Tag Archives: the alternative

This week I had the chance to talk to Caroline Lucas, newly elected co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, about the book “The Alternative.” She co-edited the book with Labour MP Lisa Nandy and her erstwhile 2015 Liberal Democrat opponent Chris Bowers. The three will be taking part in a fringe meeting at Conference TODAY at 1pm in the Buckingham suite in the Hilton Metropole. The event is organised by the Social Liberal Forum. Part 1 is available here.

I  wondered if the sense of solidarity that exists between women across politics, partly because we all have to put up with a fairly sexist political culture, could be developed to help the process of cross-party working along:

In my experience generally speaking women tend to be more interested in working together and and finding that common ground not in scoring points. But one of the crucial things is to have confidence building measures at a local level so that some of the very real mistrust between parties can be addressed and, as much as possible, neutralised.

I’m glad she brought that up because we all have that baggage of bad experiences with members of other parties. Many Lib Dems feel pretty bruised by some of the abuse that came our way during the coalition years, especially when we didn’t agree with what was happening.  We do have to get past that, but how do we patch that up?

This week I had the chance to talk to Caroline Lucas, newly elected co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, about the book “The Alternative.” She co-edited the book with Labour MP Lisa Nandy and her erstwhile 2015 Liberal Democrat opponent Chris Bowers. The three will be taking part in a fringe meeting at Conference tomorrow at 1pm in the Buckingham suite in the Hilton Metropole. The event is organised by the Social Liberal Forum. Part 1 is available here.

Part 1 ended with a discussion on a more collaborative politics. That’s not quite what we see even within the Labour Party at the moment. After what the Tories did to scare people witless of a coalition between Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond, what would they do with anything that involved Jeremy Corbyn, even if he were inclined to be a part of it?

Caroline is clear that this is not something politicians can stitch up between themselves:

This week I had the chance to talk to Caroline Lucas, newly elected co-Leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, about the book “The Alternative.” She co-edited the book with Labour MP Lisa Nandy and her erstwhile 2015 Liberal Democrat opponent Chris Bowers. The three will be taking part in a fringe meeting at Conference on Sunday at 1pm in the Buckingham suite in the Hilton Metropole. The event is organised by the Social Liberal Forum.

The first part of the book explores all sorts of ideas, from foreign affairs to social security and public services, where there is significant common ground between those of a progressive nature.The second explores how progressives could work together to beat the Tories. It’s a progressive antidote to the Tory dystopia into which we are currently descending. Though the book sets a lot of hares running, it doesn’t seek to outline a way forward. So, I asked Caroline, what happens next?

In the book there are all kinds of options discussed and explored and absolutely no blueprint not least because what might work in one constituency might not work in another.