Do all conference motions necessarily need to be about immediate policy change? Is there not value in clarifying where the leadership and wider party stand on such relevant questions - especially for what is essentially a new party?
I think there is some value, for sure, I just don’t think it’s worth the costs: big public argument about an issue that’s not relevant to most people, advertising disunity, giving the press the opportunity to restart an anti-semitism crisis. I’d have more sympathy if this was the only / primary way to influence the manifesto because manifestos do (somewhat) matter - but its not, thats the policy working groups.
Given the surge in membership, many of whom are ex-Labour like yourself, the openness of the GP is probably something of a shock to a lot of the new members. Of course it will make them a bit giddy and keen to make radical waves. But motions at conference are one way of containing those waves to a test tank. Also, zionism is racism, so maybe having that debate now, when the evidence is clear for almost everyone, is no bad thing. The only people supporting Israel and Zionism today are those who are bought and paid for clients of the Zionist state, or zealots. The trajectory of support for Israel is steeply downward, and getting steeper with every vindictive 'strike' on Lebanon and Gaza.
It would be good to focus on cost of living, but the question is, how do you address that without addressing the underlying structure of the economic system? The balance between making yourself a genuine alternative to the "same old same old" parties, and not being too radical so as to scare the more cautious voter away is a tricky one. Not many have managed it. What policies can restore a satisfactory economic status for the majority without breaking the whole neoliberal structure? Since the ecological and environmental crises are only deepening, and the level of conflict is affecting supply routes, costs are only likely to rise. Attempting to stabilise the situation, while mitigating climate change and restoring biodiveristy, has proved beyond everyone. So doing this while simultaneously dismantling the wealth pump that extracts profit upwards.. and staying popular, probably undoable. Whoever inherits the mess Labour will leave is almost certain to fail. There is going to be a major economic crash, and it is probably the government that comes to power once that has happened that will have licence to be truly radical.
I don’t think the danger is being too radical, it’s being too minoritarian. We should be radical on issues that a majority of people care about. This could mean: nationalisation, green industrial strategy, investment in public services, price controls on basic goods, rent caps, wealth taxes etc. but also anti-establishment measures: a workers’ wage for MPs, banning corporate money from politics, abolishing house of lords, moving Westminster up north etc. Obviously not everything we want or need to do will fall into this (drugs and arguably police reform less popular) but our job is to jack up the salience of our popular radicalism while our opponents will try to highlight our unpopular radicalism.
One persons radicalism is anothers minoritarianism (horrible word). I think what you are saying is that there are popular policies and unpopular ones, but the real question is who decides which is which. Focus groups? Polls? Asking the membership? Assembling a select clique and letting them decide? There is a torrent of misinformation and bias out there, funded by those who benefit from our current system. They strongly influence 'popular' opinion. If they fear a policy, they do everything in their power to make it 'unpopular'. What may seem popular today, may only be that way because it isn't seen as a serious possibility. The narrative to change how they are viewed is already there. It just needs to be emphasised in the same way they have been pushing the anti-immigrant line. Trying to operate on the basis of what is popular is a road to ruin. You need to have values, and principles, and a coherent vision of a better world and how to deliver it. Then you need to stick to it no matter what they throw at you. You need to force them to operate on your terrain. Anything else will fail.
"You need to have values, and principles, and a coherent vision of a better world and how to deliver it. Then you need to stick to it no matter what they throw at you."
I completely agree with this. But from those values, principles and vision you will pick certain aspects to emphasise and talk up, and others to de-emphasise. Attention is finite, and your choice of headline will always be zero-sum. My argument - completely in accord with what Zack's doing right now - is that you stick to your principles but spend as much time as you can talking about the parts of your programme that resonates most deeply with a majority of people.
And I agree, it's not easy to gauge public opinion and you can't solely rely on polls and focus groups, but we have plenty other sources of information as a party: what's coming up on the doors, what our friends and family are talking about, what aligns with the material reality (IE. things are getting more expensive, wages aren't going up, so it makes sense that cost of living is a big issue). It's also not even clear to me that polls are deliberately stacked against us: for years polling companies have shown that nationalisation is wildly popular. What incentive do they have to do that? It's possible that the incentive to be right (which means they get more work as a pollster) is stronger than their incentive to uphold the system as it is.
The Belgian Workers Party are a good example here, they do mass online and door-to-door issue surveying to keep in touch with what working class people care about and then tailor their comms and messaging to that. They're an explicitly Marxist party and currently first in some polls in Belgium. Radical and majoritarian!
The extreme right long ago co-opted 'zionist' as just another word for Jew. And there are a spectrum of definitions of 'zionism'. So, as you say, the motion is politically mind blowingly naive and falls head first into the media's gleeful hands.
It’s a bit of a catch-22 for the Greens. They can either use provocative framing to cut through and risk alienating parts of the electorate, or stick to more technocratic policy that rarely gets much attention. It’s a balancing act all smaller parties have to navigate in a media environment that rewards salience over substance.
I think there's a way through the middle: popular radicalism. Policies that are popular and cause controversy because they're seen by the establishment as radical. 10:1 wage ratios are a great example: controversial with SW1 types but overwhelmingly popular with the public, including a majority of Reform voters
That makes sense, I agree the emphasis matters. I guess the challenge is that even the flagship policies have to survive that first round of real-world interpretation. People don’t engage with them in a linear way anymore, they go straight to stress-testing them, and if something can be easily misunderstood or turned into an unrealistic example, that version tends to stick pretty quickly.
So we should encourage zionists to join the green party and be scared they'll leave? This exact kind of thinking is what gets the conservatives and labour lurching right, chasing this amorphous 'average voter' at all costs. What's the point of a green party that only stands on the most lukewarm, barebones policies out of fear of the electorate?
I'm not scared of zionists leaving, I'm scared of giving the media and the establishment a chance of doing anti-semitism crisis mk II and discrediting the Greens as they did Corbyn. No coincidence this is the attack line Steve Reed and Labour are now pushing.
"What's the point of a green party that only stands on the most lukewarm, barebones policies out of fear of the electorate?"
I never argued for this. I want a radical party that can win. That means certain kinds of popular radicalism. The 10/1 pay ratios policy is a good example of this: radical and caused a fuss on our terms, when polled a majority of Reform voters agreed. Excellent radical policy
if you think that the dominant shared characteristic of the 21st century british left - that 95% of people who turn up went to university - doesn't have some downstream effects on our politics and practice, I don't really know what to tell you
And as someone who went to uni but grew up in a place where most people didn't, I can tell you that on a behavioural / cultural level there is a gulf between graduates and non-graduates, and in that sense Dan Evan's thesis in the Nation of Shopkeepers does really hold up
1. The weaponisation of identity. "This motion centres Palestinian voices and was written by them" was the common shut down , and any conversations on this used that line.
2. Feelings hurt/outrage politics focusing on moral reactions rather than logical or political ones. Try argue the Greens ridiculously naff migration policy needs moderating and you get hit with "you want migrants to die !" , its the same with this. Wanting nuance equates supporting Netinyahu and backing genocide in the eyes of the motion supporters.
That’s incredibly frustrating mode of argument, and a symptom of an impoverished intellectual / strategic culture on the left, most obviously and recently diagnosed by Emma Dabiri and Ash Sarker. The most depressing thing for me from a party building perspective is it’s denial of other members as capable and strategic subjects who have the ability - and responsibility - to critically engage with each other as comrades. Identity driven moralism just says: stay in your lane, only speak at your intersection and accept the party will be site of expression for a collection of radical activists, not a vehicle for taking power / over throwing capitalism. I want the latter!
This is the same predicament facing the Progressive Left in the American political arena. Some would rather die on their cross of anti-Zionism, rather than putting this stance on a back burner, understood, but not used as a cudgel to gain popular support. Maximal idealism in politics is worthy of Don Quixote, and many Sancho Panza’s are sure to follow.
Yeah I was talking to a DSA friend who noted that this GP motion was based on one that went to their convention, with the express purpose of purging zionists from the org (despite there being few to none, and them have no meaningful power). It’s an authoritarian purity politics that says: we want a mass membership organisation, but everyone must think exactly as we do, and we’ll incur any cost in achieving it. I think it’s so often missed that internal conflict and disunity are so deeply unappealing - to new potential members, to voters, just to humans really.
Do all conference motions necessarily need to be about immediate policy change? Is there not value in clarifying where the leadership and wider party stand on such relevant questions - especially for what is essentially a new party?
I think there is some value, for sure, I just don’t think it’s worth the costs: big public argument about an issue that’s not relevant to most people, advertising disunity, giving the press the opportunity to restart an anti-semitism crisis. I’d have more sympathy if this was the only / primary way to influence the manifesto because manifestos do (somewhat) matter - but its not, thats the policy working groups.
Given the surge in membership, many of whom are ex-Labour like yourself, the openness of the GP is probably something of a shock to a lot of the new members. Of course it will make them a bit giddy and keen to make radical waves. But motions at conference are one way of containing those waves to a test tank. Also, zionism is racism, so maybe having that debate now, when the evidence is clear for almost everyone, is no bad thing. The only people supporting Israel and Zionism today are those who are bought and paid for clients of the Zionist state, or zealots. The trajectory of support for Israel is steeply downward, and getting steeper with every vindictive 'strike' on Lebanon and Gaza.
It would be good to focus on cost of living, but the question is, how do you address that without addressing the underlying structure of the economic system? The balance between making yourself a genuine alternative to the "same old same old" parties, and not being too radical so as to scare the more cautious voter away is a tricky one. Not many have managed it. What policies can restore a satisfactory economic status for the majority without breaking the whole neoliberal structure? Since the ecological and environmental crises are only deepening, and the level of conflict is affecting supply routes, costs are only likely to rise. Attempting to stabilise the situation, while mitigating climate change and restoring biodiveristy, has proved beyond everyone. So doing this while simultaneously dismantling the wealth pump that extracts profit upwards.. and staying popular, probably undoable. Whoever inherits the mess Labour will leave is almost certain to fail. There is going to be a major economic crash, and it is probably the government that comes to power once that has happened that will have licence to be truly radical.
I don’t think the danger is being too radical, it’s being too minoritarian. We should be radical on issues that a majority of people care about. This could mean: nationalisation, green industrial strategy, investment in public services, price controls on basic goods, rent caps, wealth taxes etc. but also anti-establishment measures: a workers’ wage for MPs, banning corporate money from politics, abolishing house of lords, moving Westminster up north etc. Obviously not everything we want or need to do will fall into this (drugs and arguably police reform less popular) but our job is to jack up the salience of our popular radicalism while our opponents will try to highlight our unpopular radicalism.
One persons radicalism is anothers minoritarianism (horrible word). I think what you are saying is that there are popular policies and unpopular ones, but the real question is who decides which is which. Focus groups? Polls? Asking the membership? Assembling a select clique and letting them decide? There is a torrent of misinformation and bias out there, funded by those who benefit from our current system. They strongly influence 'popular' opinion. If they fear a policy, they do everything in their power to make it 'unpopular'. What may seem popular today, may only be that way because it isn't seen as a serious possibility. The narrative to change how they are viewed is already there. It just needs to be emphasised in the same way they have been pushing the anti-immigrant line. Trying to operate on the basis of what is popular is a road to ruin. You need to have values, and principles, and a coherent vision of a better world and how to deliver it. Then you need to stick to it no matter what they throw at you. You need to force them to operate on your terrain. Anything else will fail.
"You need to have values, and principles, and a coherent vision of a better world and how to deliver it. Then you need to stick to it no matter what they throw at you."
I completely agree with this. But from those values, principles and vision you will pick certain aspects to emphasise and talk up, and others to de-emphasise. Attention is finite, and your choice of headline will always be zero-sum. My argument - completely in accord with what Zack's doing right now - is that you stick to your principles but spend as much time as you can talking about the parts of your programme that resonates most deeply with a majority of people.
And I agree, it's not easy to gauge public opinion and you can't solely rely on polls and focus groups, but we have plenty other sources of information as a party: what's coming up on the doors, what our friends and family are talking about, what aligns with the material reality (IE. things are getting more expensive, wages aren't going up, so it makes sense that cost of living is a big issue). It's also not even clear to me that polls are deliberately stacked against us: for years polling companies have shown that nationalisation is wildly popular. What incentive do they have to do that? It's possible that the incentive to be right (which means they get more work as a pollster) is stronger than their incentive to uphold the system as it is.
The Belgian Workers Party are a good example here, they do mass online and door-to-door issue surveying to keep in touch with what working class people care about and then tailor their comms and messaging to that. They're an explicitly Marxist party and currently first in some polls in Belgium. Radical and majoritarian!
The extreme right long ago co-opted 'zionist' as just another word for Jew. And there are a spectrum of definitions of 'zionism'. So, as you say, the motion is politically mind blowingly naive and falls head first into the media's gleeful hands.
It’s a bit of a catch-22 for the Greens. They can either use provocative framing to cut through and risk alienating parts of the electorate, or stick to more technocratic policy that rarely gets much attention. It’s a balancing act all smaller parties have to navigate in a media environment that rewards salience over substance.
I think there's a way through the middle: popular radicalism. Policies that are popular and cause controversy because they're seen by the establishment as radical. 10:1 wage ratios are a great example: controversial with SW1 types but overwhelmingly popular with the public, including a majority of Reform voters
Not every policy will hit these notes, but the ones we emphasise and raise up in salience should be
That makes sense, I agree the emphasis matters. I guess the challenge is that even the flagship policies have to survive that first round of real-world interpretation. People don’t engage with them in a linear way anymore, they go straight to stress-testing them, and if something can be easily misunderstood or turned into an unrealistic example, that version tends to stick pretty quickly.
So we should encourage zionists to join the green party and be scared they'll leave? This exact kind of thinking is what gets the conservatives and labour lurching right, chasing this amorphous 'average voter' at all costs. What's the point of a green party that only stands on the most lukewarm, barebones policies out of fear of the electorate?
I'm not scared of zionists leaving, I'm scared of giving the media and the establishment a chance of doing anti-semitism crisis mk II and discrediting the Greens as they did Corbyn. No coincidence this is the attack line Steve Reed and Labour are now pushing.
"What's the point of a green party that only stands on the most lukewarm, barebones policies out of fear of the electorate?"
I never argued for this. I want a radical party that can win. That means certain kinds of popular radicalism. The 10/1 pay ratios policy is a good example of this: radical and caused a fuss on our terms, when polled a majority of Reform voters agreed. Excellent radical policy
Attacking university graduates doesn't make you sound smarter. It's a trope, not an argument.
if you think that the dominant shared characteristic of the 21st century british left - that 95% of people who turn up went to university - doesn't have some downstream effects on our politics and practice, I don't really know what to tell you
And as someone who went to uni but grew up in a place where most people didn't, I can tell you that on a behavioural / cultural level there is a gulf between graduates and non-graduates, and in that sense Dan Evan's thesis in the Nation of Shopkeepers does really hold up
Considering I'm part of the British left and only about 40% of the people I know in my party went to university, I'm calling bull.
Unless literally every single person in every other left party is from a university to compensate, 95% is bogus.
Its hard to argue against for two reasons .
1. The weaponisation of identity. "This motion centres Palestinian voices and was written by them" was the common shut down , and any conversations on this used that line.
2. Feelings hurt/outrage politics focusing on moral reactions rather than logical or political ones. Try argue the Greens ridiculously naff migration policy needs moderating and you get hit with "you want migrants to die !" , its the same with this. Wanting nuance equates supporting Netinyahu and backing genocide in the eyes of the motion supporters.
That’s incredibly frustrating mode of argument, and a symptom of an impoverished intellectual / strategic culture on the left, most obviously and recently diagnosed by Emma Dabiri and Ash Sarker. The most depressing thing for me from a party building perspective is it’s denial of other members as capable and strategic subjects who have the ability - and responsibility - to critically engage with each other as comrades. Identity driven moralism just says: stay in your lane, only speak at your intersection and accept the party will be site of expression for a collection of radical activists, not a vehicle for taking power / over throwing capitalism. I want the latter!
This is the same predicament facing the Progressive Left in the American political arena. Some would rather die on their cross of anti-Zionism, rather than putting this stance on a back burner, understood, but not used as a cudgel to gain popular support. Maximal idealism in politics is worthy of Don Quixote, and many Sancho Panza’s are sure to follow.
Yeah I was talking to a DSA friend who noted that this GP motion was based on one that went to their convention, with the express purpose of purging zionists from the org (despite there being few to none, and them have no meaningful power). It’s an authoritarian purity politics that says: we want a mass membership organisation, but everyone must think exactly as we do, and we’ll incur any cost in achieving it. I think it’s so often missed that internal conflict and disunity are so deeply unappealing - to new potential members, to voters, just to humans really.
Hi this is Tyrone. I fully agree. But it's ironic to hear this position!