Hello again.
I has been a while I know since I’ve written a blog article
about what I’ve been up to, so this one is going to double up as a confession.
About an hour after Jeremy Corbyn was elected the leader of the labour party I
joined the party and then I e-mailed the Green Party to inform them I was leaving.
The reason I joined the Green Party was actually simple; it
was my way of telling the labour party off. The labour party had basically lost
its mojo; Blair’s government was almost as right-wing as the Conservative
Party, and up until a few days ago had been committed to political centrism believing
the only way to victory was a programme of ‘small C conservativism’ rather than
embracing Left-Libertarianism & Democratic Socialism as it’s way forward.
I joined the greens as I was becoming increasingly political
since the ConDem government took over in 2010 and I could see the effects of their
policies first hand, from friends who had been sanctioned, to poverty wages and
now since the Conservative majority government’s attacks on trade unions,
however I could not in good conscience join the labour party as it was failing
to outright refuse to cooperate with the Conservative government’s austerity
programme; a programme which has hurt the most vulnerable members of our
society causing many people to die or commit suicide through reckless economic
policies.
The fact that the labour party has since elected its most
left wing candidate in its leadership election, and has its own surge of
support shows that a great many people in the British public want an
alternative to austerity and that they are more willing to support a left-wing
labour party; myself included. As I said earlier I joined the Green’s to give
the labour party a kick up the arse – I am myself the stereotypical labour
party member; a working class northerner, and I joined the Greens because despite
their reputation as a single issue environmentalist party there policies were
far more socialist than the pre-Corbyn Labour party.
This is in my opinion what caused the green surge, the phenomenon
where over a relatively short period of time the Green Party managed to
quadruple its membership; not because people suddenly started believing that environmentalism
would stop poverty, because they were socialists and the Green Party was
preaching anti-austerity & social justice. Don’t get me wrong; protecting
the environment is a necessity and to quote my barber “as the caretakers of
this world we are doing a shite job”, but if someone is going hungry to feed their
children then I highly doubt they will have the luxury of thinking of long term
issues like wind farms & climate change (despite the fact that they are important
issues). But with a red surge which has put the green surge to shame in terms
of the numbers of members who have joined it is my view that it is now the Labour
party who is best suited to represent the views of members of the British left &
be the voice of trade unions in government as it was meant to do, while
campaigning as the leader of Britain’s anti-austerity movement instead of
leaving that task to minor parties.
The green surge served its purpose; it gave a platform to
people who wanted to speak out against the conservative government who couldn’t
bring themselves to do it on the labour party’s ticket, and it made it clear to
the labour party that if it wasn’t going to listen to its supporters then it
could be replaced. But now the desired effect has happened; a party which will once
again be the voice for the voiceless & hold out a hand to those in need. But
now I can’t help but think that those socialists who joined the green party,
like myself, would now do better stepping sideways into the Labour Party. Come
2020 Labour is the party which will be able to mount the campaign most likely
to unseat the conservatives and the more lefties which join now the more the
members of the parliamentary labour party who might attempt a coup against its
new leader Jezza will be deterred by the knowledge that a left wing party is
absolutely most definitely the wish of the members and the British left.
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