This column is going to make me very unpopular in parts of the party, but there are times when the elephant in the room needs calling out: we have to learn to respect the Greens.
I’m not saying we should love them, I’m not advocating standasides, certainly not a merger; I’m also all for highlighting how we’re different as parties. But I am getting irritated at the number of cheap shots coming from our party that denigrate the Greens. The fact is: Lib Dems and Greens perform a similar function in British politics. We need them, and they need us.
Much is made of the current realignment in politics. This realignment is and isn’t happening. It is in the sense that Reform and the Greens will have a much bigger presence at the next general election – even if their current poll ratings aren’t sustained – which will create a five-party system, or six in Scotland and Wales. It isn’t in the sense that there will still be two main blocs: the progressive/centre-left made up of Labour, Lib Dems and Greens, and the regressive/far-right made up of the Conservatives and Reform.
That’s if you divide the political spectrum vertically. If you divide it horizontally, you get the old versus the new, or the system versus the anti-system. The ‘old’ or ‘system’ are Labour and the Tories, while the ‘new’ or ‘anti-system’ are the Greens, Lib Dems, and Reform (at least we ought to be in that anti-system group – at present we’re uncomfortably too old-school for a Liberal party). Whichever way you divide it, we are – or ought to be – in the same space as the Greens as a progressive anti-system option. So we have to find ways of working with them, even if it’s under the radar.
I can already hear the screams of anguish from local parties, nursing the scars from Greens tactics that were felt to be below the belt. I know, I’ve seen it myself. But, you know something, the Greens think exactly the same about us. In fact, as we’re the more established party, our numbers over the past 30 years have been higher, so they think we’ve looked down on them (at times we have). Liberalism’s outward-looking philosophy may make us good Europeans and internationalists, but we’re still as tribal as the Greens when it comes to relations with each other.
If we want grown-up politics, we have to put some of our tribalism aside and recognise how much we have in common with many Greens. If we met in some social context without knowing their politics, we would quickly get a sense of common ground. All is fine until we admit we’re members of different parties fighting for the same political space.
The real mistake of LibDem/Green antagonism is that we risk seriously misreading the voters. We politicos may be proudly Lib Dems or Greens, but the voters are fluid. In my constituency (Lewes), people are smart enough to know that voting Green is something they can afford in council elections as the Greens can win and it doesn’t let in some dastardly alternative. But come the general election, they know voting Green is wasted, so they vote Lib Dem – and we have a Lib Dem MP again. When voters clearly have their Lib Dem bar charts emblazoned on their subconscious, it doesn’t help us to take cheap shots at the Greens.
We were rightly elated to pick up 57 new seats at the 2024 general election, but I sense a complacency that assumes those seats are ours. No, they were the result of good local campaigning and canny tactics on the part of the voters. If we are to keep the progressive/centre-left votes (Labour and Green voters voting tactically for us where it makes sense to do so), we have to be progressive, not ‘more of the same’ as we’re increasingly being seen. And we must be more tempered in our criticism of Labour and Greens than of Tories and Reform.
That will mean a shift in thought on our part. We need to focus on what we want to achieve in politics, not on contesting sport-like battles where the orange team should always beat the green, red, blue, and turquoise teams. Of course there are tactics involved, but tactics are means to an end, they must never dwarf the end. Even allowing for Zack Polanski’s more extreme views, the Greens share many of our aims – we need to focus on those aims, not diss a rival party with a moderately similar outlook to ours.
Under first-past-the-post, we need to work with the Greens, and once we secure our grown-up voting system, we’ll have to work with them in coalitions and confidence arrangements. So we’d better start respecting them now.
With liberal democracy itself at stake at the next election, we have to make it easy for voters to vote for radical progressive options. We don’t have to like all Greens (although most of them are good eggs as much as we are), and we can get irritated at Polanski if it makes us feel better. But we do have to keep an eye on what we’re in politics for – and that means showing some respect for people we’ll need to work with.
* Chris Bowers is a two-term district councillor and four-time parliamentary candidate. He writes on cross-party cooperation, was the lead author of the New Liberal Manifesto, and is unofficial coordinator of the Yorkists.
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39 Comments
Well said. Chris.
So, today we read that a Green candidate with a good chance of being elected to the Scottish Parliament describes herself as a prison abolitionist.
We are not similar to the Green Party and it is dangerous to suggest we are.
Many good points here but standasides absolutely *should* be on the table where it makes sense to keep Reform out or topple a Labour/Tory MP.
As you say, under a proportional electoral system LibDems will need to get used to working with Greens in coalition, so why not start now?
As proved by the success of tactical voting in 2024 (and Gorton and Denton recently) progressive voters are more than willing to lend a vote to an alternative progressive party to unseat a right-winger so why frustrate them (and slow down the pace of change) by fighting the Greens in seats where they are clearly more likely to win?
I don’t suppose the Greens will be targeting existing LibDem seats anyway (they don’t have the resources to fight everyone, everywhere yet) so if they’re looking likely to unseat somebody LibDems would prefer to see gone, why not let them do it?
Splitting the progressive vote in such seats just risks Reform/Labour/Tories stealing it and thus preventing the election of enough progressive MPs to form a left-of-centre coalition government in 2029.
I’m sure none of us wants that!
“Many good points here but standasides absolutely *should* be on the table where it makes sense to keep Reform out or topple a Labour/Tory MP. ”
So lets assume that this strategy is decided upon by the Lib Dems and Greens and widely accepted by the membership of both parties and discussions are entered into in good faith. How do you draw up that list of seats?
Remember the Lib Dems only came second in (I think) 27 seats in 2024 (itself a remarkable indicator of how successful the 2024 strategy was)
I spent 15 Years in The Greens & now its 20+ Years in The LIbdems, they have a lot in commons & many of the same values. The differences can be useful in that each can reach Voters the other can’t.
I tend to be in favour of always standing where we can, it’s enough that both Parties are sensible about Targeting. I am a good example in that I will be voting Green in May because I live in a Green Target ward, working together both Parties may be able to break the local Labour monopoly. I am lucky enough to live in a place where Reform aren’t relevant. Where Reform stand a real prospect of winning then yes, we should think of not standing.
The Liberals and SDP were much closer in the early 1980s than the Lib Dems and the Greens are now, but dividing up the seats for the 1983 General Election caused lots of bruised feelings when seats were allocated to the other party. Don’t underestimate how difficult standing aside will be.
“I am getting irritated at the number of cheap shots coming from our party that denigrate the Greens. ”
Is it a cheap shot to point out that some of their members are openly anti semitic ( and nothing is done about it)
that their members are going door to door asking people to boycott Jewish owned businesses?
that their deputy leader describes Jew living in their ancient homeland as ‘colonialsts ‘
there policy to leave NATO ?
etc etc.
Whatever they used to be they are now an anti Semetic, far left party. we should not be making any deals with them
The Greens – trying to save the world whilst appearing to live on another planet. Yes, that’s a cheap shot, but I am fed up with being lectured by them and their apologists. I suppose I might get used to their sanctimonious holier-than-thou posturing, but If their policies were to be implemented it would require a degree of illiberal legal and regulatory control that I for one would find intolerable.
Let’s put it this way – in an STV election, I doubt if they would be my second preference.
Here we go again, ignoring the reality.
The Greens policies are way way out, they are very left wing and it is utterly naive to see them as the deserving our respect. Do that and they will destroy us. They have made a good start to that processin local by elections over the past few weeks.
They do not respect us.
No no no no no, yes we must respect the greens but only in the sense that one must respect ones enemy so as not to be outdone by them.
Sure we’ve not earned the right to be dismissive of anything that the Greens do for as long as they have more members and are doing better in the polls, but accepting that we should accept that they should be a significant force in our countries politics is just as bad, and seems to be the result of short memories. When I joined this party the Greens were on 1% with no MPs or councils, WE were the party of Young people, WE were the party Muslims were turning to as a result of Labour’s foreign policy, WE were the ones taking over Labour cities.
We are letting ourselves be slowly boiled like frogs; our reaction instead should be the same as that of a LibDem who had fallen into a coma in 2009 and woken up to discover that they’d overtaken us in the national polls and in several former lib dem seats, had taken Bristol Central and many of our former wards, won a by election in one of our stronger parts of Manchester and were dominating the youth vote.
WE SHOULD NOT ACCEPT THIS.
PR will only make matters worse if we don’t turn things around first, as Greens would get more seats solidify their hold over ideologically liberal voters, leaving us with a very minor role to play in any future coalitions.
@ Simon McGrath. Could Mr McGrath please explain the evidence for his accusations of anti-semitisim in the Green Party given that their current Leader’s family had to escape Lithuania to avoid anti-Semitic persecution ?
The Greens are under Mr Polanski populist left, to the left of Labour and closer to Mr Corbyns brand of socialism. They advocate no controls on migration, are soft on law and order and worryingly support complete unbanning of all drugs. They are surely odd bedfellows of any lib dems. Even Labour would be better.
“Lib Dems and Greens perform a similar function in British politics. We need them, and they need us”
If the first sentence were true (and I’m not sure it still is) the second would definitely not be. From a practical point of view, avoiding them may well be the best strategy in some areas but in others it is not an option and we need to fight them.
There seems to be a lot of confusion here which could easily be remedied by a bit of searching online, 80% of Green policies are the same as or very similar to ours. They Talk more Left than they actually are, particularly facing Labour. Polanski does not decide Green policy any more than Ed decides ours. You have to remember that he only got the vote of 3 in 10 Green members.
We don’t know what the relative strengths of our Parties are, there is no consensus in The Polls, some firms put the two Parties level & some put The Greens way ahead. We won’t know for certain till we get The National Voting Equivalent figures on May 9th or 10th. The numbers of Councillors won’t tell us much because The Elections are mostly in areas where they have more potential than us.
I’d vote Conservative, and maybe even Reform before the current Green Party leadership.
“There seems to be a lot of confusion here which could easily be remedied by a bit of
searching online, 80% of Green policies are the same as or very similar to ours.”
Maybe, but it’s the other 20% that I’m bothered about!
It’s not just policies it’s philosophy
The Greens are basically a socialist dictatorial solution party. We are…or should be a Liberal Party we believes in individual liberty rather than “group think” of the Greens.I too would sooner vote Conservative rather than Green
Some of the comments here are reminders of why I left. I have my issues with the greens but they are emancipatory progressives and the Conservatives and Reform are authoritarian hate-tanks. The greens are making noises about things that we – I should say that you – should have a line on, even (especially) when it’s a different line, and on which the you are currently silent. It is shameful, and reminder of why a lot of liberal radicals and radical liberals don’t feel attracted to Davey-Cooper split-the-difference centrism.
“There seems to be a lot of confusion here which could easily be remedied by a bit of searching online, 80% of Green policies are the same as or very similar to ours.”
This is the Green party manifesto on work as an eg (and its fair to say that a 2028/29 one under Polanski would be further to the left:
“Repeal of current anti-union legislation and its replacement with a positive Charter of Workers’ Rights, with the right to strike at its heart along with a legal obligation for all employers to recognise trade unions.
A maximum 10:1 pay ratio for all private- and public-sector organisations.
An increase in the minimum wage to £15 an hour, no matter your age, with the costs to small businesses offset by reducing their National Insurance payments.
Equal employment rights for all workers from their first day of employment, including those working in the ‘gig economy’ and on zero-hours contracts. Gig employers that repeatedly break employment, data protection or tax law will be denied licences to operate.
A move to a four-day working week.”
Hard to see where 80% of that would be Lib Dem.
You have moved incredibly rapidly from ‘respecting the Greens’ to ‘basically we are the same’
Chris Bowers makes a very good case for co-operation with (NOT standing aside for) the Greens, and I think that each case needs to be considered on its merits. As he says, the Green membership tends to be similar in many of their attitudes to the membership of the Liberal Democrats, and perhaps the most important thing we should be talking with them as individuals, to find out their views and beliefs. Frankly, those who say they would rather vote Conservative or Reform than back the Greens when no Liberal is standing are not people who would share the values of Liberalism, and would probably be better off in the Conservatives. Yes, of course there are differences, but I have found that the people who are becoming Green Party members are the same type of person who a generation or two ago would have been recruiting into the Liberal Party. There is much room for co-operation, since Green and LibDem target seats do not appear to overlap, either at local or at national level.
LibDem target seats are almost all seats to take from the Conservatives, whereas the likely gains by the Greens would currently seem to be all from Labour (the two rural seats they won in 2024 would appear to be exceptions). And as has been said, if we are to succeed with electoral reform, we have to become used to working with other like-minded (or fairly like-minded) people in other parties, since PR means no single party will win exclusive power. Chris, a good potential example from your own constituency would appear at ward level on 7th May to be in Seaford, with LibDems holding Seaford South Ward and the Greens holding Seaford North Ward. And working with the Greens gives us the opportunity of helping them to understand the values of Liberalism. After all, forty years ago it was working with many new recruits to the SDP which helped to turn a large number of them (Charlie Kennedy was a great example of this) into real Liberals; those who did not adapt eventually dropped out.
We just need to beat them. Every time .
“while the ‘new’ or ‘anti-system’ are the Greens, Lib Dems, and Reform (at least we ought to be in that anti-system group – at present we’re uncomfortably too old-school for a Liberal party)”
Indeed you are. What part of the current system do you want to overthrow? The answer for the Greens and Reform and the SNP is obvious – capitalism, multiculturalism, and the Act of Union respectively. I can’t imagine there ever being a similarly clear or even internally-agreed answer for the Lib Dems. (No, “first past the post voting” doesn’t count)
“Even allowing for Zack Polanski’s more extreme views, the Greens share many of our aims – we need to focus on those aims”
Yes, because at the high level, all parties from the centre-right leftwards tend to agree that the job of government is to improve things for people. All of them at least claim to want to end poverty, ignorance and conformity. But the Greens want to do that by abolishing capitalism and you want to do it with an extra penny on the top rate of income tax or something similarly incremental.
We need to have Lib Dem candidates in all important elections. Then Lib Dem members can choose whether to support their own party, or with FPTP and tactical voting, vote for the least worst of the alternative candidates that might win. In the Gorton & Denton by-election, although we had an excellent candidate, it seemed that many electors voted Green to successfully deny Reform UK the seat. Until we get a proper PR electoral system that is likely to continue. In the meanwhile, let us promote the kind of society in which we want to live in the future. Spell out our vision, and how it relates to our values.
Very refreshing. Thanks. In my view, we waste a lot of energy thrashing the Greens. They are not the real opponents.
We need Lib Dem candidates in ALL elections. Tactical voting is a matter for voters and there are always party supporters who won’t vote for another party no matter the circumstances. We can have tacit agreements not to campaign in some seats where we know for certain we can’t win in return for other parties tacitly agreeing to give us a chance where we can win.
Since we can’t be certain that our voters will be willing to vote tactically for another party, we must ensure thaty do have a LibDem to vote for in all contests.
Slagging off other parties is almost always bad politics and is often counter productive, so is telling porkies about ones ability to beat Reform, the Tories or Labour. The Greens have cost us 3 recent by-election seats by just these tactics.
It’s all very well to ask for respect for the Greens, but that respect has to be mutual and right now it isn’t.
There does seem to be a lot of hysteria being expressed here. Unless something major happens an optimistic view of the 2028 election is for neither the LibDems or the Greens being contenders to form a government; but by working together (ie. Working around each other, not necessarily joining forces) have the potential to deny Reform/Conservatives an overall majority.
Given the impact the Green vote has had on the major parties in the 1990s, ie. If it wasn’t for the greens the LibDems would be in as much denial about our environmental impact and climate change and taking action to address it as were both the Conservatives and Labour, I suggest this would be a good outcome.
“We need Lib Dem candidates in ALL elections………”
How about adding “which are seriously contested”?
I can’t see the point of losing deposits and whatever other expenses are involved in fielding a token candidate. What does “flyng the flag” really mean if you are only going to end up in fifth place? If any party, not just the Lib Dems, isn’t going to try to win, then the sensible thing is to recommend someone else who might win and so boost their chances.
Recently saw the Rest Is Politics Leading podcast featuring Mr Polanski. Scary. Student politics of the more dangerous kind. Willfully detached from economic and geo political reality. @Jack. Not convinced they are less authoritarian than the Conservative. Progressive does not always equal liberal.
Fortunately the local elections come first and there will be a chance to study just how the Lib Dem/Green nexus turns out. The electorate are geting to know how tactical voting works. In our campaigning we are obviously going to make direct and uninhibited attacks on Reform etc but for the Greens I think it should be more in sorrow than in anger. “They mean well but really…….
@Chris the political and economic reality is that far too much power, economic and military, lies with far too few people, most of whom are abusing it in order to hold into it and garner more, a situation for which the Conservatives are consistent authoritarian apologists unless of course the perceived authoritarians are trade unions or the Guardian. Progressive does not always equal liberal, but Conservative tends not to equal either, especially in its present from here and elsewhere. The greens would be my usual second choice in an AV system. Special circumstances notwithstanding, I wouldn’t usually even include the conservative candidate in my choices.
“How about adding “which are seriously contested”? ”
What does seriously contested mean?
Because you probably just wrote off the entire county of West Yorkshire
@Peter Martin. The problem with FPTP is that often you really don’t know of you might win. I know of at least two new 2024 LibDem MPs who were being asked to go and campaign elsewhere and chose to ignore it. I suspect there were more.
On the fighting ALL seats issue, any serious political party must be seen to fight everywhere because otherwise they risk being dismissed as being out of the game altogether.
Also on a practical point. If there is a multimember council seat and you don’t fight all the seats, then you are in effect asking voters to vote against you as well as for you. For example, if you fight 1 seat in a 3 member ward, then voters who want to vote LibDem have two spare votes and will likely cast them for their second choice instead of voting 3 times for the LibDems. This mostly prevents LibDems being elected in that situation. Sadly too few of those that go out to find candidates really understand this point, with the result that we win less seats than we could.
Polanski today, political madness, frightening, Worse than Farage
Thank you to everyone who commented on my piece. It seems as if the comments fall into two categories: those who get what I’m saying, whether they agree with it or not, and those who are so set against the Greens that there’s no room to even acknowledge my point. To those in the latter group, I say: what happens if the next parliament is hung, and we can prevent a Reform government by working with the Greens? Are we to reject that because we feel so strongly about the Greens that we’d rather have a far-right government than work with them? That’s really what it boils down to.
Take Hywel’s comment (7 Apr, 11.39pm) about the Greens’ ideas on workers’ rights. We would never agree with everything they’re saying, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see scope for a common position. This could include a Charter of Workers’ Rights that recognises the legitimacy of trade unions (recognising trade unions is a basic requirement of a civilised democratic society), a small rise in the minimum wage but not to £15 in one go, and aspects of the German corporate model that sees workers’ representation in company boardrooms along with a framework to ensure that workers get a reasonable share of a company’s profits. We wouldn’t get everything we wanted, and nor would the Greens, but both parties could claim the country was getting something as a result of all the people that voted for them. No party’s manifesto will ever be delivered in its entirety, and in a coalition manifestos are a starting point for negotiations. So we really need to stop picking up every difference with the Greens, and start focusing on where there’s common ground so both of us can deliver tangible results to our voters if the electoral arithmetic allows for it.
I think discussion of candidates ‘standing down’ is a red herring, and the experience of 2019 shows it didn’t really work anyway. (And those of us with longer memories have no deisre to repeat the seat negotiations saga of 1982!).
Far better for the parties on the centre-left to have an informal understanding ibn key seats and minimise bitter contests with each other which would just let Reform or the Tories in by the back door.
And how about we look for a local ‘Martin Bell’ type candidate in Clacton, and run paperless campaigns there? RefUK are still largely a one man band outfit, and decapitation would help burst their balloon!
@chris
Your original contention was “Under first-past-the-post, we need to work with the Greens, ” not how the LDs might work with them under a coalition post election. A very different point and one that is *incredibly* unlikely to come about in 2028-9 at least as a two hander.
We can see from 2010 that coalition arrangements are possible even when ostensibly there isn’t much to unite the constituent parties.
What your answer does make clear though is that the idea that “80% of Green policies are the same as or very similar to ours.” is well wide of the mark.
The only way I would ever support a coalition deal with the Green Party in government if the numbers were ever there is if they replaced Zack Polanski with Rachel Millward. There is no way I will support Zack Polanski as deputy prime minister but I would support Rachel Millward as deputy prime minister.
Would our leadership support local pacts with the Greens under special circumstances? I understand the importance of allowing the electorate to vote Lib Dem in every seat. We live under an imperfect electoral system and for us to allow a party to win for the sake of this would seem an abandonment of the reason many of use joined the Party.