When you need to employ soldiers to do your price-checking, I think that may be a clue that something’s not quite right. Would make a bad-ass advertising campaign though “We guarantee the lowest prices! If you can find lower prices anywhere else, – we’ll shoot those fuckers in the face!”

“Surely the ideas we espouse are what is crucial for building a revolutionary, and yes, often utopian, vision?”

The ideas and policies which the Green Party stands for would lead to mass unemployment, economic collapse and declining public services. The intentions are noble, but the consequences would be much worse than New Labour at its worst or even than the Tories.

“I can’t apologise for being a middle class socialist”

No need to apologise – me too! The point is not about individuals, it is about institutions. The Green Party is a party where the overwhelming majority of members, activists and voters are part of the progressive middle class. The Labour Party, for all its faults, draws from a much wider range of people amongst both members and supporters.

I’ve worked closely with Green Party activists and councillors in the past and admire and respect many of them, but while they might have an “explicitly socialist vision”, they have no presence or organisation amongst working class people.

Whilst this is true of the vast majority of political parties without representation in Parliament, that view seems to be excusing doing the wrong thing because it’s easier than doing the right one. Of course Labour only gained unprecedented popularity when it swung sharply to the centre ground and away from its ‘loony left’ 80’s phase and started talking about ‘pragmatism’, ’social exclusion’ and ‘evidence-based policy’. But are these really the arguments we should be making? Surely the ideas we espouse are what is crucial for building a revolutionary, and yes, often utopian, vision?

- “If you look at their activist base and where they get votes, the Green Party are mainly a pressure group for the progressive middle class.”

I can’t apologise for being a middle class socialist any more than I can apologise for being a male feminist, a heterosexual gay rights supporter, an atheist opposed to Islamophobia or an Asian coconut. Where we’re from is less important than where we’re going.

First of all, good article and an interesting debate

I appreciate there are many good things in the Green Party’s manifesto, but anyone can write a manifesto and make it sound good when you know there is absolutely no chance of it being implemented.

For example, no one in the Green Party seems to know how much their welfare policies would cost, or how to pay for all the spending promises like nearly doubling the old age pension, or what the consequences would be for, say, the future funding of the NHS or unemployment of running an economic policy aiming for 0% economic growth.

If you look at their activist base and where they get votes, the Green Party are mainly a pressure group for the progressive middle class. Nothing wrong with that, but it does tend to shape their policies and priorities.

With respect, John, I don’t think you’ve properly engaged with either Dave’s or my (Paul’s) view in the TCF article comments about the Labour Party,and I’m grateful to Salman for setting out that even if we have a healthy disagreement about the potential of the Labour party as a working class going forward.

Salman, I appreciate where you’re coming from, but your focus is still on the PLP leadership, not on the potential of the rank and file. You’ve not really engaged with that side of the argument.

Likewise you praise your own current party, the Greens, for its leftist leadership. That’s fine, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that – and this is just a quick example – in areas of the country like mine the people who adhere to it are a bunch of vacuous twerps who wouldn’t get a socialist idea if it hit them on the head from a great height.

No, that’s not exactly empirical, I know, but it does cut both ways.