Great Britain: “I can help you build a progressive majority"

The dynamics of the left and anti-austerity forming around Jeremy Corbyn gained new momentum. In a few weeks, in a left focused campaign, this candidate could win the first round election according to recent polls. Right up to last week, with manipulation by party leaders who excluded around 50,000 voters, he held 57 percent of votes. He has fallen to 55 percent (see note on “purging” below). This week the leader of the Greens proposed an alliance.

Caroline Lucas wrote an open letter to him, published in the Independent, proposing an alliance for the next election in 2020. Sure, the Greens only represent three percent of the British electorate, if you consider the last election results, but the dynamic is interesting. Though a certain disaccord exists; Jeremy Corbyn, although vegetarian and not owning a car, is fairly productivist in regard to employment and industry. But the Greens are aware the system must change to allow a real ecological transition. “I’ve never felt so optimistic about a potential leader of the Labour Party”, she wrote enthusiastically. “For the first time,” she said, Labour “looks likely to be led again by someone who dares to stand up for the radical changes demanded by the challenges we face.” Caroline Lucas’s ambitions do not stop at an electoral pact: “Not only can we provide real economic alternatives to austerity, defend the trade unions and make the argument for urgent climate action, but we can also start to imagine an entirely different future – of a new social settlement, an economy that provides decent pay and allows people to flourish outside of work too.”

The “purging” of the Labour party. There were 600,000 enrolled to vote in the Labour election. After cleaning the lists, there were only 553,000. Labour leaders explained the drop as being due to Corbyn supporters being overenthusiastic and willing to take two subscriptions in order to vote twice, but also several thousand exclusions from the party, notably of unionists, who do not share the “values and aims of the party”.