UK Politics
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I think I agree. He handles himself well. It's a shame the rest of the party isn't more politically savvy. It's a case of having a star player but the rest of the side letting the whole team down. No doubt the latest motion at their conference hit them in the polls. It's upsetting that the Greens have so few MPs but they aren't helping themselves sometimes.
I'd rather we stay out of parliament if getting elected means we must refrain from standing up for our own values
Those aren't the only options, there are plenty of ways of doing both, but the Zionism is Racism motion was very badly done. The whole thing is an argument in semantics which does nothing to help Palestinians while painting the green party as anti-Semitic (even if the wording of the motion is talking about a political ideology, it will be viewed that way). The fact that the motion's promoters repeatedly said that the wording for the motion will not be used to discipline Jewish members who are associated with Zionist institutions (i.e. pretty much any British synagogue), and then fought and defeated a motion which made that explicit just strengthens that allegation.
There would have been plenty of ways to pass a motion saying that Israel is committing a genocide and that Palestinians have a right of return and to reparations for the harm caused in the nakba, but the motion passed is the party handing a stick to it's opponents to beat it with.
I believe Zionism is Racism and I am not afraid of saying it, even if that means getting beaten with a stick.
If you think this paints the Greens as antisemitic then the real problem is people associating anti-Zionism with antisemitism (which is itself antisemitic, btw), and that's the thing we need to fight against. Refraining from saying the truth isn't going to help.
Good for you, are you also a party trying to persuade the public to vote for you so you can enact meaningful improvements to people's lives? Because if not its not really a useful comparison.
My point was that a party can say those things without going at it in a politically brain dead way that gives your opponents an easy way to paint you as something bad even if it's not true.
So do you think as a party we should hide what we truly believe so people will vote for us, and once we are in we can show our true faces? Let's be a little moderate now but once we are in we will be different and enact radical changes?
where have i heard that before? hmmm...
No I think that if you want to be a political party you have to think about how you phrase things, consider that you don't live in a vacuum with only your core supporters who think exactly the same as you do, and think about how other people will try and spin your words to make them look bad. Then taking all that in mind craft your message in order to work round those constraints to say what you mean without falling foul of them.
You know, do politics.
Democratic decision making in a party conference shouldn't be put under this kind of scrutiny because that's how you silence good faith discussion and party democracy.
How conference decisions are then articulated publically is a completely different issue. Conference isn't where these considerations ought to be made. This, ironically enough, stifles free speech and open debate which liberalism claims to love so much.
As a party we should focus on what's important, not on slogans. "Zionism is Racism" isn't a radical change and it doesn't enable radical change - it's a slogan. It would have been much better to focus on more important policies like sanctions against Israel than on this slogan. Or what about North sea drilling, or poverty, or many other debates that this took attention away from?
Read the resolution. It's more than three words.
There's plenty of doubt about that. More likely this will further strengthen their support, which will rise even further as Burnham fails to live up to the hype.