Polanski and the rise of the Green Party in the UK
As he is willing to stand up and be counted, he politely takes no rubbish from other politicians and is charismatic (though that is not necessarily that important) Polanski is riding in public opinion. The Greens are now 4th in the list of parties ahead of the Lib Dem’s. Are they just a flash in the pan or can they make a real difference?
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This. I joined the Greens some years ago, though sadly I can't physically help with canvassing, or go to meetings. Still, my support in terms of £££ helps the party to carry on its forward march! An email from them recently said that membership had increased from 65000 to 100000 in recent months.
Mr Polanski is certainly a welcome breath of fresh air in UK politics.
Yes.
The question of his name is an unexpectedly interesting one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zack_Polanski
You're welcome.
Well, he said that's what he wanted to do, so it's good to see that he's not only calling out Reform, but is also able to back up what he says.
For the major news outlets in Scotland, it seems to be business as usual. Ignore the only Greens in the UK to have ever been in government. Ignore a party with membership that now exceeds Scottish LibDems and Conservative (and, possibly even exceeds Scottish Labour). Ignore a party set to have more MSPs after the 7th May than LibDem or Conservative.
IIRC, the Greens here now have more members than the LibDems, but (so far) only the four MPs - hence an email from ZP this morning encouraging us to give as much in the way of £££ as we can.
A general election is some way off, of course (unless the flag-hoisters have their way), but the Greens are clearly gearing up for a fight in the intervening years. I don't think there are any by-elections forthcoming, but it'll be interesting to see how voting goes next time there is one.
There's a long way to go, of course, and I doubt if we'll ever see a Green government (unless PR is somehow magically introduced, in which case the Greens would form part of a coalition government).
I'm referring here to England and Wales - as @Alan Cresswell points out, the Greens in Scotland are in a different situation.
O I see - yes, I think you're right. It was the (entirely correct) capital Y that confused my two remaining brain cells...
Indeed.
It is a slow grind, but we do make a difference. With Zack, this is just reaching more and more people, people who are disaffected with existing politics (and so Reform are attracting). It makes for a rather unpredictable future, which cannot be too bad.
When asked whether the former Conservative voters now with the Green Party would support his ambition for the UK to leave NATO, Polanski stressed that the UK needs "a different approach to defence".
He said: "What I'm talking about there is recognising we can't be in hock to Donald Trump.
"What I want to do is have a conversation about what an alternative alliance looks like with our European neighbours."
This would not "necessarily" mean spending more on defence, Mr Polanski added.
Greens are instinctively pacifist, we would always seek non-violent means of resolving international issues ahead of the use of force (we're also realistic enough to know that a military option may ben needed as a last resort, much though we loathe that reality). We're also instinctively anti-nuclear - military force may be needed as a last resort, but the destruction (often mutually assured) of nuclear weapons would never be acceptable.
For Greens, NATO as a nuclear alliance is always going to be a problem. If we achieve our aim of nuclear disarmament starting within our own nations, then ongoing membership of an alliance where the use of nuclear weapons held by other members of that alliance will always be unacceptable. Especially when NATO has never ruled out first strike.
We've stated that there needs to be an alternative approach to defence. That would include more emphasis on soft power to achieve the desired end of peace and justice between nations - more spending on international aid, more use of diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions and boycotts etc. It would include a defence structure that addresses real threats to our own nations - less emphasis on imperialistic unilateral projection of military power around the world. Certainly no nukes. And, within that alternative approach would be a re-assessment of military alliances - that would necessarily be primarily with other nations in Europe rather than globally, but also as part of that alternative softer approach working more with the UN in provision of peace-keeping forces.
A couple of years ago, there was a motion at our Conference calling for a major revision of our policy relating to defence; it fell partly because it included removing our aim to leave NATO, instead seeking to change the nature of NATO. Part of that motion also included removing our objection to the international arms trade, to allow our elected representatives to call for supplying arms to the Ukrainian armed forces (the 2022 invasion of Ukraine is one of those events that make it hard to be pacifists), but again fell because a major revision of long established policy in relation to a single event (no matter how dire) sets a poor precedent and weakened our stance against the supply of arms to other governments which would still present an ethical problem - including supplying the Israeli Defence Forces with a record (even in 2022) of war crimes. We did have one new clause in that motion that was universally welcomed (but the nature of the motion meant it couldn't pass without the rest of the package) that defence spending should not exceed international aid - in direct support of that push towards soft-power solutions to international tensions.
His position is building an European Army, and his critique of NATO is that it's not reliable.
But I don't think the Green Party (either Scottish or the GPEW) is suggesting that they would have any power over other Western countries' nuclear capabilities. It's also a bit rich to point to a future Russia and China doing what the US is currently doing right now with nobody else having any power to rein them in.
I also think you miss the point of soft power - the point isn't to somehow defeat the enemy directly, but to make sure that everyone else is your friend. After all, part of the problem with Putin is that he does sincerely have a high approval rating within Russia. Dictators are always genuinely terrified of public opinion turning because it's the one thing that military might etc is helpless against. Making Putin unpopular with the Russian public is both cheaper and more effective than nukes.
*Ask the people of Palomares, Spain, Mars Bluff, South Carolina, Goldsborough, North Carolina, and several other places in the world.
Though of course that doesn't mean nobody will use them... there's always at least one general who's still fighting the last war.
He thinks a European army would be more reliable than NATO? And would leave NATO? Not getting my vote.
When NATO was founded, the threat to Western Europe was perceived to be a massive Soviet and Warsaw Pact military, with concerns (possibly invalid) that they had an agenda to conquer Western Europe. Based on information available at the time, it was a fair assessment that the combined military forces of Western Europe wouldn't be able to stop an all-out attack from the Soviet Union and their allies, and so an alliance that included the USA was justified.
Today, the world is different. The Soviet Union has collapsed, and Russia can't rely on the support of the nations that had been part of the Soviet Empire, nor the old Warsaw Pact allies. Even if Russia was to launch an all-out attack on the rest of Europe the forces available are far fewer, and the forces arrayed against them would include some former allies of the Soviet Union. Added to which, we've seen over the last 3 years that the Russian military is far less formidable than the count of numbers of soldiers, tanks, aircraft etc would suggest. The initial invasion of Ukraine was nothing less than a humiliating defeat for the supposedly vastly superior Russian forces against a small Ukrainian army. Do the Russian military really pose a threat to Europe who, even without the US, can field forces far in excess of what Ukraine had available in 2022? The whole scenario on which NATO was founded to defend against doesn't exist any more. More realistic threats of terrorism and cyber-attacks from either Russia, China or non-state actors don't require anything that looks like NATO, it needs intelligence cooperation not boots on the ground or aircraft in the air.
Well, for almost the last year, I've been hearing from Europeans that Trump doesn't care about the threat Putin poses to Europe, and is pursuing dangerous policies of appeasement towards Russia. And I'm guessing that the number of Americans who are absolutely outraged by Trump's policies, to the point where it would effect how they vote, doesn't break 50%.
So, assuming that there is more of a consensus in Europe about what is neccessary for the continent's defense, yeah, it might make sense to think that an entirely made-in-Europe military policy would be to the continent's advantage.
(Unless, of course, one assumes that trumpian isolationism is just a weird one-off in American history, and once his name and image have been scrubbed in rage from the national memory, it'll be back to the old Atlanticism as if nothing had ever happened. I get varying vibes from European commentators about how likely they think that is.)
Well quite, you have to pick one of NATO Is Our Shield *or* America Is Mobbed Up With The Kremlin, and then run with one of them. Because it really can’t be both at the same time.
But some people believe in getting their excuses in early.
I'm sure he's devastated.
Right. Though at this point, there's probably still a third camp capable of concluding: "Oh, come on. America's gonna come to its senses soon enough, we can wait out the current gong-show a little longer."
And I am sincerely agnostic about whether that is true. Part of me does remember the anti-American sloganeering of the Bush years' "Amerikkka is now a rogue terrorist state to be permanently banished from the international community!!", followed almost immediately by the 2009 Peace Prize bestowment.
This time around, Macron during Trump 45 ran the idea of a post-NATO European military alliance up the flagpole, with scant ensuing salutes. But Trump 47 is a lot more erratic and unpredictable in his thinking and actions, so that might crystallize the issues for some people.
They do if Putin gives the green light to use nukes against us.
I’m not comfortable with relying on the likes of Putin to act morally to prevent a significant chunk of my country (and even myself) suddenly going up in a mushroom cloud. If the only thing keeping that from being a realistic possibility is the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction then I for one am monumentally unbothered about whether that threat is morally questionable or not.
The real world has some very bad people in it, and they’re not going to just leave you alone if you’re really really nice all the time. Speak softly by all means, but you still need to carry a big stick. As Tolkien wrote, those who do not carry swords can still die on them.
And something perhaps more to do with my own personal interests than anything else, but...
Would say that a typical GPEW member today would be someone who shares the above analysis(ie. the USSR wasca threat justifying an alliance with the USA) as applied to the Cold War period?
Personal interest: I came to political maturity in the early 80s, and remember the European anti-NATO/anti-antinukes movement and its Yankee Go Home orientation, and also the impression that the original Greens were very much in that groove(**).
(*) Or possibly reading it fir the first time, since I think until now I was mistakingly remembering having read it, but it was actually the Polanski stuff on another thread.
(**) Though likely more genuinely non-aligned than some of the Moscow-linked front groups.
I came to political maturity a bit later than you, but as I was growing up and first became really aware of political action there were two big issues that I was particularly aware of - the anti-nuclear campaigns (particularly the Women's camps at Greenham Common) and anti-apartheid campaigns. At that time in the 80s the anti-nuclear campaign was particularly focussed on cruise missiles, with many who were not too concerned about nukes as deterrent very much against the deployment of first-strike weapons. The Green argument against NATO has always included opposition to first-strike (whether conventional or nuclear) and that NATO leadership has never ruled that out, that position seems to have solidified during the Greenham Common protests, and corresponding protests in other parts of Europe while Green Parties there were also be founded.
My experience in SGP, which I don't expect to be much different from GPEW, is that the anti-nuke and corresponding anti-NATO sentiments for the majority of members are probably more instinctive than well thought through (the same would be the case for many other policies). The more activist members and "policy wonks" who tend to put in the time to define policy positions, and then put forward arguments for proposed policy changes to the membership, are much more likely to consider why we hold particular policy positions - in this case the history of why NATO exists and whether the same situation still exists which raises questions of the ongoing nature and role of NATO.
'The Green Party recognises that NATO has an important role in ensuring the ability of its member states to respond to threats to their security.'
They would push for for the UK to sign the UN TPNW and then cancel Trident.
Thanks for that.
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
It may well have been in the papers a while ago, but this is what I posted earlier on this thread (in reply to you) - it's a what Polanski said to the BBC recently:
When asked whether the former Conservative voters now with the Green Party would support his ambition for the UK to leave NATO, Polanski stressed that the UK needs "a different approach to defence".
He said: "What I'm talking about there is recognising we can't be in hock to Donald Trump.
"What I want to do is have a conversation about what an alternative alliance looks like with our European neighbours."
This would not "necessarily" mean spending more on defence, Mr Polanski added.
The party's position is expressed quite clearly in what you quote from their website.
That's fascinating. I always liked the character of Zack in Goodnight Mister Tom - he's really charismatic. A good namesake.
Interesting, thanks.
The reason I was asking, is because Polanski's critique of NATO was earlier described, by @chrisstiles, as NATO being "not reliable". Which is actually the opposite of the old CND/Greenham Common criticism, in the same way that "Don't call the police because they never come on time" is the opposite of "Don't call the police because they're a buncha thugs who'll beat the crap out of everyone".
FWIW, the anti-nuke campaign in Alberta 1980s was also focused on cruise missiles, partly because they were being tested in northern Alberta. But anti-NATO positions were never popular with Canadian voters, even when framed within the threat of nuclear annihilation.