A Green Party Member Responds to Kitty Jones

As an increasingly active member of the Green Party, for a while I have been considering setting up a blog to express my own personal political views. While responding to Kitty Jones’ recent ‘debunking’ of the ‘myth’ behind the Green Party is a proximate cause of the creation of this blog, it is far from the entire cause.

The following is addressed directly to Kitty Jones, and is an adaptation of a comment I made on her blog a week ago, which seems to have been actively deleted, as opposed to still awaiting moderation. (The original comment will be posted as the first comment of this blog post, so you can decide for yourself whether she was right to not let it through.)

While I believe her post is a gross misrepresentation of the Green Party, there are several other of her posts I’d recommend – in particular her look at the way  benefit sanctions punish poverty, and her detailed analysis of the links between Tory policies and poverty. There’s also a post (which at the moment I can’t refind) in which she makes the case that Rachel Reeves has used some highly technical lawmaking to box Iain Duncan Smith into a position where he can’t withhold inconvenient evidence – her case is persuasive and this seems to have been missed by the mainstream media.

While I’m angered and frustrated by the criticisms she made, what makes it worse is that she generally is a provocative and interesting political writer – I’d recommend that anyone who’s open to being persuaded that the Labour Party is still a force for good to check out the blog posts of her’s that I recommended, and her blog in general.

 

Kitty,

There’s some valid questions about the need to question environmental causes, but the objections in this article work better as an attack on ‘greenwashing’ in general than the Green Party/ies in particular – such as Cameron and his huskies. The Green Party policy you’ve quoted seems to me like it would focus on cutting waste – so overcoming wasted energy through better house insulation, encouraging people not to waste food. You make a series of mistakes between Green and ‘green’ (by which you mean Malthusian) policies. Have you any evidence that the modern Green Party admires Malthus?

From your comments: “Labour don’t support austerity and never have, Labour have no funding from corporate organisations. That’s 2 Green lies that are commonly thrown out. “

Labour might not use the phrase austerity directly, but Rachel Reeves has promised to be tougher than the Tories, and Ed Balls has promised to work towards balancing the budget by capping benefits paid for children and pensioners, which sounds like austerity in all but name. (There have been internal analysis of new membership numbers shared on the Green Party members’ website, looking at when membership numbers have spiked. The day of, and immediately after, Ed Balls’ conference speech was one of these, with Balls being the messenger himself, uninterrupted by ‘Green lies’.)

The assistance from Price Waterhouse Coopers has to count, at least, as a ‘donation in kind’, which is more worrying than a direct donation, given that they are apparently helping to write tax laws which they will later be helping corporations find loopholes in.

Misinformation is not necessarily spread deliberately – you argue in the comments that Rachel Reeves meant, when she promised to be ‘tougher than the Tories’ that  she would cut Ian Duncan Smith’s waste. If this is true, then it’s at least a bad way of phrasing what she meant – phrases like ‘more efficient’ or ‘less wasteful’ would have communicated her intent better than ‘tougher’. Either she chose a bad turn of phrase, or the media has misrepresented her intent (The Guardian quotes her as saying “If you can work you should be working, and under our compulsory jobs guarantee if you refuse that job you forgo your benefits, and that is really important”). Either way you can’t hold Green Party members entirely responsible for sharing what is a common interpretation.

The ‘tougher than the Tories’ line is one I’ve shared a couple of times – if I’ve got the wrong impression, then it’s been a ‘Green mistake’ rather than a ‘Green lie’. While I believe that the Green Party offers a better moral philosophy than the Labour Party, I can respect those who disagree and misunderstand Green statements. I would ask that you do the same when others say things that you believe to be untruths about Labour – they could well be mistakes rather than lies. While I disagree with your depiction of the Green Party, I can respect your intent in exposing a party you see as charlatans.

The criticisms of Green Party alliances is possibly valid, but I’d like to see some specific criticisms. Not every Tory council is as bad as Cameron, some will be worth working with. Brighton Labour obviously consider Brighton Tories worth working with.

I’d accept that Miliband is a decent socialist, albeit one who’s strongest policies are still quite half-hearted. The Green Party focus on attacking Labour is obviously something to validly criticise, but most people who are tempted to vote Green will take as given that Cameron can’t be trusted.

Likewise, I’m aware that Brighton Greens have made some bad choices, but I personally consider this to be a combination of external pressures (inheriting an equality lawsuit which neither Labour or Tory councils dealt with in the previous 14 years, and which had a deadline of November 2013, two years after the Greens came to power; austerity cuts from the national government) and poor decision making (sending officers to negotiate with unions, rather than councillors doing it themselves). There is an implication in the way your argument is presented that excessive cuts are somehow inherent in the Green Party nature, possibly fuelled by our raging Malthusianism. (You have denied several times that you compared the Green and Nazi parties, but that is certainly how the blog post read to me.) While I don’t want to excuse Brighton Greens for every mistake, Brighton Greens are a minority controlled council, with some reports saying that Labour and the Tories are acting as an unofficial coalition government. Brighton Labour have recently forced through a large tax increase for the poorest.

Around 100 jobs have recently been cut in Brighton, around 600 in Labour controlled Manchester, which from my understanding is proportionately similar.

You say in one comment that you’re not a Labour Party member, but I’ve read elsewhere that you work in PR for Labour – is this true? As a semi-regular reader of your blog, I’m fairly sure that you described yourself as a Labour councillor at one point – am I mistaken? (Apologies if I am.)

Edit – I’ve been informed, in a comment below, that I was mistaken. I apologise unreservedly.

Your anti-democratic response to comments is more unambigiously troubling. After a commenter responds to a wordpress blog post, they can see that post, with the heading ‘Your comment is awaiting moderation’ until it is either approved or deleted. I have no issue with you not getting around to approving my comments, as you’ve clearly been busy with this particular blog post. My objection is to some very benign comments being actively deleted, while you have implied that your policy is to let through disagreeing posts – “There are many posts here on this thread, and many raise points that i disagree with, but they have been posted.”

The comment which makes the basis of this blog post seems to have been actively deleted. As does a comment in which I pointed out a factual mistruth in one of your statements (whether this is a lie or a mistake is obviously something which I can’t be sure about). The time on my clock in the bottom right corner in the third image shows that there is no comment ‘awaiting moderation’ at a later time than the second image.

Based on your refusal to share my factual correction that you do have the ability to edit comments on your blog, it seems logical that you did edit Andy’s comment, and possibly that he made another comment (as you requested) which you have not allowed through. I’ve posted a few more examples of this apparent deletion of benign comments at the bottom of this post – though in the later examples, I saved pages rather than took screenshots, so the clock in the bottom right would be no proof of when comments when still awaiting moderation.

It’s unfair and undemocratic to go out of your way to limit the range of debate in this way.

On the whole, I find your site interesting, and although we disagree on several subjects (you’ve obviously got more faith than I do in the current Labour leadership, and you’ve described the Tory leadership as eugenicists) you make a lot of interesting arguments. Along with Eoin Clarke, I consider you one of the most persuasive Labour voices, but transparent nonsense like arguing the Green Party is Malthusian in nature doesn’t help.

I’m sorry if my fellow Green Party members have been bullying you, and I promise to try and call this out when I see it. But I think you’re smart enough to see that drawing a direct line from Malthus, through the Nazis, to the modern Green Party, is going to provoke strong responses. While there’s no excuse for abusive messages, calling people liars is going to annoy them. As is writing an article which compares a significant political party to Nazis and Malthusians based on a single ambigious quote.

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