A senior figure called the idea 'just patronising'
The Greens have hit back at calls by a key Corbyn ally for a formal merger between the Labour Party and the Green Party.
Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum – the Corbyn-backing campaign group – today raised the prospect of taking a ‘progressive alliance’ to the next level through the Greens becoming a semi-formal wing of the Labour Party – in a similar relationship to the Co-Operative Party, which does not run candidates against Labour.
Speaking at a Labour conference fringe meeting in Liverpool on Tuesday, Lansman said: ‘Why shouldn’t the Green party have the same relationship with the Labour party that the Co-op party has with the Labour Party?,’ according to politics.co.uk.
Lansman said under his proposed model, Greens would be able to join Labour with equal voting rights, ‘including the very important one of selecting candidates’.
However, a senior source ruled out the prospect of any merger between Labour and the Greens: ‘We’re not going to become a party within the Labour party. [We’ll stay] separate parties, working together when possible/useful.’
Caroline Lucas, co-leader of the Green Party, told Left Foot Forward: ‘
‘While I have great respect for the traditions of the Labour Party, and agree with the leadership on many things, I believe both in the distinctiveness of Green policy and in the merits of a multiparty democracy.
That’s why my Party will continue to make our united voice heard loudly and clearly, on issues such as trident replacement, stopping Hinkley power station and democratizing the post-referendum process, but we’ll also look to work across party lines wherever there is common ground.’
However, she added:
‘Since no one single party has a monopoly on wisdom, and the chances of a Labour majority are vanishingly small, we owe it to the public to explore whether our separate parties can work together to bring about a progressive Government at the next election.’ She said backing proportional representation would be a condition of the Greens engaging in any progressive alliance.’
Another senior Green Party figure responded to Lansman’s merger plans, telling Left Foot Forward:
‘There’s room for doing something differently, but the idea of being a wing of the Labour Party is just patronising.’
A progressive alliance – including a formal pact between Labour and the Greens – was a key plank of Caroline Lucas MP and Jonathan Bartley’s leadership campaign this summer, with the two securing 87 per cent of the vote.
However, the response from Lucas and other senior figures suggests anything more serious than standing down in selected seats on the condition of Labour backing PR is off the cards – at least for now.
Josiah Mortimer is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
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7 Responses to “Greens rule out Momentum chief’s call for merger with Labour”
Gerhard Lohmann-Bond
It can’t happen the way Jon Lansman is suggesting (if only because that would require a change of party rules which is unlikely to find broad support among our membership), but we shouldn’t decry attempts at looking to cooperate where such cooperation makes sense. I welcome the way Corbyn has taken over large parts of last year’s Green manifesto and made them his own (plagiarism IS a very sincere form of flattery), although an acknowledgement of his intellectual indebtedness to the Green Party is still missing. Even if that is not likely to be forthcoming, I still think the best way of getting other parties to accept our ideas is to make them believe they thought of them in the first place. What is missing so far is some kind of reciprocity. Greens shouldn’t dismiss Lansman’s suggestion out of hand, even though they are clearly not workable as they stand. Instead we should welcome them as the opening gambits of a concerted attempt to end the reign of a Conservative government, which has clearly run out of ideas.
Jonathan Kent
Lansman’s comments betray a worrying lack of both political nous and emotional intelligence. Greens have had to endure all sorts of abuse from certain Labour members, especially in any area where the Greens have had success – the bitterness of some Labour figures in Brighton and Oxford has been deeply depressing.
Today’s politics are plural. People coalesce around issues. They lend their support, they don’t pledge it. The old two-party system is dead and I’d be amazed if it returned. The internet is building constituencies based on interests not geography and it’s not lending itself to mass movements, but to more focused activism.
Unless Labour can ditch the tribal mentality, embrace the new plural politics, fight for a properly democratic system that reflects all views rather than that pushes people into two camps, and learn to work constructively with others, it will simply be a large opposition party rather than the leader of a broadly constituted government.
I’m a Green because I believe not only that its vital to hand our children and grandchildren a viable planet and a viable future, but because I value freedoms and civil liberties. The last Labour Home Secretary or Shadow to be truly liberal in this regard was Roy Jenkins. Labour is very right wing on personal freedoms. I couldn’t fight for a free society within Labour so I do it with the Greens.
That said I’ve never, in thirty years as a Green, baulked from finding common cause in good faith with others. Less of the taking over and more of the talking over please.