My refutation of Owen Jones' article of 22 February

Owen Jones, left-wing journalist and loyal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, and most famous for authoring "Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class", has recently claimed that the Greens should join up with Labour: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/22/greens-labour-jeremy-corbyn

It is clear that Owen is demonstrating the same sense of entitlement as so many left-wing Labour members and supporters, who spend more time trying to unseat who they see as rivals on the same side rather than Labour's natural opponent, the Conservatives.

He is also entirely wrong about the Progressive Alliance: it was not responsible for depriving the Conservatives of their majority; on the other hand it was a clear disaster for the Green Party and was not a real alliance at all since Labour never intended to reciprocate. The Greens' best performances were mostly in areas with a strong Liberal Democrat vote or naturally progressive vote-a strong Labour vote was and is not a significant factor here. And even when such an idea was being put into action for the snap 2017 general election, the Conservatives were at that point still on track for a landslide victory anyway, due to UKIP tacitly lending support to their "hard Brexit" plan. It was the Conservatives' own fault they lost their majority-their 2017 campaign was one of the worst in British history and they could not stand up to genuine scrutiny. The electoral system needs to be changed as well-Labour (along with Owen of course) is as decidedly uninterested in electoral reform as the Conservatives.

This is of course not the first time I have mentioned these truths or myth-busted pro-Labour propaganda-but to some the message has not sunk in yet. A red-green alliance is not necessary or useful at all and the Green Party, if it is to remain true to its core values and in bringing about a new green way of life to everyone, should never ally with Labour under any circumstances, especially after Labour has spent so much time and money trying to oust Green councillors (as shown in Private Eye regarding Islington council).

Comments

  1. Ricky Knight25 February 2018 at 18:29

    Good contribution, Alan - it's unclear to me to what extent Jones is trying to undermine the Greens - he (like Brand) has been really supportive in the past - but then along came the Saviour, JC. Nonetheless, he is at least prolonging the 'dialogue' and his article has been a reasonable 'success' on some of the political 'chatter' sites.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My analysis of local by-elections from 22/11/18

Readers, the results of this week's British local by-elections were as follows: Enfield LBC, Bush Hill Park: Conservative 1540 (52.4%, +12.7%), Labour 828 (28.2%, -8.3%), Liberal Democrats 313 (10.7%, -0.8%), Green 127 (4.3%, -6.6%), WEP 79 (2.7%), Independent (Oyaloyu) 50 (1.7%). [UKIP did not stand] Westminster LBC, Lancaster Gate: Conservative 913 (47.2%, -1.5%), Labour 684 (35.4%, -1.0%), Liberal Democrats 275 (14.2%, -0.7%), Green 62 (3.2%). Windsor & Maidenhead UA, Datchet: Conservative 525 (56.0%, -3.1%), National Flood Prevention Party 223 (23.8%), Labour 121 (12.9%, -9.1%), Liberal Democrats 48 (5.1%,-13.8%), Green 21 (2.2%). Wirral MBC, Upton: Labour 1490 (61.3%, +3.1%), Conservative 705 (29.0%, +0.4%), Green 151 (6.2%, -0.5%), Liberal Democrats 83 (3.4%, -0.8%). [TUSC did not stand] All changes are since May. The open divisions in the Conservatives, which resulted in a failed attempt to call for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May by the European Researc...
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian ...
Read more

On the French local elections of 2020: Vive le surge de vert!

The French local elections finally concluded yesterday, having been originally scheduled to take place on 15 March; they were postponed due to the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  The most sensational story of these elections was the many triumphs by the main French Green Party, Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV). In major French cities (those with more than 100,000 people), EELV captured the mayoralties of Annecy, Besancon, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Strasbourg, and Tours. They also performed impressively in the munciipal elections for those cities as well. However, in the midst of all this triumph there was one notable setback for them: Eric Pollie, the first Green Mayor of a major French city, decided to contest the mayoral election there as an "Independent Left" (divers gauche) candidate instead. Furthermore they narrowly missed out on unseating former PS leader Martine Aubry from her post as Mayor of Lille; in the second round she held on by 227 votes, a sig...
Read more