I was in Cardiff on Saturday, campaigning for the Green Party in its bid to hold the balance of power in the next Senedd after elections on May 6th. (See below to see why that is a very real prospect!).
Most conversations when you’re out door-knocking are pretty humdrum. Occasionally, someone seizes your entire attention – as a first-time voter did with some vigour as I was working my way up Severn Road, suggesting that the Green Party was ‘betraying’ young people by ignoring the climate crisis.
In case you’re wondering, she definitely hadn’t recognised me as the author of ‘Love, Anger & Betrayal’! But she’d seen my Green Party rosette, and as a former activist in Just Stop Oil, felt aggrieved that our campaign in Wales “seemed to be ignoring anything about climate or nature”.
This conversation happened in the afternoon. If it had happened in the morning, I might have agreed with her. But in between, I’d heard Zack Polanski ‘rallying the troops’ with characteristic gusto – and absolutely hitting the nail on the head with his comments about “both people and planet”. Not least because part of our pitch in Wales is to remind voters that only the Green Party can hold to account Plaid Cymru (which is all but guaranteed to win more seats than any other party) on its piss-poor record on climate change and the environment.
Zack was great. And I felt somewhat vindicated in my efforts to ward off lots of colleagues levelling pretty much the same charge against him and the party as was my interlocutor on Severn Road. The charge goes something like this: “we love the emphasis on cost of living, on the deeply immoral weaponizing of immigration, on the genocide in Gaza, on fair taxation (in new Green Party MP Hannah Spencer’s memorable phrase: “why should we all be working so hard to line the pockets of the billionaires?”), on seriously sorting out public services – but what about the climate crisis? What about Nature?”.
And that’s exactly why my conversation in Cardiff was so close to the bone for me. On Wednesday, I’ll be launching the audio version of ‘Love, Anger & Betrayal’.
I’m really pleased that the printed version is still selling well, but there’s something extra about the audio version. Listening to the extracts from my co-authors, I can hear that this better represents their courage, insights and emotional complexity.
Which makes me all the more mindful of the fact that it’s nearly a year since Just Stop Oil ‘hung up the high viz’. Is it a coincidence that coverage of the climate crisis has plummeted since then? Today’s new variant of climate denialism is a nightmare for all of us – but just imagine what that must feel like for all those in their 20s who put their future on the line to help the rest of us focus on the urgency of accelerating climate change — and the implications of this for hundreds of millions of people in the second half of this century.
Their love. Our betrayal.
Which is why the Green Party needs to be working much harder on behalf of all young people in keeping the climate crisis and Nature at the heart of all its campaigns.
So please help me promote the audio version:
Excitingly, this year’s elections for the Welsh Senedd in May are using a version of Proportional Representation – thinned down, it has to be said, but a lot better than the usual First Past The Post. There will now be just 16 constituencies in Wales, with all voters over the age of 16 electing 6 Members in each constituency –– 96 Members in all. The number of seats a party wins will (more or less!) reflect the percentage of votes each party gets in that constituency.
That may sound pretty abstract. So let’s focus on what that means for the Green Party in Cardiff Penarth: Plaid Cymru is pretty much guaranteed to get two of the six seats; according to the polls, the Green Party, Labour and Reform are pretty much guaranteed to get one each. When it comes to that final sixth seat, voters know they can forget Labour (with its fortunes in Wales declining just a little bit more every single day), which means it’s a straight fight between the Green Party and Reform. Just as it was in Gorton and Denton!
