A Thousand Years of Green Party Experience

Tim Beaumont, Green Party Peer:
"I would like to record my vehement support for the present leadership arrangements. In 60 years in politics I have only known one good party leader."

Molly Scott Cato, GPEW Economics Spokesperson:
"Leaders only create psychological dependency and disempowerment. Our process is as important as our policies so let's not have our agenda set by the requirements of the media." Read article

Shahrar Ali, London Policy Coordinator:
"We can only transform society by transforming politics itself. To take our radical vision forward we need people to take ownership of their actions, not have them delegated to a supposed authority. Genuine leadership empowers by example not diktat."
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Ceri Galloway, Cambridge Green Party:
"Electing a leader is a step back towards a centralised model of decision making. This would show the public that we have not understood our own politics and that we have not even begun to develop an alternative to the current Western European model of government."
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Paul Ingram, former Co-leader of Oxford City Council:
"Leadership within the Green Party is vital. Having a formal leader will not itself bring any of the benefits its advocates dream about, and is likely to bring further conflict into the Party. It dangerously distorts the fundamental philosophy of empowerment at the heart of the Green Party." Read article

Denise Craghill, Vice-chair, York Green Party:
"Do we construct any of our policy platforms around 'what we think the media might like'? We are wasting time on a divisive proposal to give some poor person a media-defined 'label' but no power to back it up, not at first anyway."

Joseph Healy, GPRC Rep and International Friend
"Better to follow the path of integrity and truth than the path well-trodden. There are enough grey parties with grey leaders and people have had enough of them."

Lucy Dale, Oxfordshire Green Party:
"Fundamentally, the Green Party is embedded in a wider green movement, and must never lose sight of this. In the quest to change hearts and minds we need to be working across the board. We won't change hearts and minds if we get into power only to water down and forget all our original principles and policies. We have to work on the ground, from the bottom up." Read article

Danny Bates , fmr GPEW & London Policy Coordinator
"I have door-knocked for the Green Party for many years in areas where we have succeeded in getting Greens elected - at local, regional and European level. But I have never heard a voter say they wouldn't vote Green because we lack a single leader. The most electorally successful Green Party, the German Greens, explicitly rejected the single-leader model, as do the Scottish Greens."