Ian Davey - Voting Green, now and next time too
30 March 2010
Ian Davey, Green Party candidate for Hove, argues for a two-pronged attack on political apathy
A lot of people have been asking lately: who is there to vote for if the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour are all committed to spending cuts deeper than during Thatcher’s time. The answer, of course, depends on the individual. You can throw up your hands in despair this time, and also next time, and the time after that. Or you decide to put your vote behind building an alternative.
It takes a long time to build a political alternative. It took Labour half a century to get into government. It took the Green Party twenty years to get into the European and Scottish Parliaments and London Assembly, and it’s taken thirty years to get Greens to the brink of a Westminster breakthrough. It took hard work, for instance, for Norwich Greens to get into their current situation of having beaten all other parties in every city-wide election in the last three years. It took the Lewisham Greens a lot of effort to turn a safe Labour seat into a key election battleground. And it took a lot of hard work for the Greens in Brighton and Hove to be in the situation of leapfrogging Labour and the Conservatives in the recent Goldsmid by-election, outpolling every party in successive local and then European elections, and finally having pollsters YouGov and ICM predict a Green breakthrough to Westminster.
Greens in other parts of the country have been building up too. There are three times as many Green councillors as ten years ago. And if most of them won’t win MP seats this time, there’s next time and the time after. Fighting for real political change is a long slog. And voters who really want that change will persevere until they get what they want. If you’ve decided the big three parties can’t deliver, you can start voting Green now.
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