UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
view the rest of the comments
The Greens control 12 councils and the only example the article brings up of the Greens blocking development is the pylon thing is Suffolk. While wrong, I don't think it's enough to say it's a systemic issue with the party.
There are lots of other examples of them blocking or voting against development, including green development, but often as they're in opposition it's not enough to block it entirely (or they team up with whoever the local blockers are and so only contribute to, rather than cause, the problem).
Their default position on everything is 'This is good, but not perfect, so we're going to vote against it', which then leads to nothing happening or just to bizarre contradictions. It's not just housing and pylons, either: look at their position on HS2 and it's the same thing: 'More public transport! But not that.' Or even on the oil and gas crisis it's the same thing, with them now arguing that the government should subsidise scarce fossil fuel resources (which is baffling on its own), but not do anything to increase our own production (which is a contradiction). Again, it's 'Do this, but not like that' and the default to stasis.
Totally agree, and i think thst second paragraph puts it perfectly.
If I'm being generous, I know them to have blocked:
So at the most generous way of looking at it, that's only 4 things, but 2 of those - HS2 and Nuclear power - are incredibly important and could completely elevate the environmental performance of our nation.
Solar power? Sure I could argue that the land is better uaed for wildlife and farming, and I usually would do so - but they usually wouldn't. Absolutely no enforcement of a party policy, which means any nation-wide leadershio will lack directikn and see the ciuntry stagnate or flounder under the weight of 100s of harebrained schemes which act against one another; for every city building a new green energy plant, another city will be tearing one down to build - well, their priorities don't seem to be the environmetpnt at all right now, so i guess it would be refugee housing or something, which could go anywhere else.
I'm also worried that if the Green party were to take control, anywhere, and didn't set out to cut any public projects, they would simply de-rail them by running out of budget on other stuff. The list of useless things they want to spend taxpayer money on seems to be endless - yet I don't see things which will actually improve the wealth of the country, which is what we need right now to fund sweeping changes to the environment, production and public transport.
Famously they've been very successful where come from - Sheffield - but have absolutely nothing to put to their name following a long-reigning green party mayor of the city ... other than some postulating and participstion in reality shows.
(Actually i would credit the green party's success here with the delay to Sheffield getting an improved metro system, which is now only going ahead under a labour-led Combined authority for the entire county.)
Also their current leader is the worst one they've ever had. Yes he stands up to israel, but he's cruel and nasty like a cult leader.
Yeah, the Polanski geezer is a conman and I'm amazed people can't see it a mile off. I've seen deeper puddles.
The other thing I worry about is if they displace the Labour party as the main centre left force in the country, that would be regressive, in that the organised working class would no longer have any political power at all and the centre left would be represented by the petit bourgeoisie, essentially (which is who makes up most political parties, Labour included), without a workers' voice. Polanski's been talking to trade unions, sure - but so did David Cameron. It's not the same as having a labour party.
Absolutely. Actually I think this is the same old problem - like it or not, the working class is mostly opposed to mass migration, so they'll be voting restore and reform. Precisely the same thing that kept Tories in power for 15 years from 2010-2025.
I don't blame the greens and labour for not thinking in 4D chess terms but here we are, back where we started.
Labour's traditional union backing seems to have split funding between labour and greens now, which is a mistake on their part because The Green Party seems to have nobody with economic literacy in it.
He held a, what Wikipedia calls, ceremonial post for one year? The Greens also only had 8 councillors and Labour a majority, so this criticism feels very misplaced.
Weird, they made such a big thing about it (because he's a minority i guess), felt like living under a propoganda regime. I might be mixing it up because he continued to hold other positions such as MEP. My apologies.
Sure, the Green party has a historic current of conservationists small-c conservatives who are only Greens because they want to keep landscapes pretty. Doesn't help that the only council the Greens have a majority in (Mid Suffolk) is held by that faction, but that will almost certainly change in May. Every party has cranks, but they do stand out a lot more and have a lot more influence in the Greens due to how small the party has historically been. Just look at the 'natural births' thing the Greens only dropped in the run up to the 2024 General Election.
Hopefully the Greens with all the momentum behind them now can leave most of that stuff behind, Polanski himself has come out in support of pylons and the people in my local Green party are from this new wave and are pretty sensible, so I have hope.
No, they argue that the government should provide support to cap people's energy bills. This unfortunately means paying for fossil fuels, but that's just the nature of our current energy grid. Reeves has announced intentions to provide support for energy bills as well, they're just less broad than the Greens proposal and will mean people over whatever threshold the Treasury decides don't get the support they likely need. Do you think it'd be fair to brand the Labour government as subsidising fossil fuels when these measures are actually announced?
A caveat: The Greens proposal only really makes sense when done along with the Greens proposed broad tax rises.
Unless you're arguing for fracking, North Sea drilling won't bring in enough gas to meet our needs or even affect the price very much. We'll still need to buy most of it from Norway and arguing over domestic production is frankly a distraction.
In practical terms, this is the same thing! I agree with you that Reeves' proposal is equally as foolish. The government should leave it alone and spend the money on direct financial support for the poorest people.