Friday 2 October 2009

Check out Chris Trotter’s blog on Bradford

by David
I had more or less stopped paying any attention to Chris Trotter over the last few years, since he’s become a champion of the Labour Party. That changed when a Green Party member suggested I check out Trotter’s commentary on Sue Bradford’s resignation, at his blog Bow Alley Road. “This time Trotter’s got it right” they said, sounding a little surprised. Over the last week there’s been a number of posts and some interesting comments too, like this one from former Green MP Nandor Tancoz (who also has his own blog):
Hi Chris

 A better argued post than the Sept 25th one, IMHO ;).My reply there addresses some of what I see as the errors of that post.

I think that here you are absolutely right that the Greens have been extraordinarily naive at times about the power of evidence. One of my questions over the years has been ‘what is the Green extra-parliamentary power base’?. Votes are not enough, as the so-called ‘winter of discontent’ (2001?) demonstrated. Labour has the union movement. National has sheer economic power. If the Greens want to make serious moves to address the causes of ecological degradation, this will entail, ultimately, a new economic system - a steady state economy of some description that does not depend on increasing consumption. And those who most benefit from the status quo won’t give it up very easily.
My own interview with Sue Bradford, conducted on Monday will be up here early next week (it’s taking a long time to transcribe from the tape!).

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