Bryce Edwards has been blogging about the Greens’ abandoned social justice agenda, saying they’ve nothing to offer the left. Russel Norman says that’s “bullshit”
Otago University political studies lecturer Bryce Edwards writes a learned blog. I like looking at its pictures. But, unsure how well his views on the Greens stacked up against what Russel Norman and Metiria Turei have actually said, I decided to ask them what they thought. Norman’s reply was characteristically blunt and scatological. He thought Edwards seemed “singularly uninformed about the Greens”, and directed me to his speech to the Council of Trade Unions delivered on 22 October, in which he’d described similar theories as “bullshit”—as in: “There’s been a lot of bullshit spoken lately from some in the Labour Party and elsewhere that somehow Sue Bradford stepping down as a Green MP means that the Greens no longer care about social justice. Well I say that’s garbage. Green policy and kaupapa remains unchanged.” In posts here and here, and here (hosting guest blogger John Moore), Edwards’ blog Liberation sets out the Greens’ political history, focusing particularly on their connections with the Alliance.
The Alliance, says Moore, brought the Greens—“middle class forces traditionally hostile to a working class agenda”—together with activists looking to build a working class party of the far left. As with most bad marriages, the Alliance coalition of divergent parties ended in divorce, with the Greens’ 1997 defection. In 1999, they took Bradford to Parliament with them; an increasing number of socialists, as well as anarchists, were joining the Greens at that time. The Green Party was seen as a refreshing alternative to the bureaucratic hierarchical Alliance. In a way, then, the Greens might be seen as a microcosm of the Alliance: a similar mix of ideological currents, without the Jim Anderton paternalism. Edwards’ and Moore’s thesis is that, since the Greens split from the Alliance in 1997, they have been on an “ideological moderating trajectory” towards the centre of the political spectrum. They’ve moved away from radical protest politics to a more sensible, middle class, mainstream image; their future is as a centre party that focuses most strongly on environmentalism. As Bradford has publicly said, it was this philosophical difference, rather than the loss of the co-leadership per se, that prompted her to resign. The bloggers deduce that the co-leadership change was a symptom of a wider problem; they accept that it is a real problem, rather than perceived. Bradford was the left wing radical stalwart of the Greens. In her absence, the Greens’ trend of “distancing from left-leaning social policies” will continue; their “intrinsic political nature as a centre-right force” will be exposed; they are “in reality a pro-capitalist party of the Establishment” that, far from threatening the dominant capitalist system, looks out for its best interests. Whew. Stern stuff. In this account of events, the preference for Metiria Turei over Bradford as the Greens’ new female co-leader symbolised the new mood. It may be that Turei has matured into a less radical figure than promised in her youth, when she dabbled in anarchy and performance art, and stood for the McGillicuddy Serious and Aoteoroa Legalise Cannabis parties. Certainly, her first speech as co-leader was vanilla—blander than that even. If you wanted evidence of having lost the radical edge, perhaps this rote recital of the party line was it. But there seems to be a degree of assumption that in taking on the trappings of the establishment, Turei has become the establishment; that cutting off the rats’ tails means abandoning the cause.
In fact, her maiden speech, delivered not that long ago, was all about social justice. It was also, if I understand it correctly, about trying different means and methods: “widening the floor of the cage”, rather than seeking to smash it. You might argue that reshaping the cage covertly, from within, is even more subversive than outright attack. Or Turei might have just grown up.
Norman, says Edwards, has probably pushed the party more than anyone else towards the centre. Edwards’ main beef with Norman seems to be that he has, from time to time, expressed confidence in market mechanisms. In his maiden speech delivered on 1 July 2008, and echoed before the CTU, Norman dug down to his working class roots. One striking thing about this is how uncannily his choice of political story resembles Phil Goff’s: “I am the grandchild of a couple of carpenters who barely survived the depression with their families intact; I am the child of a man who was given a chance to get an education and become a fitter and turner and then an engineer. We grew up in a housing commission house in Brisbane and went to the local state school. I was the last of six children and the first to go to university … I am proud to stand before you as co-leader of the Green Party.”
It was his story, before it was Goff’s, and it illustrates how they’re staking out the same ground, in line with speculation from some that the Greens may seek to position themselves as an alternative Opposition in these troubled Labour times. It’s as if Norman’s implicitly saying: this is where a party of the centre left should be. If Labour is too busy chasing after law and order, and perpetual economic growth, and beneficiary bashing, the Greens will occupy the abandoned bits of turf. To find evidence here of “distancing from left-leaning social policies”, you have to buy into the hostility theory: that you won’t find a pool of voters with broad-based social consciences for whom working class and Maori issues and eco-friendliness are all part and parcel of the same thing. The charge of looking out for the best interests of the system, as a “pro-capitalist party of the Establishment”, handily ignores a larger point about growth unsustainability that Norman has raised repeatedly, including in the same blog post where he talked about the irony of saving capitalism from itself. He posed this “question that defines our age”: whether you can have GDP growth without growth in resource use. If you could achieve that, I suppose it would still be capitalism; you’d still be left with a further set of social issues that Norman didn’t address. Maybe that speaks volumes; or maybe Frogblog just doesn’t lend itself to whole theses.
Neither co-leader bows to the present model, as Edwards and Moore would have it. If you renovated the cage by grafting on, for example, progressive social policies, and environmental sustainability, and Treaty recognition, it would be a different-looking cage. I’d venture that Bradford’s departure tells us more about Bradford than it does about the Greens. She is, through and through, a proud radical and idealist. More than once, her preference has been to take bat and ball and go home, in defence of her stringent beliefs, to save them from being sullied. As Moore tells it, Bradford was at first shy of joining the Greens: if they weren’t middle class pakeha putting kiwi before workers, they were pot-smoking hippies who’d never worked a day in their lives. However, from the time she did join to the day that she left, it’s debatable whether the ethos of the party has radically changed, which is really the charge being levelled. Perhaps there were features of the previous co-leadership style that made it easier to bear, not least of them being that Bradford didn’t feel personally slighted. For the time being, at least, the Greens are trying to sustain a broad church. Edwards et al may think this is a bad marriage—I might well agree that it’s more of a political than an ideologically defensible position—but this is politics, after all.
Comments (17)
Interesting.
But I've run across this bit about an endlessly rising GDP not being sustainable a few times, and I think its mistaken. GDP tends to be decoupled from the real economy, which is why the US has had so many jobless recoveries over the last few decades. I'd argue that GDP can indeed rise indefinitely - it is the real components of the economy that cannot, land and energy consumption, ecological footprint etc.
If the Greens were to take an active position against economic growth per se, I don't think it would serve them, or their constituency. Many Green initiatives - like energy efficient homes, for example, are economically rather sounder than the endlessly repeated but unproven dogmas of the 'efficient market' economists.
The problem/strength of Bryce and John's analysis is its insistence on seeing politics through a thoroughly unreconstructed class-based lens. In such analysis, claims that there are political positions that transcend "left" or "right" categories simply won't work ... everything collapses down to either "good for" the working class or "not good" for the working class.
The positive aspect of this approach is that it can cut through bullshit - it retains a single-minded focus on "does this help or hurt those at the bottom of the pile?" The negative aspect is that it insists every development must fit within its narrative requirements - so by its logic Sue Bradford was the "most left wing" candidate for the Greens leadership; Sue Bradford was not chosen as the Greens leader; therefore the Greens must be "moving away" from the left. QED.
All well and good - unless the basic presumption is mistaken and (1) class is not the only (or even the primary) driver of social conflict/politics within NZ; meaning (2) not every decision taken within a political party reflects a preference for "left" or "right" wing policies. Why can it not be the case, for example, that the Green Party membership simply believed Meteria Turei would provide a media-friendlier face for delivering Green Party policy to the electorate than Sue Bradford would?
Why can't we get past the presumption of class conflict or betrayal? Sue said it herself in her valedictory speech:
We are living in a time of economic and environmental crisis. There appears to be no real willingness from either Labour or National-lead Governments to take real leadership on issues like dealing with the impacts of climate change, or on seriously reducing the deepening gap between rich and poor.
If the Greens merely chose Meteria Turei to be media friendlier, what media would that be? The Murdoch media? Hardly a non-partisan player.
More likely, and more properly, the Greens may have chosen Meteria as being more successful in identifying politicial cleavages that are significant to the electorate, or perhaps less unsuccessful. Sue was active and forceful, but her anti-smacking position consumed a lot of political capital - and when Jeanette is gone, the Greens are going to need all they can find.
Smart smart comment, Andrew. Thank you.
Nice piece Claire. I'm glad to see someone challenging the erroneous conclusions of Edwards and Moore.
"As Bradford has publicly said, it was this philosophical difference, rather than the loss of the co-leadership per se, that prompted her to resign."
I don't think “philosophical difference” captures the whole of it though. Sue said quite explicitly that there was no political division and the Green’s social justice kaupapa would continue. Her criticisms were about the approach being taken to achieving these goals and what segments of the electorate to appeal to. This is essentially an argument about political tactics, not principles or policies, with Sue preferring a more radical approach and saying so.
"The bloggers deduce that the co-leadership change was a symptom of a wider problem; they accept that it is a real problem, rather than perceived."
Their assumptions are wrong, so their conclusions are wrong. They believe a "complete leftwing break" is inevitable based on the fantasy that the Greens have an "intrinsic political nature as a centre-right force". I'm not making this up, as you know. Of course they can offer no coherent argument for this analysis given the number of readily available facts they had to ignore, but seem to just want so badly for it to be true.
But Andrew could be right. What he describes is just what happens when one has a dogmatic ideological position that allows for no new information. But it does assume they are being honest, even with themselves, which isn't obvious either. Their selective quoting and ignoring of relevant facts leads to the other possibility that they are actively promoting division within the Greens in the hope that they can contribute to the end they'd like to see occur. I may be wrong, but either Andrew or I am surely right.
I don't think “philosophical difference” captures the whole of it though. Sue said quite explicitly that there was no political division and the Green’s social justice kaupapa would continue. Her criticisms were about the approach being taken to achieving these goals and what segments of the electorate to appeal to. This is essentially an argument about political tactics, not principles or policies, with Sue preferring a more radical approach and saying so.
Agreed. That came across very clearly in her interview with Julian Robbins on National Radio; Bryce Edwards then blogged on the interview, quoting from it at length, but selectively.
Hi Clare – thanks for the blog post, I’ve just stumbled across it. It’s an interesting idea to get politicians to respond to what’s being said about them in the blogosphere. Well done – it’s a bit of a coup to get Russel Norman to respond to my analysis – he’s inclined to run a mile from engaging in such debate. That said, his response wasn’t too analytical! As usual he can’t seem to actually point out where my analysis is incorrect. So he resorts to the usual politician trick of just dismissing the messenger. So he might well claim – in very Winston Peters-like style – that I am ‘singularly uninformed about the Greens’, but this ignores the fact that very few – if any – other academics have studied the Greens as much as I have or written as much about them. What’s more, my analysis is guided by the use of evidence rather than just opinion. In all my numerous blog posts on the Greens, as well as academically published writings, I’ve attempted to actually base my analysis on quotes from the Green MPs, from analysis by other respected political commentators, and access to various internal party sources.
And, yes, my quoting from Sue Bradford – and other sources – is selective. (And of course, I was upfront about this, and I directed readers to the full RNZ interview – I wasn’t going to transcribe all of it!) This of course goes without saying and what debate is all about – marshalling your evidence. I ignored some of the contradictory things that Bradford has said. I’m not actually holding her up as the clearest exponent of the changes in the Greens – she’s currently all over the place and clearly having to please different internal party audiences and generally keep the peace. Yet all the same, some of her comments about the direction of the Greens are incredibly revealing and damning of the new leadership. Obviously there’s some ill feeling toward Metiria Turei over the leadership battle, but actually she feels more betrayed by Russel Norman. More of this will come out before long.
Andrew – ouch! I suppose that ex-socialists are normally the most anti-socialist. ;) But I do actually agree with you that there is a need to understand politics by more than just economics, class, and the left-right spectrum. I’ve been an advocate for such an approach for some time – you should read, for example, my talk to Drinking Liberally, for which the text of the talk on my blog (I’ve also just written a conference paper on the need to understand NZ politics by more than just the left-right divide). And if you also have a read of my analysis about both Bradford and Turei you’ll read that I have a rather in depth look at the reasons why Turei was always going to win over Bradford. I think I was the first political commentator to actually pick that she would definitely win the contest. And I backed up this political forecast with significant detail and evidence. Part of this analysis was in fact that Turei was essentially the more media-friendly of the two candidates – which goes against your argument.
Yet it should be obvious that there was more than just questions about media-friendliness or trivial stuff about personalities. What might often appear in politics as being just about personalities or superficial disagreements normally involves much more fundamental politics. As Bruce Jesson once wrote, ‘One of the most tantalizing things about politics is that things are never as they seem.’ At a formal level, all sorts of things are said to happen, but at an informal level, things happen in a quite different way. The challenge for critical thinkers is to go under the surface and see how things really work. What isn’t widely known is that in the vote for the co-leadership position, Sue Bradford did not just get beaten by Turei, but she actually got thoroughly thumped. It was like the All Blacks playing Japan! Her leftwing vision for the future was very poorly received, and hardly any conference delegates voted in her favour – indicating to Bradford that her and her more leftwing orientation were totally out of favour. So it wasn’t just that Bradford lost a close battle to a more media-friendly politician, but the party very clearly told her that her ‘red-green’ political vision had no support.
Furthermore, my analysis of changes in the Greens is not actually based on some simplistic assumption about Bradford’s departure. In fact I’ve actually put together thousands of words, an array of evidence, historical material that is not about Sue Bradford at all – you need to check out the rest of my blog posts. So the “QED” comment is also rather bizarre. But to view Turei’s win of the leadership position and then Bradford’s untimely resignation as just reflecting superficial issues is itself a superficial analysis.
As to whether the changes in the Greens are a good or bad thing is completely open to question. I don’t think that I have actually said it is a bad thing, as Andrew strongly implies. I’ve just described a number of changes in the party, adding in my analysis, but leaving it up to the reader to decide whether it’s a good thing or not. In fact I’ve speculated that the party might actually be more successful if it moves more into the centre and concentrates more on environmental issues. I’ve certainly not said blunt things like Andrew implies, such as “this is good for the working class” or “this is bad for the working class”.
So, yes, Russel Norman is increasingly “The Phil Goff of the Greens” as Clare implies. Both Goff and Norman are both very ideologically flexible, and looking for public support towards the mainstream rather than the margins. Is that a good thing? Many in the Greens think so; many amongst the wider left and progressive voters think not.
There’s a lot more to say in response to the blog post above, but this is probably best handled in future blog posts on these issues. The Greens are at a particular crucial juncture at the moment, so I’ll putting together a few more blog posts in the very near future.
Cheers
Bryce
The Greens have been going through a protracted struggle over principles and policies. The leadership battle between Turei and Bradford was not just about political tactics, as Go figure would claim, but very much about what the party's core values are and about how it will project itself within electoral and activist politics. Bradford has made it clear that her resignation was directly related to the shift of the party away from 'radical' values and policies and towards the political centre. She stated that the party is often unable to differentiate itself from the mainstream parliamentary parties. Her statements are a damning indictment on the current Green Party leadership.
In the early 90s Bradford was scathing of the Greens, labelling them as, 'either ignorant of or hostile to worker and union issues'. She described two kinds of Green, 'hippie dropouts content to make pots, be creative and smoke dope' and those who are quite right wing, 'who think it’s fine to send the unemployed out to work that is environmentally sound like cutting bush tracks'.
Bradford's decision to eventually become an active member of the Greens was obviously based on her belief that the party could embrace working class centered issues and left wing social policies. A number of left activists agreed with Sue, and joined the Greens. These leftists are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with a party leadership that is happy to cut deals with any political party, and whose leadership openly embraces the 'power of the market' and wants to 'save capitalism'.
Bradford had obviously become so sickened with the opportunistic nature of the Green's parliamentary caucus that she threatened to resign from the party during the period preceding last year’s election. Her threat to resign came after Russel Norman indicated the Greens would be happy to cut a deal with either National or Labour.
Go figure and others in the Green's leadership may brush over Sue Bradford's damning statements, but they now stand in the public record for all to see.
Hi Bryce and John,
From John's recent blog on Bryce's site:
With the elections of Metiria Turei and Russel Norman to the leadership, the party has deliberately chosen to throw off any leftwing ideological baggage and embrace the mainstream. Deals can now be cut with either major parties of the right or mildly 'left' without fear of dissent or division.
This is the kind of howler that just makes us roll. You really can't have a good idea how the Green Party works internally, either in the development of policy or in making major decisions.
Of course, all will become clear over the next few years. If our pre-eminent scholar on the Green Party is correct, we'll see a few things happen. First, the Party will begin to eject its huge amount of left social policy. Bryce would know from all his study that the co-leaders are bound to advance existing policy and cannot change it themselves. So the Party membership, having made the great leap rightward from somewhere left of mildly 'left', will naturally begin to make the matching policy changes. This will be easy to follow, as all GP policy is readily available on the website. All we have to do is grab a snapshot, sit back and watch the transformation. I'm sure Bryce will let us know as soon as the changes start.
Second, after the next election, the Greens will of course be able to cut that deal with National "without fear of dissent or division". An early indication that Norman and Turei have really seized this unbridled power will come at the 2011 AGM in June. There, counter to all previous elections where the membership have explicitly ruled out talking to National about coalition, they will pass a resolution that leaves open the possibility of such talks. Why, they may even go so far as to drop the usual requirement that any substantial deal (particularly with the Nats) be endorsed by the membership at a special general meeting after the election.
Finally, in the run up to election day, we'll see the Greens cuddling up to the Nats in preparation for the big marriage. In fact, that process will need to start pretty soon to be credible as the Greens have a lot of ground to make up, seeing as they currently oppose the government on more issues than any other party. Included in this long list of issues is just about every environmental policy the Nats have, despite the Green's environmental focus being one of the reasons for their supposed "intrinsic political nature as a centre-right force".
It's late so enough fun for tonight, but a quick question for John:
Bradford has made it clear that her resignation was directly related to the shift of the party away from 'radical' values and policies and towards the political centre.
In Bryce's blog on Sue, he quotes her saying "we should do more to explain our policies", and neither of your blogs say which policies Sue claimed the Greens were shifting away from. Can you let us know, please.
Hi Claire, Andrew, Bryce et al.
I think the title of the blog post is apt, and Andrew & Bryce have touched upon an important point in his post: that 'there is a need to understand politics by more than just economics, class, and the left-right spectrum'.
This is something that is taking place all over the developed world and has been charted in the World Values Survey by Ronald Inglehart of the University of Michigan.
Basically, he sees a transition in sociopolitical values from Survival Values (in industrial societies) to Self-Expression Values (in post-industrial societies). This transition goes hand in hand with economic development.
These self-expression values are likely to be individualistic and related to specific policy areas, rather than focusing on the connected or class-based values which epitomised the left-right divide.
Examples of self-expression values are: To recycle or mobilize to protect the environment; To favor less emphasis on money/material posessions; To think scientific discoveries will harm, rather than help, humanity.
These values are now widespread in New Zealand: Inglehart's surveys (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/) place NZ very far towards the self-expression end of the spectrum.
The implications of this development are as noted above: The failure of a left-right analysis of politics to be insightful in every case (although I would argue it is still insightful in many cases - see my post on the median voter theorem). The Green Party are a fascinating case to study in this point, as they seem to epitomize self-expression values and thus are very different to place on the L-R spectrum.
some of her comments about the direction of the Greens are incredibly revealing and damning of the new leadership. Obviously there’s some ill feeling toward Metiria Turei over the leadership battle, but actually she feels more betrayed by Russel Norman ...
What isn’t widely known is that in the vote for the co-leadership position, Sue Bradford did not just get beaten by Turei, but she actually got thoroughly thumped. It was like the All Blacks playing Japan! Her leftwing vision for the future was very poorly received, and hardly any conference delegates voted in her favour – indicating to Bradford that her and her more leftwing orientation were totally out of favour. So it wasn’t just that Bradford lost a close battle to a more media-friendly politician, but the party very clearly told her that her ‘red-green’ political vision had no support.
So ... not Russel Norman's fault, then?
Hi Clare – in a sense you’re right, the shift to the right and the effective vote of no confidence in Sue Bradford wasn’t just the work of Russel Norman but of the wider party. Norman is probably roughly in line with the views of the party membership, even if he has been pushing the envelope, playing a leadership role. So, no, I wouldn’t say it was his ‘fault’ if indeed there is any ‘fault’ involved. Those amongst the left of the party might regard him at fault, but that’s a question for them. It was no secret amongst active party members that Norman favoured the election of Metiria Turei over Bradford. This is partly why Bradford feels betrayed by Norman – he had previously been close to her, worked for her as her executive assistant in Parliament, and she in fact was a key force in helping to arrange Norman’s leadership victory over Nandor Tanczos. And the left say that Norman was then involved in undermining Bradford after her ultimatum over Green-National relations.
Go Figure says that the Greens won’t move any further towards the right due to the constraints imposed by the party membership. This is also what I was getting at yesterday in terms of the Bruce Jesson quote about how in politics ‘things are never as they seem.’ Yes, on the surface level, party constitutions, election manifestos, academic textbooks, will tell you about how political parties hold conferences, make policies, produce manifestos, fight elections, change laws etc., but at an informal level, things happen in a quite different way. This is the same within the Green Party – as within any party. Despite formal rules governing how a party is supposed to function, the leadership actually has immense power, leverage over the membership, and considerable freedom to maneuver. In fact, with supreme irony, Russel Norman wrote a whole Phd around this topic – showing how the leadership of the Alliance was able to consolidate power and devalue the formal internal mechanisms in order to impose their own politics. Now Norman uses these lessons to do the same within the Greens! He’s turned his academic critique of authority in the Alliance into a personal instruction manual onto how to maximise that authority in his Green Party. Digression aside, the point of all this is, however, that Sue Bradford played a crucial role within the Green caucus, being a leftwing ideological anchor. She proved to be a major constraint on the freedom of the leadership to develop a more independent position with parliamentary and electoral competition – as we saw with her ‘spiking’ of the 2008 ‘mother coke and father pepsi’ election formula. With that anchor removed, the leadership now have much greater freedom to develop the trajectory they were already pushing the party in.
And, yes, Henry is entirely right about postmaterialism (or post-industrialism) and its interplay with Green politics. Increasingly the politics of the NZ Green Party will relate to postmaterialist issues rather than leftwing issues. We’ve already seen that, of course, with the party running ‘quality of life’ campaigns – a distinctly postmaterialist issue. Like the old Values party, the new Green party is thoroughly postmaterialist, with policies that indicated the influence of members who had been involved in progressive politics against war, racism, and sexism. In this sense the Greens are largely a continuation of the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
But overall, NZ party competition is increasingly configured not by materialist-economic-class issues (that is, by the traditional left-right cleavage), but by postmaterialist issues such as conflicts over immigration, sexual politics (prostitution legalization), foreign policy (intervention in wars, bans on nuclear ships), environmental issues (such as genetic modification and climate change). As a result, a *liberal-conservative* dimension increasingly structures party competition. Thus the Greens are hardly out-of-step in this way. So, again, I wouldn’t really say either the Greens or Norman are at ‘fault’.
Cheers
Bryce
in a sense you’re right, the shift to the right and the effective vote of no confidence in Sue Bradford wasn’t just the work of Russel Norman but of the wider party ... Go Figure says that the Greens won’t move any further towards the right due to the constraints imposed by the party membership.
Well, I like it best when Go Figure speaks up for himself, so I am not going to say very much. However, I did rather think he was saying - as was I - that the Greens haven't shifted to the right at all. Your arguments are very seductive, Bryce, dangerously so, but that was, and remains, the key point of difference. Trying to gather in some more middle New Zealand votes does not, in itself, connote a shift, unless you can establish that other previously held policies have changed.
And, yes, my quoting from Sue Bradford – and other sources – is selective. (And of course, I was upfront about this, and I directed readers to the full RNZ interview – I wasn’t going to transcribe all of it!) This of course goes without saying and what debate is all about – marshalling your evidence. I ignored some of the contradictory things that Bradford has said.
Oh, and by the way: if, as an academic, you can't tell the difference by now between quoting accurately (as in, not selectively) and quoting in full ... bit of a worry, don't you think?
Clare - OK, I take your point. I will reflect a bit more on what I mean about the Greens having shifted to the right. Perhaps I’ll write a more extensive blog post that outlines what evidence there is for that notion. I’m certainly interested to read about other contrary evidence that exists, if anyone can point me to it.
One thing that comes to mind, that I haven’t previously mentioned, is a survey I recently carried out amongst other political scientists. When asked to locate the Green Party on a 1-10 left-right scale, the average of their responses was 2.9. Of course there’s all sorts of problems with this sort of quantitative research, but it’s still interesting. Although this survey plotted the Greens at 2.9 on the scale, effectively labelling the party as left-wing, it’s worth noting that as part of the Alliance in the previous survey of 1996, the party had once shared a more left location of 2.3, suggesting that the Greens are still in a more centrist position than the party was in the 1990s. And although the Greens are the most left party on this spectrum, there is still a considerable gap to the left of the Greens, leaving the most left part of the spectrum empty. (Also, btw, in plotting the party on a postmaterialist 1-10 liberal-conservative spectrum, the respondents put the Greens at 2.7).
Btw, where have I not quoted accurately? I think you're getting a bit mixed up here.
Cheers
Bryce
Looking forward to reading the post! Pundit's editors consider guest posts on a case by case basis, by the way - so if you wanted to share it with us here too, as well as your Liberation readers, that'd be interesting ...
I'll come back to you on the quoting; I think I've still got the full Bradford interview. I'm guessing that what you term "ignoring contradictory things", I call selective quoting. But anyway - minor point, that might have been better left alone.
I’m not actually holding her up as the clearest exponent of the changes in the Greens – she’s currently all over the place and clearly having to please different internal party audiences and generally keep the peace. Yet all the same, some of her comments about the direction of the Greens are incredibly revealing and damning of the new leadership.
I take your more general point, that she's been in a bit of a muddle, and feeling emotionally betrayed, which might be reason to approach her as a source with a bit of caution - which you say you do. However, you can't take some of her words for some purposes, like "revealing and damning the new leadership" and dispense with the other bits that fit less tidily with the argument.
Well as a Green part Activist and a delegate at the last Agm , I am quite surprised that I and others are being pushed in a direction that Russel wants. In fact, to put it bluntly, it is complete bollocks ..
Of course I cannot discount the possibility that Russel wanted me to say that.
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