[Green Flag Revisited] Opinion Column: Britain Deserves a Progressive Majority Government

ChainChompsky1 is a Green Party Politician and Activist

This general election was a watershed moment for British politics. Facing new leadership in all of the parties, and a new electoral system, the British public took advantage of these changes by electing one of the widest ranges of politicians in our country’s history. The two party duopoly is well and truly dead, with the Liberal Democrats emerging as true competitors to the seat counts of their traditional counterparts in a way not seen for the last 100+ years. Parties that exist to hold the major players on the left and right to account, the Greens and Reform respectively, received a large share of the vote and one of the largest shares of seats for parties outside the top 3 in British political history. All the while, nationalist parties maintained the strength they’ve developed in the 21st century.

All this upheaval begs the question, where do politicians go from here? I don’t claim to speak for everyone in my party, and will support what decisions we make internally and democratically, but on a personal basis, I think the country would be best served by a Labour-Liberal Democrat-Green government, which I will henceforth refer to as the Progressive Coalition. 

It's important that the next government have a majority. For years the British public was told that electoral reform would lead to chaos, unable to give stability to the nation. It is incumbent on the participants in our nation’s first proportional election to prove that sentiment wrong, lest we revert to old ways that have underserved our country for so long. This particular formation would combine stability with a show of force for how cross party cooperation is facilitated by proportional representation. Another broad right government would improperly impart the message that the thinking of politicians hasn’t changed due to proportional representation, and that the British public should still sort itself into broad camps. A progressive coalition would instead show that our new electoral system has fostered an environment where parties of different ideological backgrounds who would previously have had no need to negotiate with one another now appreciate the chance to do so. Parties who compromise need no longer worry about first past the post wiping them out.

On a policy level, a progressive government would represent the clean break from the status quo that the voters demanded. After a cost of living crisis, a global pandemic, and years of war in Europe, there was a clear message sent that the current way of doing things isn’t acceptable. When one analyzes the platforms of the different parties that stood, the issues of alignment between Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Greens most contrast from the status quo. A shared desire to re-imagine how we tackle immigration and criminal justice. A newly forward facing foreign policy that re-centers fundamental human rights, even when making the case is politically inconvenient. Robustly tackling the climate crisis with the urgency that it requires. Re-investing in our local communities whose public services have crumbled and collapsed over the years. And, perhaps most importantly, a shared desire to roll back impositions on our long standing uniquely United Kingdom oriented democratic process in the form of the American style voter ID laws. For our young people, to re-engage with democracy, only a Progressive Coalition will do.

Specifically focused on the Lib Dems, if you are one of their politicians or one of their voters and are reading this column, I pose a very simple question to you. Do you think the Conservative Party will back a single one of your tax changes? While I again can’t speak for all of the Greens, yet alone Labour, I personally don’t see a single tax proposal in the Liberal Democrat manifesto that I wouldn’t support. If my view is shared, there would be no need for haggling, and a government could get on with the much smoother debate about how to allocate revenue. While not as comprehensive as I would have liked, the Liberal Democrat manifesto certainly contained ambitious new policies and commitments, and I propose it is only through Labour and the Greens that the Lib Dems will find the money to fund them. It certainly reflects the rhetoric of some of the Liberal Democrats in their critiques of what they viewed as the impossibility of Conservative fiscal plans. While I don’t necessarily agree with their premises behind why they think the Conservative plans aren’t viable, if the crux of their critique is that any government needs to be reasonable about the state of public finances, only through a coalition that shares the broader tax base desires of the Liberal Democrats will they be able to achieve their ideas of fiscal discipline.

One final potential critique of this particular coalition is that it would break the “broad right” understanding that voters allegedly had going into the election. This concern is unwarranted. Labour ran everywhere, making it impossible for the Lib Dems to have even considered an endorsement deal that cut two days. The Greens were obviously inclined to give our endorsements to Labour due to ideological similarities. The parties of the right, fractured more in the number of candidates they could run, endorsed one another seemingly not with the intent of forming a unified government but simply with the understanding that such endorsements would lessen the amount of seats going to parties further to their left. Simply because they sought to minimize our seat count doesn’t mean the Lib Dems are unable to use their own seats as they see fit. It was clear during the election debates that a broad right coalition was never set in stone, some of the most aggressive attacks occurred between the Lib Dems and the Tories. A Progressive Coalition gives the Liberal Democrats the chance to prove to the public their repeated claims since 2015 that they are an independent minded progressive party not intent on simply propping up right wing governments.

With great upheaval in politics comes a desire for things to improve. The British public will be looking with heavy scrutiny at the byproduct of this great democratic experimental restructuring UK politicians have embarked upon. A Progressive Coalition would serve to prove this experiment works.