Dear X,
As your elected co-leaders our job is to represent the values and policies of our membership. It’s fundamental to the way our party works that we listen and act on the direction given to us by our members.
The party's current strategic priorities include campaigning to stay in the EU, tackling climate change, calling for a fairer voting system at General Elections, and maximising the number of elected Greens.
In recent weeks, many of you have contacted us personally urging us either to forge ahead with electoral arrangements or to avoid them, while other members have discussed these issues on party forums and social media. We are reading and listening to these messages and now we want to give all members the chance to tell us what they think.
In particular, today, we have seen new proposals made by
Unite to Remain, an organisation lobbying for political parties to come together in the event of a snap General Election this year, particularly if there is a
Boris Johnson/Nigel Farage alliance to push through Brexit. That organisation has challenged us as your co-leaders to discuss these ideas and our stance with them.
Please let us know your thoughts before
11.59pm on Monday 15th July.Unite to Remain is calling for an electoral arrangement whereby parties campaigning for Remain stand just one candidate in each constituency with a Brexit-supporting MP, or at risk of electing a Brexit-supporting MP according to constituency level polling, in order to create a majority in Parliament for remaining in the EU and a People's Vote. This proposal would mean Greens standing as the sole candidate from a party campaigning for Remain in a significant number of seats. In our view, this aspect would be vital. Absolutely no proposal we would consider discussing could be about standing down with nothing in return.
The attempts to form a progressive alliance in 2017 led to a largely bruising experience due to the lack of time for preparation given the snap nature of the election, and the fact no reciprocation was offered on a national level, but we have a Green Party conference mandate from members to listen to approaches from others and discuss political arrangements that would provide a pathway to bring in a fairer voting system. We will of course listen to what Unite to Remain suggest, and will listen to the views of other political parties. Listening is in our nature.
But after listening comes hard decisions that we don’t at this stage have a full mandate to make. As members, we need a steer from you on what factors and priorities you believe we should be considering as we meet and listen to others, and ahead of putting any ideas forward within the party's appropriate decision-making processes. Your views as members on the questions in the survey would be really helpful to guide us in the coming days. Please complete the survey by Monday 15th July 11.59pm.
Thank you,
Siân Berry and Jonathan Bartley
Co-Leaders, Green Party of England and Wales