Suddenly, who our next Prime Minister is is WIDE open
Enter, the Green Party, now in contention for power for the first time ever...
I can’t count how very many times over the past year I’ve heard good people say despairingly, “Farage is bound to be the next Prime Minister”. Every single time I have pushed back, hard, against such foolish fatalism.
This morning’s unheard-of (and massive) by-election victory for the Greens was a massive, MASSIVE piece of evidence in favour of what has >for the last three years< consistently been my view: that the 2029 General Election is simply wide open, ...and that it is most likely to be most hotly contested >by the Green Party and Reform UK<. The two old parties are in absolutely desperate - and potentially terminal - trouble; they are going to perform so abysmally in May that not only will Starmer be gone (but they literally have no-one strong to replace him with) but Badenoch may be gone as well before the year is out.
This by-election was the most important of our lifetimes, I would claim. It is now game-on nationally. The Green Party membership is about to explode again; it will receive a surge in donations that enables it to start to compete really seriously with the other, billionaire-bankrolled parties. I predict confidently that very soon the Green Party and Reform will be 1st and 2nd (though not necessarily in that order!) in opinion polls. As I’ve been saying for the last three years, the real opposition within the future of British politics is hashtag#GreensVsReform.
None of this should be taken breathlessly to imply that all is well with the Green Party. It is not. The Party will now face much greater scrutiny: of its internal rivenness and hard-left-entryists, of its dangerously ideological commitment to a wacky form of identity politics, of some of its culture-war rhetoric, of its insufficient policies/emphasis/honesty on the great and terrible challenge of climate-adaptation, of its lack of any planning as yet for how it would cope with hostile bond markets etc if it actually got into power... but what is exciting about the last question in particular is that for the first time it is now as feasible as it is vital to ASK the question: How should Greens best prepare for a role in GOVERNMENT.
For as of today, it is suddenly clear to everyone that Farage is no shoe-in as the next PM. The next PM could very well be Polanski (or even Hannah the plumber?: she’s brilliant), leading a minority or coalition Govt...
In Gorton and Denton, Labour voters rejected their own Party in incredible numbers. The Greens are out-competing Labour on inequality and cost of living. But the Greens are also of course trusted on climate and nature: and, ever-increasingly, these are becoming cost of living concerns, and security concerns. The way that the climate crisis hits ordinary working people is through impacts, vulnerability, and price rises: it's all connected. Acting on climate adaptation and on cost of living simultaneously is a winning combination for the Greens.
This is where I hope the Green Party will head. This is what I hope eco-populism can mean...
#ClimatePopularism.
I’m thrilled the Greens won but let’s not be over confident why. I did some door knocking in Denton and Gorton and the majority I spoke to were of the opinion that they would vote whichever way kept reform out. So glad they did, but that doesn’t mean they have an allegiance to or even understanding of Green politics.