When respondents to my readers’ survey were asked which political parties they would like to see in coalition government there was a great outpouring of enthusiasm for the Green Party to be in the mix – more so than either of the two main parties:
But if we break the answers down according to whether the respondent chose Labour in preference to Conservative or vice versa strong differences emerge.
Respondents who preferred Labour to Conservative
Respondents who preferred Conservative to Labour
Interesting?
Interesting to see this following an article in today’s Guardian raising the possibility of a Conservative-Labour coalition following the next election. This is something that has been discussed quite a bit recently in Scotland following the referendum as a means of countering the apparent SNP surge. Of course it is partly seeing labour standing shoulder to shoulder with the conservatives during the referendum campaign that has led to that SNP surge, so I imagine that such a grand coalition would result in similar damage to labour in the rest of the UK and is probably unlikely.
However, it looks as though the establishment are floating the idea to gauge the reaction as they see this as a potential way of maintaining their power (and the neoliberal consensus) against the ‘insurgents’ (this term was actually used in the Guardian article, meaning the SNP, Greens and UKIP).
As interesting as finding out that the Pope’s catholic. Of course Labour voters align more with Greens. Why on Earth would that be a surprise?
Time to put your full weight behind the Green Party and ditch the tried, tested and failed Labour, Conservative and Liberals.
It’s actually far more interesting than that – it could well reflect a support for the environment that isn’t party political – as was the case over the forest sales, where the realisation that many Conservatives were violently opposed led to David Cameron’s spectacular U turn.
It is significant that, having been caught on the wrong side, rather than trying to understand what happened, the conservation NGOs have behaved like good members of the establishment and tried to pretend it never happened. That is a huge mistake: the forest sales fiasco demonstrated very clearly that there is a huge groundswell of support for the environment out there and we should all be asking why that isn’t being translated into political influence in the way it was over the forests.
I’d suggest that the support for the greens is the closest people can get to expressing that view under the current political system and that whilst the Conservative leaning support is, not surprisingly, lower than the labour leaning, what is truly remarkable is that it is so high.
It depends on how you define ‘environment’. For many conservatives it is about amenity, which was why they opposed forest sales and why they are also the most likely to oppose wind farms. The large conservative element in RSPB membership are also attracted by the amenity of RSPB reserves. That kind of support for ‘countryside’ amenity does not necessarily translate into support for Green social and economic policies. So all of this amateur psephology with an unrepresentative sample leaves you back where you started, with the Pope still a Catholic. Stick to the day job Mark.
Stevenson – any amateur psephology can’t be mine, it might be yours, since my only comment was ‘Interesting?’