Very early on Saturday morning, after watching the Tories start to dismantle several of the best things our country has ever done (opportunistically using the deaths of six children to try to justify actions which will probably kill many, many more), the LibDems help them and Labour do nothing*, I came to a conclusion-
If this week in politics has done one thing, it’s convinced me that I need to join @thegreenparty
— Ian Pattinson (@Spinneyhead) April 5, 2013
I didn’t do anything about it over the weekend. But then @thegreenparty went and retweeted it yesterday, and it got a few re-retweets and favourites. I didn’t exactly explode over the internet, but it’s the most attention one of my tweets has ever garnered. So I’d sort of been guilted into getting my arse into gear by a retweet.
Another tweet from yesterday cemented my resolve. In amongst all the chatter about Thatcher I spotted-
@mike_fabricant Even people who claim to hate her vote for a Thatcherite party. Tories, Labour, LibDems, UKIP are all shaped by herlegacy.
— Jonathan Chilton (@Jonnt) April 8, 2013
The person who sent this obviously believes it to be a good thing, but it’s actually chilling. That the three main parties in the country (and those also-rans, the LibDems) can be said to be practicing slightly different shades of the same political philosophy can only be a bad thing. Even somebody who thinks that Thatcher’s policies weren’t awful should be able to see the problem. The woman’s most famous because she shook up the system and aggressively went against the flow, taking the ire this provoked on the chin, yet some think it’s a good thing that none of the party leaders is brave enough to do the same to what she left behind. Even if the natural progression of Thatcherism that we’re seeing wasn’t so appalling, religiously rehashing the same dogma would still lead to stagnation and decay.
I believe the Green Party can provide the strong, principled opposition to the status quo that is needed. Some people are going to say that they’re a one-issue party (I picked up one in amongst the reactions to my tweet), but so is the buffoonish media darling that is UKIP. Unlike UKIP, the Green’s “one” issue is a genuine problem, and solving it won’t leave us a bland, alienated country reminiscing about how we were once great and blaming everyone else when we were the ones who could have solved our problems. Creating a sustainable, low carbon economy will create more jobs and wealth than reducing our options to starvation wages or just starvation. Making not just the country, but its citizens, energy independent will be a greater act of libertarianism than anything Farage could ever dream up.
For these reasons, and more, I joined the Green Party this morning (possibly twice, thanks to some problems with the Direct Debit page).
*The Government rushed through a law retroactively making the illegal and truly immoral Workfare scheme legal. Labour’s official line was to let this pass.