As Lib Dems at their conference in Liverpool today turned their attention to modernisation, privatisation and relations with the unions, the Green Party accused the Lib Dem leadership of “joining the Conservatives in a Thatcherite effort to turn back the clock."
The Greens believe the nature and scale of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition’s public spending cuts could force many Lib Dem members, activists and voters to switch allegiance to the Green Party.
Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, was reported this morning (1) to be about to issue a warning to Britain’s unions not to resist the coalition’s cuts agenda. Mr Alexander was expected to tell delegates at the conference that the next few years will be "very tough for some" – and to warn the unions not to "misrepresent" the government.
He was expected to say: "I know there are a minority in the trade unions who will deliberately misrepresent what this government stands for because they are spoiling for a fight. Please don’t allow their political motivations to push you into doing the wrong thing for the country. We do not want to take you on. We want to take you with us."
But a spokesperson for the Green Party said: “The unions are not misrepresenting the government. The unions can see the havoc the coalition is proposing to cause and naturally they’re resisting it.
“It’s not that the unions are spoiling for a fight, it’s that the coalition is starting to inflict savage cuts on this country, and the unions are quite rightly trying to defend the people who stand to suffer."
Royal Mail privatisation – the last straw for disillusioned rank-and-file Lib Dems?
Part of the conference fringe programme for today will be a meeting on “Royal Mail and the new politics: the modernisation agenda,” in which postal affairs minister Ed Davey will debate with Bill Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers' Union.
The Green Party today published a video of Bill Hayes addressing last week’s Green Party conference in Birmingham (2). Mr Hayes then accused Vince Cable of wanting “to destroy the postal service.”
Bill Hayes added that in some people’s view – implicitly that of the coalition government – “‘modernisation’ is a code for increased workload, increased cuts in jobs” – but that when the CWU says modernisation it means “better postal services, improved services, expanding the postal services and so on. That’s what we mean by modernisation.”
Mr Hayes added that in a recent poll, 63% of Lib Dem voters opposed any complete or partial sale of the Royal Mail. The Greens pointed out today that keeping the Royal Mail as a “publicly owned public service accountable to the public” is Green Party policy – and said that “this is one more policy area where a lot of ordinary Lib Dems will find they have more in common with the Green Party than with the Liberal Democrat party.”
A source close to the Green Party leadership commented:
“There has been an observable trickle of support from the Lib Dems to the Greens since the coalition was formed. There have been some significant defections, and a lot of local Green Parties report that disillusioned Lib Dem activists are starting to help the Greens campaign.
"The Green Party has actually increased its membership by 50% in the last 18 months, and we believe that a significant proportion of these new members have probably voted Lib Dem in the past.
“If Nick Clegg continues on this path, a lot of local Liberal Democrat parties are going to have increasing difficulty persuading their members to turn out and knock on doors, never mind persuade voters who feel betrayed to carry on voting Lib Dem.”
Notes
1. “Today at the Lib Dem conference,” Dods bulletin.
2. Hosted jointly by the Communication Workers' Union and Dods.