A week can be a long time in the debasement of politics. Just last Sunday, Prime Minister Papandreou appeared to salvage a smidgeon of honor for his government, when he announced that the Greek people would be given a referendum on the austerity-bailout package. For two years the Greek people have struggled with mounting pain yielding only negative gain – as repeated austerity programmes, and Greece’s continued membership of an over-valued Euro, conspired to stymie growth, and hence the country’s ability to pay back its debts. Now the people would get a chance to decide whether they wanted to continue down the same path.

Papandreou said some fine words about “patriotism” and “democracy”. Yet it soon became apparent that he saw the referendum not simply as a means of giving people the say, but also as a means of evading political responsibility. A few days later he announced that he would scrap the referendum plan, if the opposition agreed to support the bailout and carry it out with him. Both this proposal, and the proposal for a referendum, served a similar function – namely to ensure that he and his party would not be held responsible for the decisions they made.

Nonetheless, he had brought the demos a little too close for comfort. Papandreou was humiliated at the G20 by the presidents of Europe’s creditor nations. The European bureaucracy swung into action, and bankers – knowing that the bailout-austerity deal was vital to protect their assets – announced that the referendum proposal wouldn’t fly.

This evening Papandreou’s premiership is no more. He has been forced out and his premiership will be replaced by a “government of national unity” which carry through the bailout. Greece’s multi-party democracy has in effect been supplanted by one party – The Austerity Party. The political elites have, in effect, formed a cartel. Greece’s major parties imagine that they can force through the huge austerity package without facing the wrath of the electorate – just as long as they all in on the game. The direct democracy of a referendum was shelved, and now representative democracy – the system by which politicians take decisions and are held to account on election day – has been short circuited.

While Greece represents the most extreme end of the European situation, the pushing aside of democracy, at this moment of crisis, is undoubtedly a Europe-wide phenonemon. All 16 of the Eurozone countries are busily preparing to sign a Fiscal Stability pact. Under its terms, crucial, and deeply political decisions about taxation and spending will be taken out of the control of elected national parliaments and hived off to an unelected European bureaucracy. Apparently this is necessary for “stability”. It is no exaggeration to say that what we are witnessing is the biggest diminution of democratic power in Europe since the 1930s.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net

Well the results are in, and the motion calling for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU was defeated by 413 votes to 111 – courtesy of all the major political parties. The political classes have, in other words, lifted two fingers to those whom they are supposed to represent. It has been clear for years now that if Britain’s EU membership was put to a referendum, the no-camp would win hands down. Meanwhile 70% of people want a referendum. And yet this majority opinion finds no expression amongst any of the major parties.

The powers that, every 5 years we lend to parliament are not theirs to give away at will . And yet give them away they have. In 2008, none other than Nick Clegg remarked that nobody under 51 had been asked their opinion on Britain’s relationship with Europe. In the meantime we have reached a situation in which 15-50% of our laws (depending on who you believe) are handed down from the only faintly democratic institutions of Brussels.

It is often said by demos- fearing Europhiles, that referenda are “not a part”of the British constitution, and that our relationship with Europe therefore need not require one. According to one commentator, a referendumon the EU “could potentially undermine the very foundations of how our political system works”. Things are in fact not so black and white. Before the Liberals curtailed the power of the Lords in 1910 they were compelled to hold another election – the second in the year – precisely on that issue. THe principle here was that when it comes making “organic change”, that when it comes to actually changing the rules of the game a simple parliamentary majority does not suffice (in the same way tht it would be constitutionally legitimate for a government to assume power and then vote through 50 year electoral terms).

Since Britain was last asked to join the EU the rules of the game have changed and changed again – as Economic integration morphed into partial political union. When various European publics delivered their negative verdict on the European constitution, it was repackaged as the Lisbon Treaty. We now have an EU president upon who we were not merely denied a vote, but denied even the opportunity to express an opinion – since his candidacy was not even announced to the public. It is a tremendous understatement to say that it is high time that the British given a say in how, and from where , they are governed.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net

There are serious tensions building up within the Conservative Party ahead of tomorrow, as MPs prepare on whether Britain should have an in/out referendum on the EU. Cameron has whipped has MPs to vote against it, and the possibility of a minor rebellion has generated numerous column inches. However most commentators have failed to grasp what these intra-conservative tensions are fundamentally about.

According to some accounts this is an insurgency by the Conservative right. Certainly there is a hardcore of traditional Tories who feel deeply alienated from Cameron and Co’s metropolitan clique. Yet despite the huffing and puffing in the Telegraph, Cameron is not the Conservative Party’s Tony Blair. The “modernisation” of the Tory Party has been very much a cosmetic job, and Cameron and Osborne have made no serious attempt to pull the party’s politics towards the centre. Equally flawed is the tendency in the Liberal press to frame this as simply a repetition of previous conservative squabbling over Europe. Back in the early 1990s the were a number of serious, ideological Europeanisers at the top of the Conservative party – think Michael Heseltine, or indeed Geoffrey Howe, whose resignation over the government’s failure to follow a sufficiently integrationist path lead to the fall of Thatcher.

This is not, in any sense, true today. The Conservative ministers holding the line against their Eurosceptic bankbenchers are themselves a heavily Eurosceptic bunch – not least David Cameron. The tensions we are seeing arise not from a clash between different ideological wings of the conservative party, but from a dissonance between the ideology of the Conservative party, and the politics Conservative government.

Throughout most of the 20th century, the Conservative party has been the primary representative of the interests of British business, and, in turn, has generally won its backing. Yet, having a political life of its own, the Tory party has never been a perfect vehicle for the interests of the business class. This is partly because, while the interests of business are liable to change over time, politics is not simply a matter of turning one tap off and another tap on. There have been periods in which fiery patriotic rhetoric – of the kind we may see from the conservative backbenches on Monday – deeply suited the interests of capital. The word “jingoism” arose at the turn of the 20th century, as the conservative government was firing up up hundreds of housands of ordinary Brits to fight and die for the gold and diamond mines of South Africa. More recently, Margaret Thatcher leant heavily upon the rhetoric of “making Britain Great” in order that the destruction of many people’s living standards could be reframed as sacrifices made for the sake of national salvation. Meanwhile, across the 19th century and into the 20th, the Tories made a point of fetishising Britain’s ancient constitutional machinery in order to stem the tied of democracy – again something that will feature in tomorrow’s debate.

Given the party’s philosophical baggage, it is not surprising that its activists, its Parliamentary party, and its leadership display an instinctive antipathy towards the European project. But here’s the rub. The party relies on the backing of big business, and, like any government in capitalist economy, relies on the acquiesence of corporations in order to get things done. And a desire to get out of Europe is utterly incompatible with the party’s crucial relationship with corporate Britain.

Despite the delusions of some on the liberal left – who see the EU as nothing more than a cuddly internationalist project – it is in no way surprising that the FT has consistently taken a ridiculously integrationist stance on Europe. Britain’s major corporations have little to gain and a great deal to lose from British withdrawal from the EU. Not only does the current situation grant them a huge open market. It also enables matters like the EU-India FTA – wherein the working class stand to take a huge hit for the benefit of the investor class – to be hived off beyond the reach of democratic institutions. Moreover it grants British business unfettered access to enormous reserves of cheap non-British labour (an uncomfortable truth for us lefty internationalists, but a truth nonetheless). In other words, British business would not countenance a decision to put Britain’s relationship with Europe in the hands of the mainly Eurosceptic public.

Cameron gets this. As the leader of business backed party, and as a Prime Minister who relies upon the co-operation of business, he knows that a referendum on the EU is not an option. Yet, it appears that these realities are less prominent in the minds of those lower down the conservative food chain. Thse people are less invested in conservative government, and for them the trade-off between politics and strategy is rather different. And so tomorrow we will se the manifestation of tensions inherent in the Tory party’s relationship with business. Yet the possibility of the British people actually being given a say over how they are governed remain as slim as ever.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net

You can always tell when leadership positions at the European Union are about to change hands. The first clue, is that no form of voting occurs. The second clue is that we the public are made privvy to a few muffled and anonymous whispers, and a blurry picture emerges of an elite game of chess taking place. This, after all, was how we came to acquire our beloved president, Mr Van Rompuy, and our  vice president, Baroness Ashton.

The baroness’ political career it seems is not long for this world. For months now, the muffled whispers have been getting louder, amidst growing suspicion that the serial democracy evader is in fact rather crap at her job. So far, so Brussels. But then progress struck. The Belgian foreign minister – a member of an elected government – actually went on record and told us that she was crap at her job.  And then the dam broke, and a whole swathe of foreign ministers came out and publicly told us that she was crap at her job. Not for a long time have we, the European public, felt so fussed over. Ok, so nobody was actually asking us what we thought, but at least some relatively important and accountable figures had taken a public position on the vice presidency.

Not much, but certainly a far cry from the process by which Ashton and Rompuy were apponted. Not only were there not elections – either involving the general public or our elected MEP’s. Nobody even  told us who was standing – the candidacies for job remained a closely guarded secret. And so we the public were denied the right to even debate or discuss who ought to get the job. The reason given was that a prime minister who stood and lost would go back to his country looking like he wasn’t that keen to be PM after all – as though the avoidance of professional embarrassment mattered more than the public’s right to know about so important a matter. Such is the contempt amongst the European political class for the demos.

The power that Ashton and her foreign exec exercises on the world stage derives from us as citizens, and as producers and consumers. On a very basic level, she enjoys leverage not because she is a great diplomat but because Europe is one huge common market. Yet for now we will have to be content with being nothing more than observers, degradingly poking our noses into the little chess came that surrounds the future of Ashton and European foreign policy.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net

Assange has now lost his extradition case and looks set to be heading to Sweden. Thankfully most people have now gotten over the idea that the acts alleged to have taken place do not really constitute sexual assault – if true,  then they  certainly do.  Yet today’s judgement, over whether Assange should be extradited, nonetheless reveals some worrying realities about how easily suspects can be sent off to other EU countries – even when their judicial procedures give legitimate cause for concern.

Assange is being extradited under the European Arrest Warrant (EAW). This system was introduced in 2004 to fast track extradition between member states. It is predicated on the assumption that all EU states provide access to fair justice, and as such the grounds for refusing an extradition are extremely limited. Last year Britain sent Gary Mann back to portugal to serve a two year sentence for affray. He had been tried and convicted within 48 hours of his intitial arrest. He and 11 other men had been represented by just two lawyers – of whom he had met one for just 5 minutes before standing trial. What’s more he had not understood most of the shot gun trial due to a lack of proper translation. The  extradition Judge, Justice Moses, had acknowledged that the verdict against him was highly questionable, but under the terms of the EAW he was powerless to act.

Today’s judgement – published in full here - is not quite as dramatic, but nonetheless should give us serious cause for concern about the EU’s extradition process. It acknowledges that the court case will almost certainly take place behind closed doors, as the evidence in almost all  swedish Rape cases is heard privately. Equally the judgement asserts that “in sweden a person detained for rape is normally detained and held incommunicado” but asserts that this is a “decision for the court”. For both of the reasons, any form of  outside scrutiny will be very limited.

The fact that Sweden is a rather cuddly welfare state, with a long democratic tradition, may make us a little less panicked about the unusual way in which it investigates rape suspects. But that, surely is not the point. Judicial checks – like the right to be tried in public so that the case against you is subject to public scrutiny, or to communicate with outside world when held captive – do not exist because governments are sometimes benevolent, but because often they are not.  And what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: the lax process by which Assange is being sent Sweden can, and has, been used to send suspects to other EU countries with considerably shorter democratic traditions.  Not long ago  Michael Turner and Jason McGoldrick where, according to their Hungarian lawyer they could have been held for nearly a year without even being charged (in fact they spent spent 4 months in jail, no charges brought).

This isn’t about some chauvanistic assertion that British justice is the best in the world. If government’s elsewhere felt queesy about sending their citizens to Britain after its 90-day dentention law came into effect, they would have my support. But the point is that within Britain, we the public have ultimate control over the procedures used to try us. Politicians who subject us to arbitrary dentention can, in the final analysis, be kicked out. The European Arrest Warrant makes us automatically subject to a myriad of potentially flawed legal systems over which we have no control. Our police and courts are compelled to enforce the decisions of foreign courts and prosecutors, regardless of whether they cohere with our own principles of justice – with principles, that is to say, that democratically accountable politicians have decided upon.

Not so long ago, Johan Hari argued - in terms typical of most patronising Europhilic rhetoric - that the European Arrest Warrant is a “superb success”, and opposition to it was indicative of “dogmatic Europhobia”. Well, as today’s judgement, the case against Gary Mann, and all to many other absuses of the Europenan Arrest Warrant, indicate, there are many reasons why democrats of all stripes – “Europhobic” or not – ought to question these extradition arrangements.

To contact Reuben email reuben@thethirdestate.net

EU gotta be kidding!

Yesterday’s vote in the European Parliament’s to extend maternity leave to 20 weeks on full pay across the EU should be welcomed by anyone who believes the work-life balance in the UK needs to be seriously revised. If approved, which is far from certain given Conservative opposition in Britain, it will also encourage more women who want to start families to feel secure in starting a career. Contrary the dribbling Daily Mail headlines, and the jerking knees of my Europhobic Third Estate colleague, the EU can actually do some good things. But unless paternity leave is equalised with maternity leave, the reform may do almost as much harm as it does good in the long run.

Despite strict equality laws, a report earlier this month from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission found that women in the UK earn on average 16% less than men. That this gap widens to 27% for women over 40, who are more likely to have started a family, is significant. Maternity leave – a fundamental necessity of modern society freeing women from having to choose between family and career – has had the unintended consequence of reinforcing the glass ceiling effect they experience in the workplace. All other things being equal, employers find themselves predisposed to promoting men to senior positions because they are unwilling to promote women who may take much lengthier and more costly maternity leave if they choose to start a family. This is one of the reasons women make up only 5% of the executive director positions of the top 600 British companies.

At present, women are entitled to 39 weeks maternity leave, with 6 weeks at 90% of their pay and the rest at a flat rate of £123.06. Men, on the other hand, are allowed only two weeks paternity leave at £123.06. The EU’s proposal will make those two weeks fully paid, but it will dramatically increase the gap between the two benefits by giving women ten times the amount of time off on full pay.

There are obvious reasons why maternity leave should be more generous than paternity leave. For one thing, men don’t have to go through the pain of childbirth. Nor can they produce milk. However, in a society where employers exploit pregnancy and maternity leave as a reason to underpay and underpromote women, increasing the gender gap in parental leave may throw up new obstacles to narrowing the gender gap in the workplace. Moreover, it reinforces the notion that the woman’s role is that of carer and the father’s that of the breadwinner. The only way to tackle both problems is to equalise paternity leave with maternity leave.

Ironic that that best way to promote female equality is to give men more rights.

It is rare to hear  government ministers predicting revolt. Yet in recent days, the Minister for Labour in Greece’s social-democratic government has done just that. Mr Lomberdos has warned that the package of austerity measures that his government are poised to implement  will lead to “blood”. Already Greece has seen strikes and occupations.

Like Britain, Greece is faced, on the one hand, with deteriorating public finances, and on the other hand with a situation which seems to necessitate serious deficit spending. In situations such as the one we face now, the ability of governments to to run budget deficits – to tax less and to spend more – represents perhaps the most substantial tool by which the economic pain felt by ordinary people can be mitigated. For all of their faults, the Labour government have, through spending far more and reducing certain taxes, been able to prop up demand, and ensure that unemployment – while huge and immensely damaging – has risen relatively slowly compared with previous recessions.

Greece too is running a huge fiscal deficit. Yet the situation it faces is rather more severe. This is in part because it is seen as a less reliable borrower, making it costlier and more difficult for the government to keep up its borrowing. Yet it is also because the Greece is part of the single currency. Whereas the UK Government plans to reduce the deficit relatively slowly – so that in 5 years time it will still exceed 5% of National Output – Greece plans to rapidly reduce its deficit to from 12.4% to under 3% of GDP. Why? Because the rules mandate that it must. Membership of the Eurozone officially obliges governments to keep budget deficits beneath 3% of GDP.

Such a course of action will be disastrous for the economy and for social welfare. When one considers the level of cuts, privatisations, and public sector job losses necessary to conjure up one tenth of GDP from the public purse, it is possible to imagine why even government ministers are fearing blood on the streets. To offer just one illustration, the governments plans to hire just one civil servant for every 5 that retire.

Yet this situation also illustrates the impact of the EU and the Euro upon democracy. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs will depend upon how quickly and how much the Greek government cuts public spending. It would seem obvious to anybody with the most basic democratic instinct that such decisions should be taken by elected politicians, by people accountable to those who stand to suffer. Yet in the Eurozone these decisions are mandated by a set of semi-permanent rules, and enforced by unelected EU commissioners. The conversations that Greek politicians should be having with Greek people about how to move forward, they are instead having with bureaucrats in Brussels. That membership of the Euro is supported people who claim to be democrats, and indeed people of the left – for whom economic democracy represents the most important form of public power – continues to amaze me.

Egemen Bagis

Guest post by Christos Loutradis

Yesterday, Egemen Bagis, Turkey’s chief EU negotiator, gave a speech in Greece on strengthening ties between the former rivals, Turkey’s EU candidacy and how to resolve the thorny issue of Cyprus. Press-Gr’s Christos Loutradis reports for The Third Estate

It was a speech of lifting taboos. Egemen Bagis, chief EU negotiator and Turkish Minister of State, spoke for the first time to a Greek audience in a lecture that was organised by the International Centre for Black Sea Studies. The audience comprised the political, academic and diplomatic elite of Greece and the rest of the world. From the Government side, the Member of Parliament Michalis Katrinis, from the previous Government of New Democracy, the ex deputy minister of Foreign Affairs Giannis Valinakis, and Giorgos Dendias, a personal friend of Egemen Bagis and the former minister of Justice. The most surprising presence, however, was that of Giannis Karantis, ex chief of the Greek Intelligence Service and MP for the ultra-nationalist party LAOS.

Bagis began his speech with a moving opening, stating that he feels proud “to be in the birthplace of Democracy”. In addition, he argued that “today’s event, your presence shows the great potential for the betterment of the relations between the two nations.”

“Turkey and Greece share a common fate and a common future,” the chief negotiator of Turkey added.

The Greek audience responded with satisfaction when Bagis proclaimed that “a new era has started in the relations of the two countries, with the Government of Papandreou willing to build a peaceful future with Turkey.”

The Minister added that during this period, Erdogan’s Government has demolished the taboos of the Turkish Society, by addressing the Kurdish problem and dealing with all the open disputes with Armenia. “It is time to talk to Greece, too.”

The most interesting part of Bagis’s speech, however, was the revelation that Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan agreed to the formulation of a co-operation council between the two nations that will discuss at the highest level all the disputes that may arise in the future. In addition, Bagis said that Erdogan plans to visit Athens in the near future.

EU-Turkish Relations

The chief negotiator suggested that accepting Turkey into the European Union would be a win-win situation. The EU will benefit from the role of Turkey as “a bridge between different civilizations, religions and cultures”. In addition he added that Turkey’s bid to join the EU serves as “a source of inspiration for the deprived of the world such as the Muslim community.”

Giannis Ioakeimidis, professor of International Relations at the University of Athens, asked Bagis if Turkey will accept a special status relationship with European Union. Bagis replied that “Turkey is a candidate for full membership of the EU and any alternative is not accepted.”

Moreover, Egemen Bagis argued that “the European Union should prove it wants to be an alliance of civilisations… We will part of the solution and not part of the problem of the EU.”

Cyprus

With regards to Cyprus, the Minister expressed the official view that Turkey will support any solution that is agreed by the leaders of the island’s two sides. Furthermore, he praised the efforts of the two Presidents, Talat and Christofias, and stressed that Greece and Turkey should support the two presidents sooner rather than later. “Their term is limited and we do not know who will govern next. We must help these guys.”

Another interesting point arose from a question raised by a citizen with regard to the presence of the Turkish Army in Cyprus. Bagis said that the Turkish Army protects the safety of the Turk-Cypriots and it will not withdraw unless all the other armies withdrew too.

Quite clearly, there’s still a long way to go.

From a journalistic and more personal perspective, Egemen Bagis’s most interesting moment was when he praised the Greek citizens who contribute to the Turkish newspapers and the Turkish Citizens who contribute to the Greek newspapers.

In conclusion, Bagis left Greece with a strong impression of a political personality committed to peace.

For those, like me, who have lived all their lives in a democracy, the impending coronation of Europe’s president is a rather strange affair. We can leave aside the fact that the people of most of Europe were given no say on the creation of the post. We could even leave aside that – for whatever resons, good or bad – there will be no mass voting for the new post. Yet what is particlarly jarring is that this important decision seems to be almost completely outside of the public sphere.

You might think that – at the very least – those who are aiming at the presidency would, within a democratic culture, seek to appeal over the heads of national prime ministers, to build a bit of public support and maybe even leaverage a bit of popular pressure. Yet the front runners have barely even done as much as put themselves forward and tell us – the public – that they want the post and that they think they’d be good at it. Instead we – the British and European public – have been reduced to keeping our ears to the ground, to watching out for rumours in the newspapers about who is doing deals with whom, as though the race for the presidency were a game of chess.

Indeed the EU in general is structured around a contempt for democracy. Earlier in the year we were treated to the spectacle of EU commissioners – accountable to nobody – telling Britain’s elected government that it must exacerbate problems of mass unemployment by reining in its fiscal deficit.

And if there is one word I am sick of reading right now it is ‘Europhobe’. Over at Liberal Conspiracy – and indeed throughout much of the liberal left – it seems to be deployed as a catch all term to describe any skepticism about or opposition to the EU. Its a language that implies that skepticism about the EU is primarily the domain of irrational Little Englanders, driven by xenophobia towards continental Europeans and petty nationalism.

And this in turn offers a clue as to why sections of the soft left are so bizarrely supportive of the EU. For some time now I have felt parts of the left are more interested in fighting ‘culture wars’ than politics wars, more interested in sniggering at relatively disenfranchised people who read the Daily Mail, or fly the British flag than addressing the big questions about the distribution of economic and political power. Thus when it comes to the EU it seems that some people think it more important to define themselves in opposition to nationalism and patriotism, than to take a stance in defence of basic democratic values.

There are certainly advantages to a federal Europe. But if it is going to be a modern day version of the Holy Roman empire – where princes ‘elect’ emperors – or an enlightened bureacracy in which huge power is excersised by unaccountable comissioners – then, as a democrat I say that we are better of out of it.

It’s that time of year again. The silly season has ended, Parliament is getting ready to return from recess and, with swine flu beginning to look like a fuss about not very much and the worst of the recession said to be over, the British media is beginning to turn its attention to the party conferences. The buzzword this year is cuts. Labour, Tory and Lib Dem alike are at pains to explain how best to slash the country’s budget deficit, walking a tightrope of public expectations over a media circus. Against the fanfare and furore of the big three scrambling to shore up their support, however, there’s one party that often goes overlooked. On the back of their best results in twenty years, the Greens are on the rise and optimistic about their chances. Coming out of their last conference before next year’s general election, I caught up with their leader, Caroline Lucas MEP, and grilled her on the big issues, from the party’s future to their more controversial policies and just why she disagrees with James Lovelock.

“There was a very positive mood at conference, and there’s a great sense of determination within the party,” she says. “We’ve demonstrated pretty conclusively that in some places we can take on the big three.” Re-elected for a third term in the European Parliament in June, Caroline Lucas is widely tipped to be the Green Party’s best chance of winning a seat at the next general election and she now believes they are on the brink of a Westminster breakthrough.

But if the party has learnt anything in its long, hard slog to the spotlight, it’s that optimism is a double-edged sword. Similar predictions were made about a Green breakthrough in Brighton Pavilion in 2005, but despite a strong result, it never materialised. “We’ve made five years’ more progress on the ground since then,” Lucas tells me. “We came first in this year’s Euro-elections, not just in Pavilion, but across all three Brighton and Hove constituencies.” In Brighton Pavilion, the party now has the majority of the councillors and they won a majority of the votes in the most recent local elections. In the Goldsmid by-election in July, Alex Phillips’s convincing win stripped the Conservatives of overall control and tied the Greens with Labour as the second largest party on the council. “Basically, the Brighton Pavilion Green team is stronger than before, much more experienced, and very well organised.”

If Lucas’s predictions are anything to go by, she may not be sitting alone in the House of Commons next year. “It’s certainly possible that the next parliament could include two or even three Green MPs,” she says. “The party’s deputy leader, Adrian Ramsay, is leader of the opposition on Norwich City Council. The Greens hold a total of twenty city and county council seats there, where we held five last time around.” Norwich and Brighton are not the only areas the Greens are targeting however. “In Lewisham Deptford, our candidate, Darren Johnson, is currently the chair of the London Assembly, and he’s widely respected in London, not least in Lewisham, where he’s a borough councillor.” Five years ago, Lewisham Greens had only one councillor. Now they have six. “We have candidates who are leading Green politicians in their communities, with the experience and the vision to make effective MPs,” Lucas says.

Amidst mounting concerns over the economy and the environment, the party has seen a surge of support in recent years. But even with their share of the vote going up by 44%, more than any other party, the Greens failed to achieve their two basic goals at the European elections: to increase their number of MEPs and to stop the BNP. “Those goals were two sides of the same coin – in most cases, for the Greens to win the last seat in a region would serve the purpose of denying it to the BNP,” Lucas points out. “Of course it was extremely frustrating to get within about 1% of trebling our number of seats.” In the North West, where Nick Griffin scraped in by the skin of his teeth, the Green Party’s committed anti-racist campaigner, Peter Cranie, fell short by just 0.3% of the vote. “It’s hard to say what we could have done very differently, other than that more resources would almost certainly have enabled us to win seats in the East, North West, South West and Yorkshire and the Humber. But we gained 1,000 members during the six weeks of our campaign, which provides us with a great foundation for the next elections.”

It has often been said that the only thing holding the party back from mainstream success is the first-past-the-post electoral system. In an interview with The Third Estate just before the Greens gained over 1.3 million votes in the European elections, Peter Tatchell argued that under proportional representation, they could expect to gain as many as 40 MPs. I ask Lucas, whose support for electoral reform has always been as strong as her opposition to fascism, how she would answer those critics who argue that PR would bring about just as many BNP MPs. “If the BNP started winning seats under first-past-the post, would we suspend democracy to stop them getting elected?” she replies. “Of course not. I deplore their racism, ignorance and lies. However, I believe the best way to challenge them is to address the factors which drive individuals to vote for far right parties. If we treat the disease, the symptoms will go away.” Lucas argues that to exclude the BNP from the democratic process would be to set them up as martyrs who can claim the system refuses to deal honestly with the issues that concern their voters. “Some people vote BNP out of racism and intolerance. But probably far more vote for them out of a sense of serious disenchantment with the big three parties. There appears to be so little real difference now between Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, because they all talk the same and share the same core agenda. A lot of people feel let down by politics, feel their voice isn’t being heard, and some of those people will vote for an extremist party in protest. Inclusive, proportional elections would be one of the ways to help engage people in the political process.”

There was a time when the Greens themselves might have been considered an extremist party. An historic perception of them, the faintest traces of which persist to this day, is of  a single-issue party for beardy organic farmers and firebrand eco-warriors. “The Green Party has never been a single issue party!” argues Lucas. “We’ve always been a party of social justice, and believe that equity has to be at the heart of a sustainable society. We’ve also always made the case that the best way to protect the environment is to transform the goals and direction of the economy to make it genuinely sustainable.” Often, when the media has discussed party policy, it has tended to be linked to environmental stories. Lucas believes this is changing. “We finally seem to be succeeding in getting the media to pay more attention to our economic policies – for instance, with this year’s million-jobs manifesto, geared towards tackling the recession and the climate crisis at the same time. And I hope that in the run-up to the general election, the media will play its part in communicating the alternative political choices on offer, rather than just following the main three party leaders around. Then the differences between the Greens and the big three would become blindingly obvious.” Here that buzzword comes up again. Cuts. “While they talk about cutting services and tightening belts, we’ll be arguing for low-carbon investments that will create jobs, keep tax revenue coming in, and fund frontline services.”

One thing Lucas believes is helping them to better communicate their message is their decision to do away with the old system of a male and female principal speaker. Last year she was overwhelmingly voted the party’s first ever leader. “Most people like to be able to put a face to a political party,” she says. “So I believe that having a single leader with a clear, recognisable presence in the media allows us to communicate more effectively.”

After decades of fighting, the Green Party finally seems to be entering the mainstream. And after decades of dragging their heels, a consensus has emerged amongst world leaders that urgent action is required to tackle climate change. Does it encourage Lucas that the major parties are adopting increasingly environmentalist policies? “I’m not sure which has been more frustrating: the slow progress in this area, or the extent of the greenwash,” she says. “Yes, there’s now a consensus that we need to tackle climate change, and yes, the big three parties do go out of their way to appear green. But so much of this is rhetoric, and even now there is so much more that they should be doing.” Lucas points out that in 1997, Labour claimed to be the first green government, despite their weak climate targets and inadequate policies for meeting them. “Although some progress has been made, even now they still have the wrong targets and inadequate policies for meeting them, and they’re still building roads and expanding airports.”

The Greens have commendably been ahead of the times when it comes to scientific thinking on climate change. They were banging that bongo long before the band joined in. Some of the main criticisms of the party, however, have been for its broader scientific policy, most notably from Frank Swain and Martin Robbins who kicked up a pre-election storm by taking the Greens to task on GM food, embryonic stem cell research and alternative medicine. “Just because the Greens are sceptical about some scientific developments doesn’t make us ‘anti-science,’” Lucas says. “I have yet to see any convincing evidence that GM crops are anything other than unnecessary and damaging – or that many of the forces behind them have anything other than morally dubious motivations.” But what about the argument that, in the right hands, GM can be used to tackle hunger for the poorest people in the world? “When will GM crops be ‘in the right hands’ if they’re developed to increase dependency on the multinationals who own the seed patents? The issue here is about control of the food chain. There’s tremendous potential for greater organic food production, and there’s plenty of evidence that ecologically designed agriculture systems, using permaculture principles for example, can significantly increase the productive capacity of the land.”

Evidence, however, is key to the criticism of Green policy. In a follow-up article, Martin Robbins argues that in seeking to ban GM and embryonic stem cell research, the evidence necessary to ascertain safety can never be produced under a Green Party model. Robbins, who points out that the party believes experiments on human embryos could have harmful unforeseen outcomes, asks how you can ban something on the basis of unknown consequences, particularly when research into embryonic stem cells is vital for treating numerous conditions. I put the issue to Caroline Lucas, who has twice been named Observer Ethical Politician of the Year. “There are no easy answers,” she says. “Personally, I remain concerned about the associated health risks, the commodification of eggs and embryos, and the potential exploitation of women. Increasing research suggests that there are a number of promising alternatives, for example adult stem cell research, and umbilical cord stem cell research. These tell a growing number of success stories, without the problematic issues associated with embryonic stem cell research.”

The third criticism of the party’s scientific policy is its opposition to attempts to regulate alternative medicines. I ask Lucas if a more rigorous approach is needed to unproven remedies. “A balance must always be reached between the right of the individual to free choice, and the duty of society to protect us from the consequences of unwise choices,” she says. “I support the idea of a regulatory agency with responsibility for natural medicines, including nutritional supplements, medicinal plants and herbal remedies, essential oils and homeopathic remedies. I also believe that where people have found such remedies to work well for them, they should be given the freedom to continue taking them.”

If there’s one issue on which the Green Party has never been anything but utterly transparent, however, it’s the pressing need to save the planet from the worst human excesses. “The Green Party’s position is that we must adopt whatever targets are necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate change; to argue for these policies internationally and to lead by example. We believe that the current science demands a 90% UK reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030, with significant year-on-year cuts starting straight away.” Lucas is a strong enthusiast for the 10:10 campaign, launched earlier this month. “We believe there are huge spin-off benefits from emissions-reduction policies, ranging from much better public transport to warmer homes and a more stable economy, along with the creation of hundreds of thousands of new jobs. So a post carbon economy isn’t just possible, it’s highly desirable.”

One area of contention within the party, however, is on the question of nuclear power. James Lovelock, author of the Gaia hypothesis, who points out that global warming is much further advanced than IPCC models and Stern have suggested, has come out in favour of nuclear power as the only green solution in the time we have left. “I find it sad and ironic that the UK, which leads the world in the quality of its Earth and climate scientists, rejects their warnings and advice, and prefers to listen to the Greens,” Lovelock argues. “But I am a Green and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy.” Wrongheaded or not, Caroline Lucas is not about to drop her objection to nuclear energy anytime soon. “Nuclear power simply won’t deliver big enough emission cuts, fast enough,” she says. “Even if we doubled the amount of nuclear in this country, we would only save about 8% in emissions reductions, and not until 2030 at the earliest. Nuclear is also hugely costly, and carries major safety and security risks. The bottom line is that there are much cheaper, quicker, safer and more effective ways of making bigger reductions – energy efficiency, renewables, decentralised energy, combined heat and power, better public transport – the list goes on.”

Lucas agrees with Lovelock on one thing, however. “Climate change needs to be seen not just as an environmental issue, but as the greatest security threat that we face. We need to put the economy on something like a war footing, and introduce far more urgent action.”

Is it too late to save the world?

“No, I don’t believe that it’s too late, but we definitely need to be taking far more radical action than we currently are if we are to stave off the worst effects of climate change.”

If there’s one person who can convince us to take that action, it’s Caroline Lucas. Parliament magazine MEP of the Year in 2008, recipient of the RSPCA’s Michael Kay Award for outstanding contribution to European animal welfare, one of BBC Wildlife’s top conservationists, Vice President of the European Parliament’s Permanent Delegation to Palestine, and perhaps soon to be MP for Brighton Pavilion, Lucas is certainly hard at work. But if she succeeds, one thing’s for sure. The future’s bright. The future’s Green.

www.greenparty.org.uk