The Green Alliance Manifesto

Or, to put it another (more accurate) way, the demands of the Green Alliance to shape the manifestos of the main parties at the next election.

The Green Alliance are a pressure group, and - of course - there is nothing wrong with pressure groups seeking to influence policy and government. Hell, it is pretty much their reason for being. Yet what is striking about the Green Alliance's press release is just how they attempt to fulfill their aims. They seem to mix strident demands with unsubstantiated threats and prophesies of doom. And as a result they are really unlikely to achieve its ends in any way.

On the eve of party conference season, eight of the UK’s leading environmental organisations today publish Common Cause: the Green Standard manifesto on climate change and the natural environment.

In case you were wondering, the eight groups are listed here by the BBC:

The groups making the call ahead of the forthcoming political party conferences are Green Alliance, Friends of the Earth, the Woodland Trust, WWF, the Wildlife Trusts, the RSPB, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Greenpeace.

All the sort of organisations that will cause the main parties in this country to drop their pants and change their carefully designed and orchestrated party conferences to debate the calls of this strange union of movements. I can just see Gordon Brown ditching his latest desperate attempt to stay in power Keynote Speech to have a debate about these ideas. Something that becomes even more likely to me when I see the demands of these groups:

They are calling on all the political parties to endorse the Common cause declaration3, which states that climate change and restoring the natural environment should be accorded the highest priority during the next Parliament.

The highest priority? Jeez, that's a bold aspiration. Sure, you might just be able to get it to a high priority with the likes of Hug A Husky Cameron, but the highest priority? Against the ongoing crippling recession? The coming bankruptcy of the UK unless there are radical spending cuts? Against the troops dying in Afghanistan? They really want environmental concerns of a bunch of charities and members of the environmental lobby to take precedence and priority over all of those issues? That's somewhere between ludicrous and faintly insulting.

They are also calling on the parties to commit to 10 green manifesto proposals for 2010.

If the Tory Manifesto is as light as last time, then 10 pledges will pretty much eliminate all other commitments. Which, I suppose may be the point. If they can't put anything else in the manifesto then environmental concerns will have to go to the top of the list. But if this union truly wants to get their ideas into the manifestos of the main parties, it needs to make sure that there is a reason why the parties should sign up to their ideals. And this is where the Green Alliance becomes like one of those sandwich board men proclaiming "The End of the World Is Nigh":

The stakes are high: the price of failure would be paid by those in the UK and internationally who are most at risk from climate change, and in the irreversible loss of countryside and biodiversity. Action is required now, not in the decades to come.

Oh God, here we go. The tedious, predictable demand that action has to be taken now. Before something terrible happens! The problem with this rhetoric is that I have been hearing it since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Environmental doom has been coming unless the government deals with it now for years. And yet here we all are, still A-Ok. Now, for all I know there may actually be a global environmental apocalypse coming. But the environmentalists have now become the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The constant repetition of their warning has made that warning supremely ineffective.

Stephen Hale, director of Green Alliance, said on behalf of the groups: “It’s now or never. Support for the Common cause declaration will be the threshold for credibility at the next election on environmental issues. The commitment to decisive action must be endorsed by all parties. The real contest will be over specific policies, so we urge them to include our 10 manifesto asks for 2010 in their forthcoming manifestos."

Again, now or never. Or, as past history has shown us, it is now or never or some point in the future because we're not sure when - or even if - the oft-promised environmental apocalypse will actually happen.

And the next election will about a debate on policies - a variety of different policies, of which environment will be a small part. It will also be about the economy, and MPs' expenses, and the War in Afghanistan, and divisions in the Labour party, and the fact that Gordon Brown is the least popular and least effective Prime Minister since Anthony Eden nearly got us into a war with America over Suez. The Green Alliance proclaiming what the threshold for credibility on environmental issues at the next election is all very well and good, but it ignores the fact that the parties will need to consider a lot of other issues also demanding a credible response before they start worrying about environmental policies.

“Action in the next parliament is critical if we are to simultaneously reduce our CO2 emissions whilst improving the resilience of our natural environment to avoid the looming crises of food, energy and water shortages by 2030.”

Now, I'm all for avoiding food, energy and water shortages by 2030 - I think most people would be. Unfortunately, two things are missing from the Green Alliance's claim that the next Parliament will be crucial in avoiding that. They are:

1. There is no evidence that the apocalyptic shortages mentioned by the Alliance are actually going to happen and
2. There is no evidence that the 10 points from the Alliance - which consist of unsubstantiated and unexplained arbitrary targets relating to standard Green objectives - will stop those shortages.

Which is the first problem with this demand for the main parties to make their manifestos green - there's no real concrete evidence that the demands of the Alliance will truly make a difference with the environment. And that ties in nicely with the second problem these demands have - there is no evidence that embracing this rhetoric will help any of the parties politically.

Had there been an election in 2006, then these ideas might have been incorporated by the likes of Cameron into a manifesto. Unfortunately for the Greens, since then things have changed. And they have changed massively. For most people in this country, environmental politics represent the political equivalent of a luxury good. If some people can afford to be green, some people will do. However, in the midst of a financial crisis, people don't care as much about the environment, and for the vast majority of people it isn't going to be the main thing that influences their votes. This demand from the Green Alliance simply shows how desperate the environmentalists are becoming. People aren't listening anymore; people can't afford to listen. And a shrill demand for the main parties to add some environmental policies to their manifestos won't change that.

Not my fault, guv'nor

There is a well known technique in the world of business - the blame-shower. Something goes wrong, and then the person in charge takes the time (often in a meeting) to pretty much blame everyone else for what has happened and in doing so abdicates all responsibility not just for the problem, but for just about everything else. In the known world. Ever.

And a great example of this is the behaviour of the Speaker of the House of Commons yesterday:

"The Speaker singled out the police for criticism as he sought to explain why they were allowed to raid Mr Green’s Commons office. Mr Martin said that he did not “personally authorise” the search although he admitted that he had been told in advance.

"He told angry MPs that the police advised Jill Pay, the Serjeant at Arms, on Wednesday that they were on the verge of arresting an MP but did not disclose his identity. She told him of the imminent arrest but not the full details. “I was not told that the police did not have a warrant. I regret that a consent form was . . . signed by the Serjeant at Arms without consulting the Clerk of the House,” he said."

It is funny what the Speaker did not know. He did not know there was no warrant. He did not know who the MP was. But let's compare this to what he did know - that the police were going to arrest an MP, and search his office. So, for me, two big questions immediately suggest themselves for the Speaker to have asked in this case. Firstly, "who are they going to arrest?" and then "do they have a warrant?" The failure to ask these questions really does reek of basic incompetence. But fair play, though; it was all the fault of the police anyway. Perhaps what the Commons should do is install some sort of person who can check what the action the police are taking against MPs. Like, say, the Speaker.

Oh.

And this is not the first time the Speaker has shown himself to be as much use as a chocolate fireguard. He has been accused of partisanship in the past, and seems to use tax money to fund a lifestyle that would be the envy of a pre-revolutionary French monarch. Like the Major government, he gives off an air of being in office but not in power. The Labour ranks can claim class bias against Gorbals Mick as much as they like - I'd imagine I'm not alone in not giving the first fuck about his social status. What bothers me - and what should bother everyone else - is his inability to do his job.

Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk when he was President saying "the buck stops here." The Speaker's sign would read "the buck stops anywhere and everywhere other than here". Which really does make me question what the point is of having this man in a position of power in the Commons. And I think it is time ask the Commons the question "can we have a different Speaker please?"

Protesting? Nah, strike!

Some people will protest at the drop of a hat - over wars, over pay cuts, over pay rises that are deemed too low, and so on. Other people will only protest if they really have to. I'd class myself in the latter camp. I don't protest over everything, but when it comes to key issues like ID cards, I will be protesting like there is no tomorrow when the day finally comes when the government tries to make me carry one.

I'd also class our MPs in the latter category. They seem to meekly accept pretty much everything, but now have found a cause that they *may* actually decide to protest. vAnd what is that cause? Why, having parliamentary offices searched, of course:

The House of Commons Speaker is to make a statement over the decision to allow police to search the offices of shadow immigration minister Damian Green. Michael Martin is expected to face a protest unless he grants a full parliamentary debate on the issue.

Isn't it funny how people become more eager to protest when it is their peers who are under threat, and they think they might be next? I'm not saying our MPs are self-serving, of course not... that would be crazy.

What I would say to our elected representatives is that a protest may not be enough. If they really want to make their case, then they should just go on strike. Down tools; just stop working. Striking is the way forward for our MPs. They can protect their rights by simply refusing to work. And MPs not working on any more generally shitty laws, not continuing to nationalise the financial sector, and not pontificating about issues that they have no intention of dealing with, may have a net benefit for the population as well...

Smith and Stalinism

Jacqui Smith isn’t a Stalinist. Oh no. You can tell. Because she said so:

Ms Smith told BBC One's Andrew Marr programme: "There have been a lot of charges thrown around here - the idea that, you know, this is Stalinism, this is a police state. In my book, Stalinism and a police state happens when ministers direct and interfere with specific investigations that the police are carrying out.”

And you know what? She’s right. Stalinism is – in part – what happens when ministers get too involved with the actions of the police. However, sadly for Ms Smith’s argument, Stalinism is also what happens when the police arrest people for the crime of being an opposition politician.

I’ll concede that not everything is known about this case as yet and it is more than possible that more will emerge about Mr Green’s actions – it is possible that he did break the law in some way. But as it stands it looks a lot like Mr Green’s sole crime was being in opposition, and acting as opposition MPs have always acted.

If this was a one off, then I would be less worried about it. But the arrest of an opposition MP seems to be completely in keeping with how our government operates. This isn’t an isolated incident; it seems to be part of an ongoing campaign to reduce civil liberties and suppress debate in this country. We live in a country where you can be imprisoned for 28 days without charge, where you can be arrested for wearing a stupid mask on the streets, where protesting outside Parliament generates the sort of police presence that one might associate with a riot. The government has tried to emasculate Parliament, and is currently trying to put us all on a database, like commodities owned and controlled by the state.

So maybe Jacqui Smith didn’t behave in a Stalinist way over this one incident. But for those who love freedom and our civil liberties, Britain in 2008 is a depressing place to be. It isn’t the individual incidents that make me want to put my head in my hands in despair – Mr Green himself is not the best of MPs, and may yet be proved to have committed a crime. Rather, it is the overall impact that this most egregious of governments is having on the freedoms and civil liberties that have existed, in some cases, for centuries. Green’s arrest is a symptom of a disease within British democracy – and it is a disease that should be concerning everyone within this country.