Corbyn Victory Makes Role of Greens More Important

Leading Greens Caroline Lucas and Natalie Bennett have welcomed the victory of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.

These are very interesting times.

We Greens will continue to have more influence outside Labour than we would have within - we need a distinct voice on Climate Change, the most important issue of our age. Caroline Lucas has held out the hand of partnership to Jeremy and we wish the labour left well, but they still have a massive mountain to climb in the face of an overwhelmingly right wing PLP and councillor base.

The Green surge was partly responsible for Jeremy's rise IMO, with the raising of left green policies to debate in the election and engagement of a new generation. Now Greens must continue to use our leverage to push for commitments on electoral reform and climate change. This is crucial, as without electoral reform, if the establishment manage to defeat or more likely sabotage the Corbyn movement to reclaim Labour from the Blairite cuckoos it will be back to neo-liberal business as usual. With electoral reform Tory majority governments will hopefully be a thing of the past (24% of the electorate and falling?) and radical left and green views will be much much harder to push to the margins where FPTP and neo-liberal "consensus" in the corporate media have managed to contain them for so long. The left wing lever that the Greens, and to some extent the SNP and Plaid have applied to Labour can be continued and strengthened and a progressive alliance will be able to take on the Tories and their corporatist backers effectively across all the country and all its diverse sections.

If we play this right we can park our ecosocialist tanks on the lawns of the establishment and the corpocracy and build the kind of Parliamentary/extra parliamentary alliance that is required for the next stage....This will not be easy, mind. The ruling class can see the threat. Expect dirty tricks from the corporate media/foreign and domestic intelligence services.....

The fact that Caroline Lucas and the SNP and Plaid may now be able to attack the Tory Corporatist agenda in concert with a Labour Party Front Bench is immensely encouraging however.  The fightback just stepped up a gear.  A key aspect of the coming period will be to unite forces on the ground to fight things like fracking, Trident replacement and the anti-trade union bill.  There is everything to play for.

"Rise like lions out of slumber, 
Ye are many, they are few...."