By now you will have heard about Caroline Lucas's
emergency all-female cabinet in response to the looming no deal Brexit. And the derision has proven to be near universal. From proposing a cross-party alliance among politicians with
little in common to the essentialist supposition that women are bound to do a better job of negotiating Brexit because, well, they're women (um, Theresa May?) and to the noted exclusion of black and minority ethnicity women from her fantasy cabinet. An absence
compounded by
her clarification/apology that all the leading women in British politics happen to be white. So quite how did the very Brexity
backbench Yvette Cooper get selected for Caroline's gang over the very remainy
actual Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott? Readers can speculate about this oversight.
Unfortunately for the Green Party's sole MP, this crass initiative has pretty much trashed her reputation among a left who've happily given her the time of day. Despite the space she has put between the Greens and Corbynism, and going full-on remain since the EU referendum. It's a distance travelled from green radicalism to green liberalism, but
why the journey at all? What happened to the searing critic of the Blair government and all-round champion of good causes?
Some, particularly on the left, might point to the original sin of green politics: the analytical primacy of the relationship of our species to the environment. Notwithstanding the diversity within green thought and the integration of leftist positions, most of what you might call mainstream green politics swerves or downgrades the importance of class analysis: as if the logics of capital and the exploitation of labour has little to do with our
collective species relationship to the environment. Conceived this way, what matters is the doing of something to prevent unsustainable usage of the Earth's resources and climate change which, historically, in the early years of the Greens resolved into a division
between radicalism and pragmatism.
The Green Party in England and Wales (the Scottish Greens are a separate organisation) has undergone significant shifts during its history. Starting out as People, this was a conservative and misanthropic sect steeped in Malthusian population control - compare this to the (West) German Greens who were a party hailing from the new social movements of the 1970s. In the 80s it moved to the left, which is where it has sat ever since with varying degrees of radicalism. Caroline Lucas, for instance, has been arrested at Faslane protesting Trident and at Balcombe in an action against fracking. During the 2015 general election campaign, the Greens - then under Natalie Bennett's leadership - formed a
de facto alliance with the SNP and Plaid Cymru and were able to place themselves to Labour's left and poll over a million votes for their efforts. Leftism paid.
And then it didn't pay any more. The emergence of Corbynism has made it impossible for the Greens to operate profitably against Labour's left flank, as the 2017 election underlined. The election of Jonathan Bartley as co-leader, in retrospect, appears a significant moment the party acknowledged the new political reality it operated in. Unlike Caroline Lucas and his co-leader, Sian Berry, who have backgrounds in activism, Bartley worked on
John Major's leadership campaign to see off John Redwood in 1995, described himself as late as 2010 as a "floating voter" and had a wonkish career flitting between think tanks and doing odds and sods commentary for the BBC. In other words, he's the first senior Green figure who is entirely the product of Westminster and its environs. And you know what social being does, right? It tends to condition consciousness. Bartley was elected jointly with Lucas in September 2016 after the Greens heavy involvement in the remain campaign, with the latter being one of its most visible advocates during the referendum. Particularly since continuity remain
took to the streets Lucas has allowed herself to be positioned as the greenish wing of EU fandom, associating the party more with Brexit than other issues. Meanwhile Labour has stolen their march on a green industrial strategy, opposition to fracking, and support (admittedly guarded) for Extinction Rebellion stunts. Still, the current turn hasn't harmed the Greens' electoral standing. In the EU elections this year the party polled 1.4m votes, its best results since it won 2.3m back in 1989. Likewise when it comes to local elections and by-elections, the Greens have proven more adept at picking up disgruntled centre/floating Tory votes than disgruntled lefties or Blairy refugees from Corbynism. Which means they're fishing in the same pond
as the Liberal Democrats.
All of a sudden, the desire for a remain alliance or
some such nonsense becomes clearer. Nick Cohen looked like he had egg on his stupid face when the
first piece of proper journalism he did for nigh-on 20 years got roundly mocked by Sian Berry on social media, but as someone on the party's left would she necessarily be involved in
tete tetes between the offices of Caroline Lucas and Jo Swinson? From the Greens' point of view, it makes sense for them to come to an arrangement with the yellow party thanks to the near identical constituency profile. And also to reach out to politicians in other parties who broadly fit with/might appeal to this sub strata of the electorate, and make them look like the much celebrated "grown-ups in the room". So the two halves of what was Change UK, the SNP and Plaid, certain "soft" Tories like Justine Greening, and remainy Labour members like Emily Thornberry were dutifully namechecked. And Yvette Cooper got included too because she's part of the same milieu, and is a great hope of the centrists - even though her Brexit position is more Brexity than the stance of the supposed closet leaver leading the Labour Party.
Being and consciousness, remember that? When you move in new layers there is a tendency to acquire their habits of thought. The elite circles of continuity remain, the studios, the corridors, tearooms, and parliamentary offices of assorted MPs are rarefied environments where individual politicians and figures
appear within the milieu as significant personalities with real world pull. How else to explain the continued crush for the
sulky Alastair Campbell? But it is also a dismissive, near preternaturally white environment where the nostrums of social liberal inclusion demand the requisite lip service, but little beyond that. Diane Abbott and other leading women of colour in the Labour Party do not mix in these exalted centrist circles, nor are they onside politically speaking. Therefore when Lucas said her fantasy cabinet was composed of leading women, her mind automatically connected to her narrow parliamentary squad.
Yes, Caroline Lucas's standing has suffered from this episode, less thanks to the implicit racism in her letter but because it demonstrates how far she's travelled from an activist politics to the most vapid parliamentary gesture politics. A sad demise, all told.
https://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-demise-of-caroline-lucas.html