Oh my gods the Green Party. You idiots! You blithering idiots, you shower of cunts! How dare you? How Very Fucking Dare You?!

It took me years to trust you enough to join. YEARS. Years and the fact that I personally knew people involved in the party who appeared to not be the blithering idiots you have shown yourselves to be over the last two weeks.

What were you thinking? This is shitty shitty politics, a politics of the past, and a politics I thought you were mature enough not to engage in.

Idiots!

So, about 6 months ago, I joined the Green Party as a member. I’d been talking to other members for a while, including Peter Garbutt, the Sheffield Hallam parliamentary candidate against Nick Clegg in May.

There were many reasons for me actually joining, but mostly it was because it had been about a year since I’d seen any press release of theirs that I hadn’t agreed with, because they were discussing dropping their opposition to nuclear power, and because they appeared to be making a big deal of the fact that they wanted a basic income.

Our current economic structures are fucked, let’s not kid ourselves about that. They do not work, and they especially do not work for those dependant on the state. They also perpetuate and enhance the problem of there being fewer and fewer jobs for the working class, and thus they also increase over time the number of people who are dependant on the state.

Universal basic income is not a fix for this. It will not dismantle those broken structures. They still need to be replaced, but in the meantime, basic income can plug the gaps, and keep people from dying.

And there is a growing recognition of the idea, and a growing political will for it.

Trying to grow that will and raise the visible number of people who support that idea was a huge part of my decision to join the Green Party.

And now they are dropping it as a part of their manifesto. They are hedging their bets and operating on the old assumptions that somehow compromise is the way to gain electoral and political success.

It will not. My politics are not the politics of compromise. I will not let myself be allied to spineless policy that changes at the whiff of broader electoral success. The whole reason for the Green Surge (TM) was that people were attracted to the principles. To something that wasn’t the same. To something that might perhaps be new. To a party that appeared to not only be genuinely left wing, but also willing to stay that way despite the temptation to seek the middle ground.

I am profoundly disappointed, and have cancelled my membership.

And that’s not even touching on the whole transphobic parliamentary candidate and donor to the party Rupert Read, who is apparently totally fine to stay a member, donor and candidate while defending people who LITERALLY WANT TRANS WOMEN TO DIE AND DISAPPEAR. Seriously, the Party’s response to his comments was derisible.

In summary:

PS: This post is written with sincere apologies to my Poly Means Many colleagues, for whom I should have written and didn’t.