I was surprised so much conference time was taken up with the leadership issue, I wasn't aware of such a feeling from members of the need for a leader. I was much more concerned with local elections in a few weeks, and wished we had spent more time discussing how to demonstrate our differences from other parties. The Tories, Lib Dems and New Labour pretend to be Green but have a ‘business as usual’ agenda, building roads and airport capacity in the name of growth. We need to be better at convincing people that emissions will continue to go up under all of them.

I loved your speech, a real highlight of the conference. The idea of standing a full slate at the next general election was worthy, but I’m not sure if we can. It costs money for deposits that local parties don’t have, and some areas don’t have strong local parties.

It seemed to me that the whole argument was based on a mistaken premise. Regardless of what our spokespeople are called, one doesn't build a mass movement with a self confident and politically aware rank and file membership - which is what we need - by simply running a slick and professional media operation. The real question is how we can empower more of our members to be leaders within their communities and how to build a strong collective leadership at all levels of our party.

I wrote a paper as a contribution to the 'leadership' debate prior to the conference. It's much too long to attach here, but here is the first bit.

In the introductory section of their conference resolution, those who are arguing for the replacement of the role of ‘National Speaker’ with that of ‘Leader’ make a valid point. ‘Principal Speaker’ is an opaque and quaint title, redolent of Kibbo Kift moots and suchlike mumbo jumbo, that has to be explained to any journalist – or for that matter any ordinary person – who wants to know more about us. So when the resolution notes that there is some “public confusion over the notion of Principal Speakers” and that there is an ongoing “…difficulty in explaining to the media what a Principal Speaker is” it is doing no more than describing current reality.

One would have thought that the logical inference to draw from this was that we should change the name of the existing posts to something clearer such as, say, chief or national spokesperson. Given that the proposed job description for the new posts is that the “Leader and Deputy will be the primary public faces of
the party, responsible for presenting Green Party policy and promoting its electoral activity and campaigns to the public on a day to day basis” a job title of national spokesperson would seem to be perfectly accurate.

However the drafters of the resolution go further. Not only is the role confusing for the press, it is responsible for a “perception among the public that we as a party do not take our vital political role sufficiently seriously”. Now, since hacks are almost always lazy, ignorant and rushed, it is convenient for them to assume that all parties are built to the same design and to look for just one face, one name, to be the personification of the Green Party. Ordinary people are used to being presented with personality politics in lieu of genuine political debate (inevitable when the actual politics of Tony, Dave and Ming are essentially the same) and might well find a party the doesn’t fit in to the familiar PR mould slightly disconcerting.

However, to infer from this that in order to be seen as ‘serious’ we should disguise ourselves as a smaller, poorer and less powerful version of the venal and discredited parties of the neo-liberal ‘mainstream’ is quite extraordinary. This position is quite wrong for two reasons.

First, it assumes that the Green Party is not seen as a serious player because its doesn’t copy some of the structures and style of the ’major’ parties. I think it more likely that insofar as the assessment of our public profile is true, it is primarily because; a) we are in reality a very small organization with very little clout who most people know virtually nothing about; b) what we have to say is difficult and extremely challenging to received wisdom; c) there is still a perception of the Green Party as a slightly eccentric one trick pony.

Second, it doesn’t recognize the depth of disillusionment in politicians and political parties among ordinary people in general, and among younger people in particular. The fact that we are not organized like a ‘proper’ party, when the big parties are increasingly seen as bunches of liars, hypocrites and suits on the make, can be (if we handle it right) a positive benefit to us.

Absolutely right Jim, those are the key issues. But I didn't hear them being addressed at the conference - certainly not in the 'leadership' debate - except en passant and in the most narrowly trechnical ways. For my money, the key to building the party is in building the capacity of our rank and file members to take a leading part in all the struggles and disputes cuyrrently going on, both local and national; for example, the huge popular campaigns against hospital closures going on practically unreported all over the place.

Leadership is very intersting. In fact I will be running a leadership training in Århus from sunday. Its at a Danish Folk School. It makes me think of a conversation I had with Darren about Mentoring, and how we need mentoring and then leaders will come forth.

But I agree that media plays a really importatnm part and if we don't give th epress a leader they will create one. We alsready see this with Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace being chosen for almost all politcial comment rather than the Green Party. Ask anyone not a member to name a famous Green and you will see who they are selecting as leaders.

Almost unnoticed the same conference endorsed an annual target of 9% carbon reduction. This was totally uncontroversial within the Green Party – both supporters of a single leader and supporters of the current more participatory model backed it. But to achieve that we are not talking about the minor tinkering that would be needed to achieve 3% (which the government finds to be too much) but fundamental changes in the way we live. That means a participatory politics quite different from the vote-us-in-and-leave-it-all-to-us approach of the conventional parties. The Green Party needs to make more of their unique structure as it both a reminder of how deeply things need to change and the guarantee that the party is up to being the facilitator of that change.