Even Greens need leaders - Mark Lynas

Ex-Green Party member and Six Degrees author, Mark Lynas, makes a good case for radical Green leadership in this week's New Statesman. It's good to see the debate getting outside the activist forums and into places that the average member (or potential member) might see it.

Planning Disaster

Today sees the launch of a campaign against the government's plans to relax planning restrictions and allow a new generation of nuclear power plants, airports, out of town supermarkets and house-building on flood plains.

Planning may not seem the most exciting topic to campaign on, but if the government push this through, it will be a lot harder to stop some of their most damaging future plans.

The public consultation is on now and I urge you to join me in backing this campaign.

Reason vs Emotion

An excellent article by Jonathan Freedland in today's Guardian about how people respond to politicians, looking at why the Democrats keeping losing elections they 'should' win.

Freedland is writing in response to Drew Western's new book, The Political Brain, which seems to be a psyhcologist's take on an argument made very coherently by George Lakoff (a Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics) in Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate.

Lakoff's book is an excellent analysis of why how you say things is as important as what you say. As Freedland points out in his article, this is often mistaken for dumbing down or populism - but there is a big difference between, on the one hand, knowing your audience and talking to them (rather than at them, as so many politicians are wont to do) and on the other, re-writing your policies based on focus groups and opinion polls.

The fatal flaw in the New Labour project was not that they decided to communicate more effectively, but that they thought they needed to adopt right wing policies along with the effective communications techniques that the right have been using for decades. I'm hopeful that the Green Party is in the midst of improving its ability to communicate its vital message whilst avoiding the trap that Labour fell into.

Yes to Green Leadership

Britain needs leadership. Green leadership
Leadership is the inspiring, organising, motivating force that makes sure good ideas actually get put into practice. The Green Party has such good ideas. We have so much potential. But if we as greens do not realise our potential, and soon, we will not just be letting ourselves down; we will be selling-short our planet and everything on it. We owe it to the world to make Green ideas work, and make them work now; not in 10 or 15 years but right now, from today. Ours is a generation perhaps unique in all of human history. And ours is a political party uniquely placed to make a difference.

The referendum - your say
In November 2007, a referendum ballot will be sent to all members of the Green Party of England and Wales. The question before them will be whether we should retain the posts of "Male and Female Principal Speaker" with no vote on the Executive, or to replace them with a "Leader and Deputy" or "Co-Leaders", with responsibility for presentation of policy and election campaigns and a vote each on the Executive.

Green Party Conference has already agreed by majority vote that this motion should be put to the broader membership, and that is why it is before you now.

I hope that you will join me and help stregthen the Green Party's democracy, participation and effectiveness by voting "Yes" in the upcoming referendum.

If you are not already a member of the Green Party, but would like to join and help the Green Party take its rightful place at the centre of British politics, you can join here.