Latest news with #Green-curious
Scoop
4 days ago
- Politics
- Scoop
Greens Gather For Annual Meeting Focused On Building Voters' Trust
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick says there's "no point being right", if the party is not in a position to make change in parliament. The caucus and party faithful are gathering for their annual meeting in Wellington central this weekend. The party had a tumultuous start to the term. This time last year, Swarbrick led the party alone, with co-leader Marama Davidson out of action, fighting cancer. She also fielded questions about former MP Darleen Tana's future, as the party mulled swallowing its pride and invoking the waka-jumping laws to get rid of her. With Davidson back and Tana now gone, it's been relatively steady going for the party this year. It put out its own 'Green Budget' in May - a plan that promised free doctor visits, dental care and an income support scheme, funded by a suite of wealth taxes. Swarbrick said she was "stoked" heading into this year's annual meeting. "I'm feeling really, really good," she said. "We're in a position where we have released four sizable and substantive policy pieces. "Being in this position now, with Marama back, and having a really strong, really capable, really focused team, it's just going to be awesome." The co-leaders have been out and about this year, holding meetings through local branches, as part of a nationwide roadshow. Swarbrick has been to Northland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Gisborne and Taranaki, where she said she met a lot of "Green-curious" voters. "A lot of people have been turning up, who have felt very strongly that the status quo of politics is not working for them, and so they're interested in understanding what our proposals, what our solutions actually are." The Green Party had no shortage of policy on the table, but Swarbrick said that wasn't enough. "There's no point being right, if we are left clinging to our mountains of evidence, when the last tree is cut down. "The Greens have long prided themselves on having the evidence and the facts, and the basis for the policies that we're putting out there, but clearly - unfortunately - that hasn't been enough to get us into a position of commanding a large enough portion of the vote to get those sizable, transformative policies across the line." She said the Greens were focused on building the public's trust with the party in the coming year. "Having those policies is critical, so that people know that we have a backbone, we actually know what it is that we're talking about, but the far more critical ingredient is building trust," Swarbrick said. "That is the work that we've been doing on the ground, organising with people and having them understand that things can be so much better, if we all occupy our power and make it a reality." Swarbrick said, no matter what Labour went on to announce, the electorate knew where the Green Party stood on a swathe of issues. "We intend to be in a position to negotiate government, where we have been completely transparent about the things that we want to do."
New Statesman
08-05-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Can Ed Miliband stand the heat?
Photo by. Last week a trade union general secretary almost called for the replacement of a cabinet minister. You might have missed it. The interview was on the day of the local elections and attention soon moved to two familiar sights: Nigel Farage toasting his victories and the Labour Party feuding over its defeats. Since becoming Unite's general secretary, Sharon Graham has mostly eschewed the power plays that defined her predecessor Len McCluskey (who treated shadow cabinet ministers as chess pieces to be moved around). But here is what she told Times Radio about the job of Energy Secretary: 'Somebody needs to be in that post that believes in Britain, believes in these skills, believes in the national security of the county'. The seeming implication was that this person is not Ed Miliband – who Graham has accused of having 'no plan' to stop oil and gas workers becoming 'the miners of net zero' (Unite declined to comment when I asked whether Graham was indeed calling for his replacement). On Tuesday I detailed the pincer movement against Rachel Reeves – the soft left, Blue Labour and the Red Wall Group have all targeted the Chancellor's economic approach. But Miliband, as a close friend notes, faces a hostile coalition of his own: 'the trade unions, Tony Blair and the right-wing press' (a triumvirate aligned on little else). Confronted by this, Miliband's allies draw solace from two sources: the voters and the Prime Minister. In recent weeks, Labour MPs have been assailed – verbally and electorally – by the former. As a backbencher puts it to me: 'One of the consequences to the heavy-handed approach to getting MPs out campaigning is that we've been outside the bubble and talking to lots of very, very angry and pissed-off voters'. Back in Westminster, MPs recount that one issue dominated above all: the winter fuel payment cuts (a policy which Miliband, an adviser to Gordon Brown when he introduced the benefit, privately warned against). Demands for its reversal are intermingled with others – a more interventionist industrial strategy and tougher controls on immigration (the government will have more to say on both of those soon). But few MPs cite net zero as a culprit for Labour's descent. That's unsurprising: polling by YouGov for Persuasion UK has found that the issue does not make the top 12 'pull factors' for Labour to Reform voters. Backing for net zero, it suggests, helps Labour retain the backing of Green-curious supporters without alienating Reform-curious ones (overall, the public back net zero by a two-to-one margin). Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Miliband's team aim to use the next few months to further solidify this coalition of support. They believe Reform's opposition to renewable energy projects in its new fiefdoms offers a potent dividing line on growth and jobs. They are also encouraged by projections that energy bills will fall by £166 (or 9 per cent) in July and are pushing for nuclear power investment to be central to Reeves' Spending Review in June. Yet speculation that the government will discard net zero or Miliband (or both) has rarely ceased. No 10 has spent this year demolishing liberal-left taboos: reducing the foreign aid budget by 40 per cent, announcing the largest welfare cuts since George Osborne and backing a third runway at Heathrow (a policy privately resisted by Miliband). Plenty asked whether net zero would join this ensemble either before or after the elections. But provided with countless opportunities to recalibrate, Keir Starmer has instead doubled down. Renewable energy, he declared in a speech last month, is 'in the DNA of my government', noting that 'the UK's net zero sectors are growing three times faster than the economy as a whole'. When Blair appeared to argue that Miliband's net zero strategy was 'doomed to fail', some wondered whether he was outriding for No 10 (the former prime minister and Starmer speak regularly). But it was Downing Street that forced Blair to row back as it reaffirmed its support for the 2050 target (Miliband's allies describe the intervention as an 'own goal'). Downing Street refused to guarantee that Miliband would remain in post for the remainder of this parliament – the assurance it has offered Reeves and David Lammy – but it did declare that he was doing a 'fantastic job'. Is this enough? Miliband's supporters like to compare him to Michael Gove – a man who entered government with a plan and has bent Whitehall to his will (Gove has returned the compliment by naming Miliband, along with Yvette Cooper, as Labour's most effective administrator). But there was, as a government source recently reminded me, a twist to this tale. Though Gove's school reforms are now lauded – No 10's new education adviser, Oli de Botton, co-founded a free school – the Education Secretary was ruthlessly demoted to chief whip in 2014. Strategist Lynton Crosby – whose influence then was as great as Morgan McSweeney's is now – deemed Gove one of the 'barnacles' that had to be scraped off the boat as the Tories prepared for re-election. Cameron laid down his friend for his political life. Faced with a no less fervent campaign against his own friend (Miliband), will Starmer do the same? The evidence, detailed above, suggests not but the Prime Minister has shown his capacity for night-and-day changes before (recall the apparent passion with which he publicly defended Miliband's £28bn green investment pledge before discarding it). We should know the answer before the summer – and it will tell us much about this government's future direction. This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here [See also: The warning of VE Day] Related
