The Greens: Humanity's greatest enemy

[Sheilbh]

I've been meaning to post this for a while and as someone who's been boring every dinner party I've ever been to with how awful and un-leftie the Greens are, it's a delight to have proof:

Drugs, brothels, al-Qaeda and the Beyonce tax: the Green Party plan for Britain
They are on the cusp of an electoral breakthrough - and an examination of Green Party policy reveals a extraordinary list of demands
Matthew Holehouse By Matthew Holehouse, Political Correspondent8:00AM GMT 26 Jan 2015

Six months ago, they were on the very edges of British politics. Now, they are within touching distance of dictating terms to the future government.

A surge in support has seen the Green Party overtake the Liberal Democrats in the polls, with support at 11 per cent. Membership is now greater than Ukip's.

And, with hopes of winning three seats in the general election, Natalie Bennett believes her party will take part in a "confidence and supply" arrangement, propping up a fragile minority administration in exchange for key policies.

What might they demand?

The party is often dubbed the "Ukip of the left". But an examination of the party's core priorities - in a document called Policies for a Sustainable Society, set at the party's annual conference - reveals they are far more radical in their aims than Nigel Farage's outfit.

In the short term, a Green administration would impose a string of new taxes, ramp up public spending to unprecedented levels and decriminalise drugs, brothels and membership of terrorist groups.

In the long term, they want to fundamentally change life as we know it.

ZERO GROWTH ECONOMY

Critics call the party's adherents "watermelons" – green on the outside, deepest red on the inside.

It's not quite right.

Karl Marx and his pupils championed economic growth and personal consumption: five year plans, tractor factories and fridges for all. The row, for them, was whether the planned economy was a stronger engine than the free market.

The Greens want something very different.

Caroline Lucas and colleagues regard economic growth as incompatible with protecting the planet and a fulfilling personal life.

While their rivals recognise more trade, more innovation, more competition and more globalisation as an engine for prosperity for everyone on the planet, the Greens argue it is nothing more than a race to the bottom that has made the poor poorer, the rich richer, and pillaged the environment.

The party's manifesto argues for zero, or even negative growth and falling levels of personal consumption. Britain would be in permanent recession; families would become materially poorer each year. After centuries of growing global connectivity, the Greens want to see greater national self-reliance.

Cottage industries, allotments and co-operatives are good. Banks, supermarkets, multi-national companies and resource extraction are very, very bad.

And while Labour and the Tories compete on job creation, the Greens argue that government policy should make paid work "less necessary", with people making their living from the home-based "informal economy".

THE CITIZENS' INCOME

The flagship policy is an unconditional, non-withdrawable income of £71 a week for everyone living in Britain "as a right of citizenship", regardless of wealth or whether they are seeking work.

Benefits and the tax-free personal allowance will be abolished, and top-ups given for people with children or disabilities, or to pay rent and mortgages. No-one will see a reduction in benefits, and most will see a substantial increase. Parents will be entitled to two years' paid leave from work.

The policy will enable people to "choose their own types and patterns of work", and will allow people to take up "personally satisfying and socially useful work".

It will cost somewhere between £240-280 billion a year – more than double the current health budget, and ten times the defence budget. Those costs will be off-set by some reduction to the welfare bill, through the replacement of jobseekers' allowance.

TAX ON PRESENTS

Under Green plans, inheritance tax – "to prevent the accumulation of wealth and power by a privileged class" – will no longer just tax the dead.

Under radical reforms, it will cover gifts made while the giver is still alive – raising the prospect of levies on cars, jewellery or furniture given by parents to their children. There will be exemptions for some large gifts, "such as those received on marriage".

There will be a threshold for the tax, with receipts calculated over five years – but the party does not set out at what point the levy kicks in. New, higher rates of income tax will be imposed.

GREEN TAXES

VAT will be abolished – and replaced with new levies based on how much environmental damage a product causes. New resource taxes would apply to wood, metal and minerals, and steeper levies imposed on cars.

Crucially, import taxes will be levied on goods brought to Britain reflecting the "ecological impact" of making them – with tariffs reintroduced for trade between Britain and the rest of Europe, ending the free trade bloc.

DRUGS AND BROTHELS

The trade and cultivation of cannabis will be decriminalised under Green policy, along with possession of Class A and B drugs for personal use. Anti-rave laws would be scrapped.

Higher taxes will be brought in on alcohol and tobacco, and a complete alcohol advertising ban imposed.

All elements of the sex industry will be decriminalised, and prostitutes could no longer be discriminated against in child custody cases.

The Greens also want to see "significantly reduced" levels of imprisonment, with jail only used when there is a "substantial risk of a further grave crime" or in cases where offences are so horrific that offenders would be at risk of vigilantes. Prisoners will be given the vote.

ETON MESS

Large schools will be broken up, to have no more than 700 pupils. SATS, early years tests and league tables will be abolished, and "creative" subjects given equal parity to the "academic".

Independent schools will lose their charitable status and pay corporation tax, while church schools will be stripped of taxpayer funding. Religious instruction will be banned in school hours.

Tuition fees will be abolished - but state research funding for universities will increase to reduce a reliance on "biased" commercial research.

THE BEYONCE TAX

Under cultural reforms, the Greens will explore a "a tax on superstar performances" to support "local cultural enterprises".

The BBC will be forced to show educational programming during prime time, giving it "equal precedence" to entertainment shows and not "ghettoised at inconvenient times".

Foreign companies will be stripped of newspapers and television shows if they control too much of the market. The "overall volume" of advertising on TV and newspapers will be controlled and cut, as part of a war on the "materialist and consumption driven culture which is not sustainable".

The England football, rugby and cricket teams would no longer play against countries where "normal, friendly, respectful or diplomatic relations are not possible." Football clubs would be owned by co-operatives and not traded on the stock markets.

DEATH OF DUTY FREE

The Greens will aim for all energy to be supplied from renewables, with wind the main source of power by 2030.

Under a new hierarchy for transport, pedestrians and bikes come first – and aeroplanes last.

Buses and trains will be electric by 2030, while taxes and regulations will be imposed to force people to buy smaller, lighter and less-powerful cars.

No more new airports or runways will be built, and existing ones nationalised. All new homes and businesses must by law provide bicycle parking. Helicopter travel would be regulated "more strictly". The sale of alcohol on planes and airports will be tightly restricted to prevent air-rage, and the air on inbound flights tested for disease.

Advertising of holiday flights will be controlled by law to halt the "promotion of a high-carbon lifestyle". New taxes would be imposed on carriers to reduce passenger numbers.

THE NHS TAX

Foundation hospitals and internal markets will be abolished, PFI abandoned and prescription charges abolished. A new NHS Tax will be introduced specifically to fund the health service.

Assisted dying will be legalised, and the law on abortion liberalised to allow nurses to carry it out. "Alternative" medicine will be promoted. Private healthcare will be more heavily taxed, with special levies on private hospitals that employ staff who were trained on the NHS.

It will be a criminal offence, with "significant fines", to stop a woman from breastfeeding in a restaurant or shop, and formula milk will be more tightly regulated.

In order to prevent "overpopulation" burdening the earth, the state will provide free condoms and fund research for new contraceptives.

VEGETARIANISM FOR ALL

A Green party would impose "research, education and economic measures" to drive a "transition from diets dominated by meat". Factory farming would be abolished, and the sale of fur criminalised and shooting banned. Whips and jumps would be banned from horse racing.

SIGN UP TO AL-QAEDA

International aid should be increased by nearly 50 per cent to one per cent of GDP under Green Policy.

Merely being a member of al-Qaeda, the IRA and other currently proscribed terrorist groups will no longer be a criminal offence under Green plans, and instead a Green Government should seek to "address desperate motivations that lie behind many atrocities labelled 'terrorist'," the policy book states.

Terrorism, it adds, "is an extremely loaded term. Sometimes governments justify their own terrorist acts by labelling any groups that resist their monopoly of violence 'terrorist'."

Britain will leave NATO, end the special relationship with the US, and unilaterally abandon nuclear weapons. A standing army, navy and airforce is "unnecessary". Bases will be turned into nature reserves and the arms industry "converted" to producing windturbines.

OPEN DOORS

"Richer regions do not have the right to use migration controls to protect their privileges from others in the long term," the party's policy book states.

A Green Government will "progressively reduce" border controls, including an amnesty for illegal immigrants after five years.

Access to benefits, the right to vote and tax obligations will apply to everyone living on British soil, regardless of passport. The policy book states: "We will work to create a world of global inter-responsibility in which the concept of a 'British national' is irrelevant and outdated."

Political parties will be funded by the state, and the electoral system changed. The monarchy will be abolished.

And lest we ever forget, Natalie Bennett in the Economist:

That would nobble the British economy. It is not obvious what it would do to reduce climate change —which, in fact, the Greens appear to have given remarkably little thought to. They talk about the world sparingly and mainly to illuminate leftist British issues. They are broadly against consumption, for example: "The world is sodden with stuff, it cannot have more stuff," said Ms Bennett. Yet they do not appear to have considered what that would mean for billions of the world's poorest people, almost none of whom live in Britain. When Bagehot suggested to her that there was a problem with this, Ms Bennett said he was worrying too much: to be poor in India wasn't so bad as to be on benefits in Britain, she suggested, "because at least everyone else there is poor too".

Edit: I also got really excited because there were stories like this in the Telegraph, the Spectator and the Economist in the same week and I thought one of my prejudices was precariously close to going mainstream. Sadly it probably just reinforces the impression that I'm a right-wing fanatic in disguise

[jimmy olsen]

They're absolute loons, this should surprise no one.

[Ed Anger]

I will laugh from my estates in Normandy.

[Sheilbh]

I recommend flying there just to laugh, then flying home

[mongers]

The UK Green party is an oddity, policies more shaped by internal politics and personality clashes than any coherent ideology.

Their poll ratings are a testament to the utter failure of the any political grouping on the broad left, including the centre-right to offer an alternative to current coalition.

The left here should get it's act together.

[Capetan Mihali]

  That sounds so unpleasant.

I've definitely gone deep into an idiosyncratic leftism that is maybe a dark place to be.   A place where I sometimes end up converging with different strains of the far-right more than I'd expect.  The fate of the syndicalists, I suppose.  The last time I visited my folks, I went on a long, unexpected rant to my mother about the merits of fascist corporatism versus today's globalized capital status quo, ready to sell out the country's interests to the highest bidder. 

And I've gone as pro-gun and pro-nuclear as any right-wing rural New Englander in this area (living right near a nuclear plant that's just been shuttered due to unpopularity, even though all the radioactive material is just going to sit there indefinitely).

Not to mention what I've absorbed in criminal defense practice -- an intense skepticism of the State's idea of coercing people into "improving" themselves, via the therapeutic-industrial complex.  As well as the realization that mainstream feminism has been "neutered" of its radicalism in the service of the heart of the "patriarchy" i.e. the police state which prosecutes DV, and the corresponding victim-industrial complex; elements bring me into scary proximity with  some of the "Men's Rights Advocates" (*shudder*) arguments... 

I guess that's why I'm drawn to the Syriza finance minister's self-descriptions as a "libertarian Marxist" and "an atheist monk of the middle ages cloistered in theological study."

[Ed Anger]

The left here should get it's act together.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm reminded of Meister Hans' analysis of the counterculture as people who self-define themselves in opposition to the mainstream, regardless of where the mainstream happens to be.

[Monoriu]

Good news.  Shows how crazy these guys are. 

[Legbiter]

It's all fun and games until you run out of loo paper.

[Sheilbh]

  That sounds so unpleasant.

I loved this Spectator editorial:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/leading-article/9426951/calling-the-green-party-socialist-is-an-insult-to-socialists/

The worst thing is I still might vote for them. Such is the joy of living in a safe Labour seat and being profoundly unhappy with all the mainstream parties and my local Labour candidate

I've definitely gone deep into an idiosyncratic leftism that is maybe a dark place to be.   A place where I sometimes end up converging with different strains of the far-right more than I'd expect.  The fate of the syndicalists, I suppose.  The last time I visited my folks, I went on a long, unexpected rant to my mother about the merits of fascist corporatism versus today's globalized capital status quo, ready to sell out the country's interests to the highest bidder. 

Well, yeah. Generally my views have ended up Very Old Labour. Labour in 1948: nationalisation, nukes and NATO. Needless to say the zeitgeist of the left has moved on a little.

But they're always evolving and I'm immaturing with age.

As well as the realization that mainstream feminism has been "neutered" of its radicalism in the service of the heart of the "patriarchy" i.e. the police state which prosecutes DV, and the corresponding victim-industrial complex; elements bring me into scary proximity with  some of the "Men's Rights Advocates" (*shudder*) arguments... 

I guess that's why I'm drawn to the Syriza finance minister's self-descriptions as a "libertarian Marxist" and "an atheist monk of the middle ages cloistered in theological study."

He is dreamy.

I'm reminded of Meister Hans' analysis of the counterculture as people who self-define themselves in opposition to the mainstream, regardless of where the mainstream happens to be.

They're just middle class do-gooders. Advocating all the evils that only middle class do-gooders can

[The Larch]

There are two or three good points amongst the stuttering amount of poppycock and balderdash they say. Some of that stuff is completely off the deep end.

[Zoupa]

There are two or three good points amongst the stuttering amount of poppycock and balderdash they say. Some of that stuff is completely off the deep end.

Pretty much. This part:

"While their rivals recognise more trade, more innovation, more competition and more globalisation as an engine for prosperity for everyone on the planet, the Greens argue it is nothing more than a race to the bottom that has made the poor poorer, the rich richer, and pillaged the environment."

seems about right though.

[Ed Anger]

I'd love to see them win. And them swinging from lampposts when the right takes them out.

A MAN CAN DREAM

[Sheilbh]

Pretty much. This part:

"While their rivals recognise more trade, more innovation, more competition and more globalisation as an engine for prosperity for everyone on the planet, the Greens argue it is nothing more than a race to the bottom that has made the poor poorer, the rich richer, and pillaged the environment."

seems about right though.

All true. But the answer isn't that poor people in India are better off because everyone's poor there, or to aim for a no-growth economy so we can all live in an agrarian commune in Pembrokeshire.

See Suzanne Moore:

Forget the Greens – if the UK wants a truly leftwing party, it might have to grow its own
Suzanne Moore
The Greens are rising in popularity but if they are the protest vote for the left, then the left has become a fairly meaningless term
Wednesday 28 January 2015 20.00 GMT

Something is in the air. The Green party is surging – and not just with those who mill their own chia seeds. A lot of people are saying they might vote Green, even those who have always voted Labour. For the middle aged, it's a political mid-life crisis. The thrill has long gone so let's run off with a new young party! At least they have some energy – renewable, hopefully.

The talk at my table is from the actual young. "Mum, you can keep all your 'isms'. In the end, they don't matter as we will all be dead. Don't you want to save the planet?" I find that hard to argue against, as I would quite like the planet to be saved, just as I would quite like my children not to blame me for climate change if I put something in the wrong bin.

The fact that the Green party is appealing to young and idealistic voters who are signing up in droves is surely good.

Some of this is a direct result of seeing how much influence an outsider can wield: Ukip, who at most will get a handful of seats, have been given huge media coverage while the Greens have been ignored. It is quite right that we should see more of them.

Some of this new engagement is a knock-on effect of the SNP in Scotland, which lost the battle but won the war. Some is a displacement activity, a byproduct of what happened in Greece. Something hopeful, something new, something big. A party was voted in that is full of "mavericks and visionaries". We would like some of that!

We would like our politics to be bigger not smaller and for a moment to be able to think the anonymous "market" doesn't always win. Some of us would like to vote for something unashamedly leftwing. Syriza's Alexis Tsipras goes to lay flowers on the graves of communist fighters. He is unashamed of being who he is. The man is a radical who knows how to wear a suit, just as his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, knows his poetry as well as his economics.

Here is a politics of resistance and thought and style that feels like a sign of life. Perhaps it cannot last and will be smothered by bureaucrats who know best what Greece needs – what Greece devoid of its actual people needs – but, for now, there is something unafraid about it. Labour, whose senior officials met Tsipras in London back in 2013, could not even manage a decent congratulatory tweet. God knows radicalism could be contagious.

This leaves the Greens now billing themselves as the only anti-austerity party in town. Labour types are worried and basically suggest nicking a few Green policies, such as renationalising the railways, to stop this happening. Desperate stuff.

But if the Greens are the protest vote for the left, then the left has become a fairly meaningless term. Half of them are about as left as the Lib Dems. The innate puritanism of the Greens is in itself conservative. As much as I would like to see a Ukip of the left, I am not convinced the Greens are it. Rather, they are a strange coalition, part eco-warrior, part middle-class do-gooder. They want to ban way too many things for my liking. They are too anti-science, so it's no to nuclear power and no to growth and no to selling alcohol on planes. That last one is really bad. No more zoos are the least of it.

What is missing from the Greens is the actual thing I want from a progressive party. It's the economy, stupid. A theory of class analysis, an understanding of the mechanics of redistribution and a sense of connection, not with plants but the very poorest.

Both Syriza and the SNP grew their parties from smaller movements by attracting the voters who were hardest hit by austerity. Both are unafraid to think publicly out loud – to form policy through conversation.

The Greens, on the other hand, having grown out of the environmental movement, seem utterly incoherent. They offer the biggest of big-state polices with huge intervention in some areas, without specifying the role of the state except as a series of committees. Anti-austerity measures have to mean taking on corporations and vested interests. This requires really hard thinking, not musing about allotments and self-reliance. One of their key ideas – that of a Citizen's Income for everyone whether they work or not – falls to pieces when properly examined. Many of the poorest households would lose out.

Those who really want to knock the Green party point to Brighton and Hove, where they couldn't get the rubbish collection right. I care less about that and their meat–free Mondays than I do about their basic inability to run services for the most vulnerable.

This matters. There is a clear need for a progressive party, one that understands this phase of capitalism enough to resist some of its harshest effects. One that doesn't simply echo the concerns of the disillusioned Labour voter.

The Greens actually seem the least organic thing on offer, but that may change. Like the Lib Dems, they appear to be all things to all people. We all know how that turned out. If we actually want a leftwing party in Britain then we may have to do something quite green. Grow our own.