The challenge for the… Green parties – politicalbetting.com
The challenge for the… Green parties – politicalbetting.com
This is the penultimate in a series looking at the 7 main Great Britain parties. The main focus will be on the Green Party of England and Wales, but we’ll also look at the separate Scottish Greens.
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Stereodog said:
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I really don't think the public care that Starmer has no outward charisma. His massive problem is that he can't inspire any loyalty or even fear amongst his cabinet and MPs. I think that Starmer's resemblance to Ted Heath grows each day he is in office but at least Heath inspired fierce loyalty among his lieutenants and fear on the back benches.
He is like a wet blanket , no -one would want to be stuck with him. Like a grey cardboard cutout of a less able John Major.
I reckon he models himself on Roy from Corrie , minus the shopping bag.
NEW: Linden Kemkaran, the Reform UK leader of Kent County Council, tells @TimesRadio the party should consider an inquiry into a possible link between the Covid vaccine and cancer.
Comes after Dr Aseem Malhotra told the Reform conference the jab gave the Royal Family cancer.
https://x.com/KevinASchofield/status/1964733148434182451
Vote Farage Party, vote death!
(I think he has already backtracked to an extent but if it becomes a meme among the Reform faithful he's going to have some trouble. Anti-vaxxers are not malleable).
The YouTuber Anthony Styles is a child sex offender who was sentenced to four and half years in jail after indecently assaulting a schoolgirl
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/anti-migrant-protester-convicted-paedophile-dxl03wnjg
And a mischievous sense of humour: ..If the Scottish Greens aspire to greatness..
It'll start showing up in the stats soon as they destroy herd immunity.
Huge AI tech deal in Europe:
> Semiconductor machine maker ASML (Netherlands) is Europe’s 2nd largest company at $307B (behind SAP at $313B)
> France’s Mistral is raising $2B at at $14B valuation and is Europe’s top AI startup
> ASML is chipping in $1.5B of the $2B and is now the top shareholder in Mistral (which is building its own foundation mode and has chatbot Le Chat)
https://x.com/bearlyai/status/1964747167631024173
Is euro-tech waking up ?
But when things get worse environmentally, and Reform are still spouting their anti-climate change agenda?
Measles will be the quickest, thanks to its extreme infectiousness.
But the virtual elimination of some childhood diseases - including, as we're seeing in the US, polio - is under threat.
I'd also add, perhaps even worse, complications from viruses - measles can infect old folk still as well as young people and children and cause some very nasty complications such as blindness and encephalitis.
What I don't know is how much even previously vaccinated oldies are at risk once herd immunity is gone thanks to those idiots.
And as Gareth points out, the other parties not on the right tick some of the green boxes too.
Also, no love for my subtle visual pun ?
The main challenge for them is finding some sensible grown ups to run and represent their party.
Hence hypnoboobs.
Same dynamic as most other political parties.
That's a good question. Let me try off the top of my head.
Zack Polanski.
Caroline Lucas.
Natalie Bennett, who I knew from Britblog Roundup, who crashed a little in the media.
Jonathon Bartley, who was co-chair of the Ekklesia thinktank.
Adrian Ramsey, who I too easily get confused with Adam Ramsey who used to edit Bright Green Scotland, and who came from a castle, and who's dad released beavers onto his huge estate (30k acres iirc, which is ~30 sqiare miles) in Scotland.
And two others.
Was one of the others the woman who stood for London Mayor, and had been involved in activism against "Plonkers in Tonkas" (my phrase) ?
It was all projection.
Whoever would have thought it?
Maybe associating Reform with anti vax quackery will encourage the ethnic minorities, who are the major group of vaccine refuseniks, to give them a go
Could be that WWC types have to have their elders/religious gurus make leaflets for them to tell them not to be scared soon, a la the Muslim Council of Britain
https://mcb.org.uk/resources/opvac/
Reform does seem to be hoovering up the Tory failures and the BNP retreads.
But I’d just let these things feed into general public discourse through osmosis: I wouldn’t, as a political party, go particularly hard on it. Just highlight it and leave it there for people to realise the nuttiness.
Actually a study published in yesterdays independent/i paper showed Farage wasn’t on mainstream tv more than other politicians. He wasn’t even the top Reformer
Nigel Farage is not given more airtime on TV than other politicians, an academic study has found
https://x.com/theipaper/status/1964723531616284787?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Far better to highlight it, and then let people create their own doubt, than to go too hard on it.
On Hypnoboobs (which is a good quip) I not sure whether to look down for on him or his customers more. He was 30, and Harley Street is an epicentre of both quackery and the enablement of criminality - did not Mohammed Al Fayed have his victims pre-inspected there?
Perhaps he should have used blue pyramids?
In opposition Labour had their feet held to the fire "this isn't costed", " that will mean tax rises", " why will you stop work from 6pm Friday until 8.30 on a Monday if you become PM?"
With Farage his every word is taken at face value.
Measles erases immune ‘memory’ for other diseases
Results from tests of unvaccinated children and monkeys come as measles cases spike around the world.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03324-7
Still expecting Starmer in the dock at the Hague?
(In Scotland our jag rates are pretty consistent across ethnicity; a small drop off for African & Caribbean/Black).
https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2013/asml-completes-acquisition-of-cymer
The optics and engineering are European, I think. Cymer developed the technology to blast minute droplets of molten tin with a laser, 50,000 times every second.
https://www.asml.com/en/technology/lithography-principles/light-and-lasers
There are two reasons for this, and they are identical to those about Blair pre 1997:
You listen because he might be in charge (and for some of us he is dangerous) so you actually want to know
and
You listen because he is a top quality performer.
The combination of both is box office.
However analysis of party representation across flagship TV political programmes by Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture, found Farage appeared less frequently on flagship political shows last year, “contrary to long-standing claims that Nigel Farage is allocated more frequent appearances than other politicians on programmes such as Question Time”.
The study is here; it's political TV not news:
https://www.enhancingimpartiality.com/blog/interpreting-impartiality
We conducted an analysis of guests selected across five of the UK’s most prominent political discussion programmes, including Any Questions (BBC Radio 4), Peston (ITV), Question Time (BBC), Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg (BBC) and Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips (Sky News).
Inflation control will be out of the window.
We will all be a lot poorer.
Some of its policies aren't going to happen anyway, they are both extreme and lack popular support, so it's only for anoraks.
And there is a complex, boring and long term green agenda going ahead about electricity, insulation, housing standards, farming, landscape transport, boilers. It is necessary, complicated and dull. The sense that some Greens want us to reurn to the good old days of the ninth century isn't needed or wanted.
There is also the fact that outside specifically 'Green' issues its politics is unrealistic leftism, attractive only to a few, and its seats and target seats are full of single issue fanatics who don't agree with each other let alone the rest of us. And I suspect a large proportion of activists believe in MMT economics.
Mais oui.
Huddersfield is an interesting example as I think I'm in saying it represents a really good example of what Ramsey has been saying about electoral strategy: the Greens win seats in areas where they have spent years building a reputation on local government. Kirklees was one of the first councils anywhere with Greens on it I think. It's slow steady work. And involves very tightly focusing limited resources. It's a model of course the Liberals have used for years.
Polanski has argued - it seems successfully in the leader poll - that this is all far too slow.
It will be interesting in 2028/9 but me thinks Ramsey will be proved the better strategist.
I don't suppose Starmer will make it to the Hague. I was merely repeating the thoughts of Your Party, and for once I don't wholly disagree with them, specifically Starmer's tacit role over the imposed famine on the population of Gaza. Now you are going to come back to me with a "but what about Hamas...?"
The national party is far less convincing.
Being found out as nasty natured charlatans and chancers who have policies that are both contradictory and crazy, with huge silences over every really hard questions and little talent would be a start.
The next would be for other parties (the Tories have a big choice here, and look like making the wrong one) to get a lot better at centrist politics and for government to start getting better at doing its job so that tactical voting by the 60% who don't want Reform can be credible and effective.
The Tory choice? Is to say that they would rather be in coalition with Labour than with Reform.
This one is Sarah Ferguson in the early 1990s and a clairvoyant called Madame Vasso, where SF sat under a Blue Pyramid to be cleansed. Same sort of edgy stuff that highly intelligent or rich people swallow, to meet some sort of need.
A strange character, who betrayed Sarah Ferguson's confidences in a book - Isobel Oakeshott style.
My photo quota:
Short interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG0bIEX4qUI
Obit (may not be paywalled):
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1493102/Madame-Vasso.html
Really? Deep down?
And anyways. That would lead to a peeling off of half of their current support.
Leaving them in single figures.
The number of people seeking work has jumped at its fastest pace in five years as company bosses brace for Rachel Reeves to impose more tax rises at the next Budget.
In August, the supply of jobseekers rose by the largest amount since November 2020 as businesses laid people off and nervous managers cut back on hiring.
Recruiters blamed “weak confidence around the economic outlook and concerns over costs”, according to the survey by KPMG and the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/09/08/jobseeker-numbers-surge-fastest-pace-five-years/
I would like to see some analysis of where the Greens have grown their Council seat base, and how well they hold areas they have won.
It seems to be both rural (eg High Peaks in Derbyshire - 2 seats) but also Red Wall (eg Darlington - 6 seats). I've had some contact with both of those two wrt active travel, which is why I mention them. The Greens in my experience are the only party who are reliable on the principles on this - all of the others, including the Lib Dems, will trim on these and regard accessibility as part of a political negotiation to at least some extent.
There's a threshold in 2019, when they had 179 Council seats in England, and today they have 859.
I want to know where they have gone from effectively nothing to a decent sized group, and why.
The Ramsey strategy, if we can call it that, was working and he's been toiling away on it for years. Must be pretty galling to have an ex-LibDem whose only been in the party about five minutes come along and say 'I have a better way', claiming they can win dozens of seats, and win a leadership landslide. But I guess that's democracy for you.
Or maybe it is just entryism?
Westminster Spotlight League Table
Ranking every MPs media visibility across the UK's top publications over the last week with multipliers for articles specifically about the MP.
https://www.mp.govspendbase.uk/
I hear plans are in the works for a hustings with MPs Wednesday, before MP nominations close at 5 p.m. this Thursday (candidates will need 80 each).
https://x.com/danbloom1/status/1964933179820974505
Those going for this role have to get their arse in gear fast.
Especially with the Greens, who get very little national exposure. Remember most voters can’t even name the main party leaders let alone know what their views on Gaza are.
(And contrary to assumptions about yokels, I expect a fair proportion of Green voters in Herefordshire or Suffolk probably do share some of Polanski’s politics, if they know what they are.)
Abject Tory government is obviously a large part of it. But why there and not elsewhere?
It seems all too easy to simply say that they'll lose them if they go left. When we don't have a got handle on why they won them in the first place.
What used to be a sparkling, salmon filled watercourse that was a pleasure to swim in has turned into a turbid brown pond with regular algal blooms and no salmon.
Years have passed, politicians have said they’d do something about it but didn’t.
On this, I have my doubts Ramsay will be able to stomach staying in a harder left Green party and it will be interesting to see if and how long he stays after his return from compassionate leave.
Id not be entirely surprised regardless of his movements to see a Green mk 2/Ecology Party emerge to try and sweep up that rural ex Tory, environmental vote.
Of course they'd be tiny like the original Ecology Party but there is obviously a space for that in politics.
No-one wants to vote Tory at the moment because they are useless, unprincipled, incoherent and Reformlite.
The way back is not populism, Farage will always beat them there, but articulating in principle and policy what Toryism stands for and how it works, here and now.
Labour are the ones with their hands on the machinery of government. They are the ones who can deliver results. But a note on “centrism” per your post - if we are taking centrism to mean the broad consensus politics that we’ve been used to in recent years, that isn’t going to deliver the results - so there needs to be a type of “radical centrism” for want of a much better term; that acknowledges that departure from the precedent is the only way we are going to get society working for people. Some politicians are slowly starting to get this, but I doubt they have the political will to really try and do anything about it. We shall see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KbsdWilgPU
We talked about it on a national basis, but building stopping in London can hole Labour below the waterline.
Nigel Farage - Ref UK
Jeremy Corbyn - Ind
Zarah Sultana - Ind
Ellie Reeves - Lab
Ellie Chowns - Grn
James Murray - Lab
Carla Denyer - Grn
Adrian Ramsey - Grn
Alex Norris - Lab
Sarah Jones - Lab
Mrs Stodge (of the Kiwi persuasion) has been following the Tom Phillips story for some time. As she told me, it's probably how many thought it would end though there were fears the children wouldn't survive.
That part of the western Waikato is well off the tourist trail and the beaten track - it's not far from the back of beyond. Phillips had friends and supporters in the local community, at least initially, and was able to use them to evade the authorities but with time he became mosre brazen and desperate and in the end a confrontation with the Police was inevitable but as Mrs Stodge has told me, it's a complex and sad tale of family break down.
In East London, the normal occasional passage of underground trains, visible and occasionally audible (if the wind is in the right direction) from Stodge Towers is both invisible and inevitably muted this morning. The RMT dispute has had the effect desired or expected with almost no underground service in the capital. With home working now a largely accepted (except on parts of PB it seems) part of working life, the effects are not what they would have been though I suspect tomorrow will be more difficult with the DLR taken out by a separate dispute.
On topic, the Greens are a political force in my part of East London though the coming of the pro-Palestine Newham Independents has reduced their influence especailly in the more Muslim areas. Two councillors on Newham are entrenched in Stratford & New Town and the third (gained by defection from Labour) is in a Ward where the Greens have done well in the past.
Nonetheless, in a crowded anti-Labour field, it will be interesting to see if any kind of electoral pact (informal or otherwise) is in place next year so for example the Newham Independents will only stand in the Muslim Wards, the Greens in others and perhaps candidates from the Corbyn/Sultana grouping will fill the gaps. Labour will prevail and easily if the forces against them are fragmented but a single slate of anti-Labour candidates from the "left" could do very well as could a single Mayoral candidate.
The Green contingent on Kirklees has for many years amounted to 3 councillors in one ward, my ward of Newsome, they haven't lost here since, I think, 1996 and typical now poll in the 55-70% range in the ward. They often just call out from the sidelines, but they are excellent locally and their votes have counted in some of those NOC situations. I've voted for them locally since Corbyn.
In 2024 they expanded out in a second ward (Crossland...) and narrowly missed out on a third (Greenhead) due to a Gaza candidate splitting the vote. At the GE they got the Gaza vote here in the full absence of a dedicated Independent, and had an excellent campaign with the 25+ year time served councillor who is the core of their ward success as the parliamentary candidate. They will be hopeful of getting into double figures in councillors in next year's all ups.
The challenges for them are the national ones though - Reform are competitive in the constituency and that could lead to "stick to nurse" tactical voting, the Future Left (pre-YP) held a one day conference with Corbyn in Huddersfield, which was definitely a tanks on the lawn type move, Cllr Cooper is not a young man and could a generic Green campaign as well as him, could their council bloc get mired in what is almost certainly going to be a massively split and messy election result next year, awareness of Green competitiveness is not that widespread or assumed and the national party may favour Bristol where word is out - needs a broad Winning Here across all wards.
Within those constraints any amount of radicalism is possible. As Attlee, Thatcher and Blair illustrate.
I remember Siân Berry, because we've met several times and she never remembers who I am!