The Rise of The Green Party

chabal said:
I'm a member of the Green Party.

Here's their political programme.

https://www.greenparty.org.uk/political-programme.html

The Green Party in this country has the age old problem of;

1) FPTP rather then PR electoral system

2) Dominance of the 2 major political parties

3) Greens are not populist and therefore would not get the coverage that UKIP got

4) Have less regard for charismatic, strong leaders and more concern for grass roots, consensus led politics which does not make for cheap soundbites and great photos

5) Don't pretend to have easy answers to difficult problems.
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Sorry. Forgot to thank you for the link. Appreciated.
 
MillionMilesAway said:
Um, yes. 1 in 650+ isn't much, certainly not enough to get any leverage.

The MEP proportion would give them about 25, which is a significant bloc. I'm not saying that it would work exactly like that, but the Greens are like most other 3rd parties - the odd stronghold, but otherwise nowhere.

Why does Lucas get elected? Is it Green politics, a single brilliant individual, annoyance with more traditional parties, or something else?
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All the above, plus the peculiar demographic that is Brighton Pavilion. Plus it's now a badge of honour for Brighton to have the only Green MP, so I can't see that Lucas will now ever lose her seat as long as she stands for re-election.

For my money, when it comes to general elections, the Greens should be more pragmatic and concentrate their meagre resources on the seats where they may have a chance of winning or hugely increasing their share of the vote - the other 2 seats in Brighton/Hove, Bristol, Norwich, a couple of London seats - and build from there. No point getting a few hundred or maybe a couple of thousand votes in every constituency. Get 10,000 + in a few, and people start to notice and think there may be a chance of them getting in next time and it won't be a wasted vote. That's what happened in Brighton. Although getting Lucas to stand was the clincher. A chap called Keith Taylor paved the way, but I doubt he would have been elected. So they also need to get some good candidates and get them airtime.
 
State elections today in Hesse with Greens moving up to joint second with SPD on 20% with CDU first with 27%. AfD on 12%. Greens already in Govt with CDU.

Germany (Hesse): Green GRÜNE (G/EFA) and left-wing LINKE (LEFT) with best election result in history, according to exit polls by Infratest dimap and FGW. #Hessen #hessenwahl2018
 
BobKowalski said:
State elections today in Hesse with Greens moving up to joint second with SPD on 20% with CDU first with 27%. AfD on 12%. Greens already in Govt with CDU.

Germany (Hesse): Green GRÜNE (G/EFA) and left-wing LINKE (LEFT) with best election result in history, according to exit polls by Infratest dimap and FGW. #Hessen #hessenwahl2018
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With PR a small party can still win seats which in turns boosts their credibility which in turn leads to more seats gained. Therefore the status quo can be challenged through individual votes.

With FPTP that model doesn't work. To make an impact nationally a small or new party needs an enormous injection of capital.

UKIP were a one issue party with relatively enormous funding and even then their impact wasn't so much about winning seats but scaring one other major political party into thinking it might lose seats.
 
We really need to move to proportional representation in this country, it'd be Turkeys voting for Christmas for the big two parties so I can't ever see it happening but I think the country would be a much better and less divided place if people felt like they were actually being listened to. It's a joke that UKIP never had any parliamentary representation with 12.6% of the vote.
 
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