Britain | Politics

A UKIP of the left

The Green Party embraces left-wing populism

|BIRMINGHAM

DISILLUSIONMENT with Britain’s main political parties takes three forms. The first two are well-known: the success of nationalism in Scotland and the rise of the right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP) in England. The third is subtler: the rise of the Greens.

The Green Party of England and Wales (Scotland has its own) has seen many false dawns, but its recent growth is impressive. Its membership has swollen by 28% this year alone (and that of its youth wing by 70%). In a recent poll of voting intention by Ipsos MORI it pulled level with the governing Liberal Democrats on 8%. Just 1% voted Green in 2010.

Why the surge? Staffers naturally credit the party’s growing professionalism. It has more full-time employees, partly thanks to financial support from trade unions. Brighton, a bohemian south-coast town, elected the first Green MP in 2010 and its first council the following year. Activists avow that the party’s communications are getting slicker. At its annual conference, which opened on September 5th, candidates could attend events with titles such as “Get your press relations right”.

The party’s message has become more appealing, too. Natalie Bennett (pictured), a former journalist elected leader two years ago, has moved the Greens beyond their home turf. “When I appear on television they traditionally put me in front of a wind turbine, a polar bear, or—if I’m really lucky—a waste incinerator,” she says. “But that’s changing.”

Ms Bennett’s conference speech focused primarily on public services and the cost of living. She pledged to fight next year’s general election on a higher minimum wage, the renationalisation of the railways and opposition to private involvement in public health care. She branded tax-dodging companies “parasites”, lambasted the banks and accused chain stores of “cutting the heart out of so many cities, towns and villages.” She also announced that two Liberal Democrat seats—Bristol West and Norwich South—would be the Greens’ main electoral targets.

The party’s approach resembles that employed by UKIP on the right: identify and exploit “wedge” issues with which to prise purists away from mainstream parties. Just as UKIP tempts disillusioned Tories with a starker form of conservatism, so the Greens, it seems, are offering disappointed Lib Dem and Labour supporters a more primary-coloured leftism. Ms Bennett cites the railways as an example: whereas the latter two parties want to let public outfits bid for private franchises, she would simply renationalise the lot.

UKIP and the Greens have one other thing in common. After losing power in 1997 the Conservatives spent years in opposition banging on about the EU and immigration. During the same period the Liberal Democrats posed as a left-wing alternative to the then-Labour government. Now in power, both face insurgent parties that have adopted similar positions. That is a sort of justice.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "A UKIP of the left"

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