Today was a big day for navel gazing at Green Party conference – organisational motions were discussed, but one in particular was more exciting than most. I have described before my role as ‘Principal Speaker’ for the Green Party, and why we don’t have a single figurehead or a rigid hierarchical structure, but a pair (male and female) of principal spokespeople. This is what attracts a lot of people to the Greens, but is also something of a barrier to communicating with people who want party reps to have more conventional titles. I come up against this all the time, and invariably find myself using up valuable broadcast time explaining the curious way I have to be described.
For many years, motions to adopt the title ‘leaders’ or perhaps ‘co-leaders’ for our spokespeople have been a regular feature of conference. They always fail to pass, but recent votes have often achieved a majority in conference, although not the two-thirds majority needed for a constitutional change.
As a result, this year, a different kind of motion was discussed. Instead of asking conference for a decision on the issue, the motion set out various changes to the constitution – including creating posts for a Leader and Deputy (or alternatively two co-leaders if a pair of candidates wanted to stand as a team) – that would instead be put out for a full ballot of all our members later this year.
As you can imagine, on such a philosophical question, passions within the Greens run pretty high on both sides of the argument, with some people frustrated we didn’t take this step 20 years ago when it was first proposed, and others convinced that we should continue to emphasise our differences with the other parties and maintain the flat leadership structure we currently have. I’ve always been a bit torn on this. I maintain a huge fondness for the idea of having ‘Co-Leaders’ instead of just one figurehead, as I think that achieves some of both sides’ objectives. However, I thought the motion was quite a reasonable one to vote on, and I am very keen to see the matter decided one way or the other at last so we can spend our energies doing more of what we’re supposed to do – get elected.
Related
Anyway, to continue the fascinating tale of our internal debate for a while, today’s two sessions on the motion were not what I expected. There were many, many amendments submitted (changing a whole section of our constitution was never going to be simple), suggesting changes such as lengthening the timetable for the referendum, setting longer minimum membership periods for leadership candidates, making them paid or unpaid posts, and proposing different lengths of terms and different methods of recall.
Despite the contentiousness, I was delighted that discussion was so constructive. Lots of amendments were simply accepted by the proposers, others were voted in after strong speeches from members that convinced large numbers of people on the floor to change their minds, and in the end we agreed by a relatively comfortable majority to put the amended motion out for ballot.
Content from our partners
So, what happens now? A big debate over the next six months, followed by a vote. This won’t be anything like one of Tony Blair’s ‘big conversations’. Every local party has people on both sides of this issue and there will be lots of strong, intelligent banter going on, which will result in every member having their say.
These small insights into conference are probably not very interesting to anyone who doesn’t belong to a political party. But, given the fact that the potential change in structure will mainly affect how people outside the party regard us, I’d be really interested in the views of non-members – so please do comment!
Meanwhile, I’m actually more concerned about getting my own big idea of standing a candidate in every constituency at the next general election off the ground. It’s not just me thinking that a full slate is an achievable ‘good plan’, and there are tons of practical as well as political reasons why we should (not least the chance that any state funding of political parties coming out of the Phillips review may depend on votes cast at the next general election). I made this the main point of my keynote address to the party this morning – my first as Principal Speaker – terrifying but it went down well I thought. Any members like to comment on it?