Does Greatness Await the Greens?

In the last decade there have been two Green surges. The first, in early 2015, saw party membership swell by tens of thousands in response to a grassroots social media campaign. With UKIP then hogging all the "minor party" interest as far as headline writers were concerned and Labour in Milquetoast mode, the huge bump in support was a diffuse and inchoate protest against poisonous politics. In 2019, after having been diminished by Corbynism the Greens surged again. In the EU elections the UK was forced to participate in, the Greens increased its MEP count to seven with 1.8m votes, beating the Tories into fourth place with 1.8m votes (12%) - the party's best result since it came third in the same elections in 1989. And now, arguably, the Greens are experiencing a third surge and one that might establish them as a force to be reckoned with.

Traditionally the Greens have been characterised as a petit bourgeois party by the left, even if their programme in the 2020s is more radical and pro-worker than what Keir Starmer will put in the next Labour manifesto. But while there are understandable reasons to reject Labour - and I don't blame anyone on the left who does - what appears to be fuelling Green growth in elections is collapsing support for the Conservatives. Over the last year, it's mostly Tory seats that have tumbled to the Greens. Only a smattering of Labour and Liberal Democrat seats were among the scalps the party wracked up in this year's local elections.

The argument long made on here is about a fundamental shift toward immaterial labour in working class and middle class occupations. That is the central concern for increasing numbers of working age people is the production of social production: the interrelated production of social relationships, education, information, subjectivities, and care in the context of an economy dominated by the buying and selling of services. This has had profound consequences on the practical consciousness of class tending toward socially liberal values. Sociality, the ability to be comfortable with diversity, of interacting, relating, and empathising with people as they are found is an everyday virtue - despite the best efforts of the government at trying to reverse this increasingly powerful consensus. This helps explain the stark age splits revealed in surveys of voting behaviour and values. The younger one is, the more likely their education and career has socialised them into the spontaneously tolerant outlook of immaterial labour. Of course, socialised workers are not an unvariegated mass. Profession and occupation, inherited class position and property ownership, the experiences of gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, disability, age, location, the privatisation of leisure combine and recombine in multiples of shifting identities. For all that, instead of being all over the place they - the totality of working age people - tend toward an anti-Tory politics. Even in the 2019 general election, the nadir of Corbyn's leadership, Labour were still the most popular party among working age people.

Therefore, as Keir Starmer moves Labour away from social liberalism and, crucially, the interests of the socialised worker the party will face significant difficulties. This, as argued here plenty times, is unlikely to manifest before the general election but once in office there's no reason why the Greens (and the Liberal Democrats) shouldn't benefit from an alienation of Labour's support from the party. There will be plenty of flashpoints, and the Tories have so thoroughly salted the ground that their being the beneficiary of anti-Labour opposition among this group of voters is not very likely. But this is the future. The Greens as a party with a radical programme with a strong pro-worker, pro-trade union spine are doing well now at the Tories' expense in formerly safe Conservative districts. How might this be explained, and does it mean the Greens can look forward to more gains from this quarter?

Looking at council by-elections so far this year, there has been profit from tactical voting. In parliamentary by-elections Labour and the Lib Dems have reaped the rewards, while at local level the Greens are surging as never before. But why are they benefiting now? A lot has to do with the fracturing of the Tory voter coalition. While pensioner power that put the Tories in office and sustained them there, over the last decade the party has been able to win over just enough working age people to win their majorities. These are, disproportionately, small business owners, older workers, homeowners/mortgage holders and layers of professional-managerial people. In previous decades, before the growing reliance on retirees, these were the bedrock of Tory support and while some are still in the Tory van, these last few years they have kissed goodbye to mortgage holders and their support has eroded significantly among the professional-managerial cadres. It's not difficult to work out why. Unlike their public sector counterparts who more or less stuck with Labour from the Blair-Brown years to the present, constant attacks on professional occupations and a traducing of expertise generally, married to Conservatives behaving badly has sullied the party's reputation. Among the managerial caste - mainly in business - the disastrous consequences of Brexit, the lack of regulatory certainty from government, the state's increasing decrepitude, and complete failure to do anything about the country's deep-seated problems is shying them away.

Tailor-made for Keir Starmer's Labour, you might think. And polls looking at the intentions of 2019 Tory voters find about 10% of those who won't be supporting Rishi Sunak this time are going for Labour. Lower numbers are transferring to the Lib Dems ad the Greens, with don't know/won't vote by far the largest group. But the local council elections and by-elections showing occasional eviscerations of the Tories at the Greens' hands, how might a party well to the left of Labour be intersecting with a not-very-left electorate? Tactical voting only goes far, especially where the Greens have not previously been a factor in the places they've won. The more cynical might alight on how local parties campaign. Particularly where NIMBYism takes hold, such as Green opposition to solar farms for example. But neither by themselves can explain the generalised advance we're seeing at local government level.

There seem to be a few other processes going on. The first is the Greens' big selling point: environmentalism. The big scare the Greens gave the main parties in the 1989 European Community elections ensured "the green house effect" and other environmental concerns were forever paid lip service to subsequently. But repeated Tory stupidities over fossil fuels and refusal to take the climate crisis seriously is seeing the party being abandoned in droves in the county shires where the conservationist tendencies of former Tory support is now transferring to the party most serious about the issue. Second, the Greens are 'nice'. By that, I mean they're at a remove from the knockabout of politics. The party hasn't been embroiled in corruption or pushed divisive politics, and are therefore "untainted". When Conservatism is synonymous with amoral politics and immoral behaviour, the Greens are a clean option. And lastly, they're not Labour. Party antipathy is as powerful a push factor as party identification is in pulling the votes in. For former Tory voters shopping around for an alternative, Reform are too crude and too much like what they're revolting against. The Lib Dems are the usual protest outlet, but are embroiled in the Westminster circus which is so off-putting these days. Which leaves the Greens as the default option, and one many are prepared to support because even if they're "lefty" they can't do much damage on the borough or district council. Their environmental credibility, their political cleanliness, and their coming from a low base endears them to a swathe of loyal Tory support fed up with the status quo but for whom Labour is a step too far.

Between now and the next election, there's no reason to believe this dynamic won't continue eating into the Tory local government base. But success here will bring the Greens some difficulties. Can their party sustain a coalition comprising former Tories from the shires and the younger, more proletarianised, urbanised, and radical socialised workers? With Labour in government, while the Tories in opposition would remain repugnant for most working age people might some of the former Tories attracted to the Greens now return to the fold in the unlikely event of the party's next leader not being a right winger determined to head the party into the wilderness? These are all problems for the future. In as much there are certainties in politics, here are a couple: the Greens will continue to build before the election. And after, though there will be tensions between the two sources of the party's support Starmer's authoritarian and managerial politics will open the gate to an historic opportunity.

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