Greens leadership motion

Most of the world has gone on oblivious to the debate that has raged within the Green party about whether or not to vote for one leader rather than our current two Principal Speakers. Yesterday the leadership motion was passed by more than the 2/3rd majority required:
Votes against 27%
Votes for 73%
The turnout was 48.3%

The arguments are set out here:
Yes to Green leadership:
www.greenyes.org/
Yes to Green Empowerment:
www.greenempowerment.org.uk

Green Party Principal Speaker Caroline Lucas who supported the Yes to Leadership campaign, said: "This is a fantastic day for the Green Party and will help ensure we have a party that is understandable, recognisable and effective. But we now need to demonstrate to all our members, regardless of which way they voted, that this is not about weakening our principles, it's about strengthening our effectiveness."

Green Party Principal Speaker Derek Wall, who supported the Empowerment campaign, said: "We need a Green Party which is effective and empowering, doing things differently from the top down traditional politics that turns voters off. The result of this referendum challenges the Party to create a leadership structure that is true to green ideals. It has put our future leaders on notice that the membership expects a more focussed, more effective party, with a leadership team that is truly accountable to the membership in a real and effective manner."

My own view is that the change will not make very much difference - I did not vote in favour of the change although I would like to see some improvements to the current structure - we are by no means perfect - what party is? However our status of two speakers marks us out as a different party - indeed I know of no other with such an effective internal grassroots democracy...it just wouldn't be possible for example for the party to manipulate voting like Labour did in the London Mayoral elections to bar Ken Livingston from standing as a Labour candidate the first time around.

Conventional leadership with a single leader almost always comes with commitments to water down the message, to remove real debate and participation - to advocate the participation of all in a party without hierarchical structures is a key base on which to develop the politics of the present and future. As Ron Bailey, Parliamentary and community campaigner said: "The 'leader' issue is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between people taking initiative and having 'a leader'. It is both inevitable and inherently healthy that people take initiative (and so give a lead) whenever they feel able: that is good Green politics and we should encourage and enable it as much as possible. But the concept of 'a leader' is the very opposite of this: it is about institutionalising the philosophy on which our current destructive and centralist society is based - leave it to 'the leader'. However 'answerable' we make that leader by appointing such a person we continue the mystique that it's OK to leave it to our (so-called) 'betters'. That is the very antithesis of Green politics and is the very concept that has got our world into the mess it is in. Having 'a leader' may (possibly!) at best get a few short term gains - but it won't lead to a Green society."

However the way the leadership role will be does have some safe guards built in, in a way that other parties do not - we will have to see how this works in practice - and I am more than happy to be proved wrong if we start getting loads more media coverage, more votes etc - as the Yes camp note time is running out - we need to get our message across more than ever - but we mustn't loose sight of the need to change politics....