The Green Queen’s Speech

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Well, it didn’t happen after all. We finished up with a coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Quite an event for us Brits, accustomed as we are to rigid political boundaries and the centuries-old Parliamentary trench warfare of government v opposition, us v them, yah-boo-sucks Punch and Judy politics that passes for debate here. The idea of a coalition, of people from different parts of the political spectrum actually settling down to make things work in a practical, commonsense way is somehow not British. It’s the sort of thing they do in Italy, for God’s sake, or one of those tiny Central European states where vampires have tax havens. At least, as far as the United Kindom Parliament at Westminster goes, an institution that is both stabilised and hampered by the weight of its traditions. Of course, the upstart Assemblies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland know all about coalitions, and actually make them work rather well. But that is a topic for another day.

In a previous post, I wrote about how the fuss over the hung Parliament had obscured the great achievement of the Green Party of England and Wales in returning their first MP to Westminster.  Caroline Lucas’s  novelty value has attracted a fair amount of media attention, it will be interesting to see what happens to her profile once some of the shine has come off. However, right now her stock is high and media opportunities are plentiful. One of the latest is the publishing by Channel 4 News of an alternative Queen’s Speech, written by Dr Lucas. For those unfamiliar with these things, the Queen’s Speech is the centrepiece ritual of the State Opening of Parliament. A short summary of the (new or continuing) government’s policy intentions is prepared for Her Majesty to read in front of the assembled members of both Houses. It’s a farce really, Monarch As Mouthpiece, an excuse for paid representatives of the people to stop doing anything useful and instead take walk-on parts in a meaningless pageant. The whole jamboree seems to drag on for ever, the speech itself  lasts  two or three minutes. Have they not heard of email?

Caroline Lucas’s alternative Queen’s Speech adopts the traditional style and tone to which we have become accustomed, a string of  one liners of the “My government will” or “My government intends to” variety. It is customary for there to be few real specifics such as how, or when, these things will, or may, happen, and the language is carefully angled so that hardly anything is a genuine commitment. It would have been refreshing for this Green document to cast aside those conventions, as the new Coalition’s offering tried to do, but that’s a minor quibble. The content is much more important.

Some of what Her Majesty recited for us was fairly predictable, kicking off with the three main strands of the Green Party manifesto: low-carbon economy, promoting a fairer society, and tackling the economic crisis. Some items that you might have expected to get a mention don’t make it. We get a promise to “decommission Britain’s nuclear weapons”, but nothing about phasing out nuclear power stations and resolutely opposing new ones, as stated on page 35 of the 2010 Green Party manifesto. I guess that this, like a number of other manifesto commitments, had to make do with being subsumed under a general bullet point, in the interests of making the whole thing fit the sound-bite format. A shame that, while some really good points didn’t make it to the final cut, some totally dotty ones did.

Try this: “The redistributive tax measures will ensure that a non-means-tested citizen’s pension may be introduced at the level of £170 for individual pensioners and £300 for couples”. Setting aside the studied ambivalence of the words I have highlighted, do the Greens really want to give every eligible adult a hugely inflated pension without even checking that they need it or not? It’s absolutely right to ensure that people who are in genuine need do not go without, but, as with the current situation with winter fuel payments, well-off people will just take the extra cash and stick it in a tax-free savings account or a trust fund for their grandchildren. It does not address a need, it just diverts money away from those who are genuinely struggling.

Or this: “… a requirement for all companies to have at least 40 per cent of their boards of directors made up of women”. I have never been a fan of positive discrimination. Surely, if we are serious about “making Britain a fairer and more inclusive society”, the best person for the job should get it, regardless of gender, race, age, etc etc. I fail to see how this kind of measure does anything to advance women’s, or indeed anyone’s, interests.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I may sound critical, but there’s a lot to read in the Greens’ manifesto and surely no one individual agrees with 100% of it. Settling on your political allegiance is a balancing act, weighing the parties’ positions on each issue and coming up with a ‘best’, or ‘least worst’, fit. Until we have a system which allows every citizen to vote on every issue, there will always be voters who strongly disagree with some of their chosen party’s policies. In fact, it baffles me how any government can claim a popular mandate to do anything. Still, we must do our best with what we have. I surprised myself recently by becoming a member of a political party for the first time in my life, and yes, I joined the Green Party, in spite of my misgivings about some of their policies, and about the way that their core environmental messages are being diluted and buried by the ‘other stuff’. Maybe I can work to change that from within. Certainly, it’s better for me to be inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in.

Pete Smith @ May 29, 2010