Why is the Green Party not more popular?

[HarryBoa]

I mean if there were ever a time that they should be relevant it's now, no?

Was talking to the DC about political parties and they asked why people weren't supporting the Green Party because of global warming.

I wanted to reply "Because people want what they've got" but resisted the urge to make a trite reply.

Wondered what other people thought? For myself I'm actually seriously considering moving my support to the Green Party but the ultimate concern is that the voting system that we have means that they're fighting a losing battle.

Yes indeed it’s quite complicated! But a Tory government, even with a few more Green MPs, is not going to pass the legislation required to tackle climate change, at least not until the market decides it can’t ignore it anymore as climate change will cost too much, and by that time it’ll be too late. Tinkering around with way of off targets for net zero, electric cars and air source heat pump is all just window dressing. We actually need to be doing things like removing subsidies for fossil fuels,, something that the Tories are not going to do. Our next General Election is crucial, without a change of government I am not hopeful at all.

@MadMadMadamMim

They hate women. They hate the poor. They are about what sounds good, rather than what works. I don't know any of their policies on other issues. It's a wasted vote.

Voting Green is perhaps fine if you're a well off home owner, living in an affluent area of London or the Home Counties. You can smugly talk of how people should use alternative transport or buy an electric car. Try living in a rural, socially deprived Northern county where your commute is 40 miles each way and there's no public transport, you're on low wages and you drive a £600 diesel car cos that's what you can afford to run.

It seems to me that green energy is praised by people who can afford to holiday in Tuscany every year rather than Skegness. It's no use telling people that green energy is better in the long run after a large initial outlay if they can't afford the initial outlay.

Way back when the Green party was still called the Ecology party it was focused on economic issues which broadly aligned with Labour's, although with a stronger focus on renewables and reuse in industry and the anti nuclear campaign. The change in name seemed mainly to be to align with Green parties in Europe, especially in Germany where they were seen as a great success.

In the UK they seem to have been completely detached from ordinary people in the last decade or so with an obsession about identity politics and middle-class policies.

It was a green councilor in my area who boasted to me about driving a massive hike in car park prices at local stations to "encourage" people to walk or cycle or use public transport to get to the station. There was no cycle park at the station, the bus times didn't align with train times but best of all was when I asked hipster dude how he would drop one child at nursery (a couple of miles one way, the other at breakfast club (different direction) and then get a couple of miles back to station to get the train for the hour long commute into work, complete with the bags of "stuff" for the nursery, the school and work.

I might as well have been speaking in klingon. They had made no analysis of the impact of trying to enforce non-car use for the non-men. He blanked me and started bleating about paper recycling (at the time the least productive form of recycling) to someone else.

Its three decades since the green party really gave a hoot about women and working people. Its all subsidised solar panels for home owners and subsidised electric cars for those who can afford the other 20k or so themselves.

Because there’s more to running a government than green credentials. Ans they couldn’t run the government.

Because they are a bunch of fannies who are in bed with the SNP and hate women.

Greens are a joke.

My local Greens are extremely sanctimonious to a degree that is extremely off putting.

Because they’ve got quite a few weird middle-class antisemites that have left Labour since Corbyn got his marching orders? Plus the anti-woman thing too.

Oh, and they’re in bed with the SNP. The most sinister and authoritarian major party in the UK.

I’d vote for them happily except that nobody does round here.
I vote for the candidate most likely to beat the tory incumbent. Which is usually Lib Dem.

I’d love there to be a progressive alliance at the next election. Only way we can beat the tories as things stand.

@DismantledKing

Oh, and they’re in bed with the SNP. The most sinister and authoritarian major party in the UK.

Scottish greens are an entirely separate party to England and Wales greens.

I suppose the other thing I find interesting is that we seem to hold all other parties to account to a level that we don't the Tories. It sometimes feels as though they're forgiven anything and everything.

What others have said re their power sharing with the SNP. Quite how a fringe party with so few concrete economic (or otherwise) policies that make any sense whatsoever and so few votes (1.3% share of the votes, no constituencies) has ended up with so many seats (8) and so much power is mind boggling.

They care more about identity politics than the environment. This has led to some very iffy decisions including their behaviour towards members who tried to flag up the massive safeguarding issue that was the challenors.

It will take a lot to turn it around.

Scottish greens are an entirely separate party to England and Wales greens

It’ll just have to be the antisemites and anti-women attitudes then. I think that’s enough.

I used to vote for them when they focused strongly on environmental topics and listened to women at a time when other political parties didn’t much unless they were wealthy.
But that was a couple of decades ago, before they lost that focus.

Because their politics are very very red. It's communism masquerading as environmentalism. Or it certainly was when I last read their manifesto.

I want all parties to become green parties.

Because in Scotland their main interest isn't actually the environment, its trans rights and their leader is a nasty horrible rude man

With regards to the environment, jobs would be lost in the oil and gas sector and defense sectors and the greens don't really care. They want it gone and gone now.

They also want independence and I believe there remains a silent majority against it.

And there's more going on in the world than climate change and trans rights!

I won’t vote for any party that don’t recognise my sex.

Plus I support HS2 and nuclear power, and they don’t.

Because they have ruined Brighton with cycle lanes that don’t get used.
Taken away car lanes when there are cycles lanes concurrently in the pavement

Wankers

Scottish greens are an entirely separate party to England and Wales greens.

With exactly the same ethos and policies.

Because the Head of the Scottish Greens utterly despises women and has made that abundantly clear -mobile.twitter.com/hashtag/HarvieHatesWomen?src=hashtag_click

Because the Scottish Greens voted against rape survivors being able to request a female medical examiner.

And as pp's have very eloquently said, many of their proposals are unworkable for women with small children, people who live in rural areas with poor public transport links, etc etc.

@TooWicked

I’ve just joined the Green Party, purely to vote for Sharar Ali in the leadership elections.

If he doesn’t win I shall be leaving straight away as they generally seem to loathe women.

Same here.

Thanks for the heads up, I hadn’t heard of Shahrar Ali or Andrea Carey Fuller before and they do give me some hope. I used to be a member of the Greens. It was both the invisibility of lower class realities and attacks on women’s rights that put me off. After the debacles of the last few years I’m afraid it’ll take a while to establish any faith that this man isn’t just saying what he feels will win him votes right now, but I’ll have another look.
As pp’s say - why do we have to look to men for a dose of reality, why are so many middle class women wrapped up in thought policing and denial?

I was interested in them about about 12 years ago they had a policy of sex work being work which I fundamentally disagree with. They've gone further away from anything representing equality since then. You cannot resolve the environmental issues on women's backs. You just can't.

@happydays2345

You're just going to get a silly GC response on here.

The reality is because it's seen to be a wasted vote.

I don't think it's 'silly' to not want to vote for a party whose leader (Patrick Harvie) doesn't believe rape victims should have the right to specify the sex of the medical examiner who will carry out an examination after a sexual attack.

These are the sorts of reasons I can't vote Green.