tomorrow against the Tory government. Tories Out!

UK General Election – It Just Keeps Getting Better

Has there ever been a general election campaign like this year’s? I really don’t think there has been. I can’t find a previous general election in which the opinion polls have moved so much as they have this year, nothing even close. All of the polls show a narrowing of the gap between the Tories and Labour, to different degrees, but all point to the gap closing.

YouGov has been showing the smallest gap for a few polls now, but today’s Ipsos MORI poll slashes its 10 point Tory lead in half, indicating the Tories on 45% and Labour 40%. Another YouGov poll yesterday puts Labour on 50% in London, a 17 point lead over the Tories, and set to gain at least four seats from the Tories, whilst the Lib Dems look to be in line for gaining at least two seats from the Tories.

Even in normally true blue Cornwall, Cornwall Live are reporting a local survey indicating Labour could win in Camborne and Redruth and St Austell and Newquay! There is also some good news for the Lib Dems with them neck and neck with the Tories in North Cornwall and St Ives.  

This has happened amid the disastrous Tory election campaign, which has included unpopular policies, policy U-Turns, arrogance, only fleeting and extremely poor public performances by the Tory leader, Theresa May, and plotting by some Tory MPs aimed at removing May from the leadership, should the result be worse than in 2015.   

Today’s news of the Tory candidate for South Thanet, Craig Mackinlay, who has been charged with electoral fraud in the 2015 general election, is perfectly timed for effect. MacKinlay is standing in the same seat this year, and has the ‘full support’ of the Tory leadership. The Tories may now lose this seat to UKIP or Labour.

Meanwhile, Local Government News reports Electoral Reform Society findings that one in five voters are planning to vote ‘tactically.’ This is more than double the amount of voters who claimed to have voted tactically in 2015. There could be some UKIP voters tactically voting Tory, but I suspect the bulk of the tactical voting will be anti-Tory, with Labour, Lib Dem and Green voters opting for the best placed challenger to the Tories.

The Lib Dems, it has to said, have had a poor campaign too, hardly making any impression in the national opinion polls, and trailing at about 7%. They have been dogged by their leader, Tim Farron, getting embroiled in a row about whether he thinks gay sex is a ‘sin.’ Farron, should have cleared this up immediately, pointing to the Lib Dems policy on the issue, which is supportive gay relationships, and said his personal beliefs were neither here nor there. Instead, he equivocated and ended up looking shifty. Although it seems like a lifetime away, in psephological terms, the Lib Dems did score 18% in the local elections, less than a month ago. It could be that their small vote will be concentrated in areas that hurt the Tories most.

Labour, apart from a few slip ups from senior figures in the party with exact figures on spending commitments, have had a good campaign. Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has looked warm, calm and assured, albeit up against Theresa May, he hasn’t had to do much other than behave like a normal person.

We are in the final straight now, and it does still look like a Tory majority anywhere from 1 to about 75 seats, but they could lose their majority altogether. Turn out of anti-Tory voters will be crucial, but we might see the biggest electoral upset ever in the UK.

I did say at the start of this campaign, on this blog, that I still had some hope left that this election might not go as well as the Tories obviously thought it was going to. Something seems to be happening amongst the voters, something I have not seen before in my lifetime, a swing away from the Tories during an election campaign. Blair didn’t even manage that in 1997. Another small swing away from the Tories in final five days of the campaign, and we could be celebrating next Friday.