When you elect us to the Green Party’s Executive (GPEx), you are asking us to exercise judgement and make decisions on your behalf. We all take that responsibility seriously and sometimes the decisions are very difficult. Historically, choosing our spokespeople has been controversial and this time has been no exception. We are accountable to you and so we want to explain how we reached the decision we made at our meeting this weekend.
Our last meeting was deadlocked and we are the two members who put forward opposing motions, both of which received seven votes for and seven votes against. Working with a few others, and in a process mediated by Green Party Regional Council (GPRC) co-chair Martha James, we have agreed a way forward that was supported by GPEx. As in all compromises, nobody is likely to be entirely satisfied but we believe what we have agreed is in the best interests of the party.
At our meeting in June it was clear that GPEx members did not feel that they had had enough involvement in the process of selecting spokespeople and were not convinced that all the speakers would represent the party well in public. Martha offered to try to resolve the disagreement through a deliberative process with the proposers of the two motions. This gave us more time to understand each other’s positions more deeply, something that is impossible during a busy GPEx meeting.
The solution we jointly proposed, and that GPEx supported on Saturday, was that we would confirm the existing spokespeople but with a much clearer process for both supporting and monitoring to ensure they live up to the code of conduct for speakers and the core values of the Green Party. We have set up a special body and a review process that will take place after six months, reporting back to GPEx. At that point GPEx members will have an opportunity to think again about any spokespeople who are giving cause for concern.
We believe that this is a fair and democratic arrangement, in line with our constitution. It gives our speakers support and clear guidance on how best to fulfil their important role, and gives elected GPEx members the chance to consider how well this has been done after six months.
We also discussed ways to ensure that those selecting our speakers in future have access to better information and found a way to involve our Liberation and Special Interest Groups in the process. These points will be taken forward and form part of the review of the spokespeople selection process this autumn. The constitution gives the responsibility for selecting spokespeople – who are effectively our front bench – to GPEx but without any details about how to do this. Although this selection round has been a bruising experience, we hope that the streamlined and agreed process for appointment will work better in the future. We are committed to learning from this experience, and to putting this learning to good effect in improving party processes.
We both appreciated the ability to spend time to see the other’s point of view and feel that the process Martha coordinated was a way of reinforcing green ways of working together based on listening, reaching across the divide when there is conflict, and showing mutual respect. We both valued this process that we think exemplifies our core values as a party.
We would ask you to work with us to get behind our speakers and support them in representing us in public. Some have already made a great start, writing articles and using social media and videos to establish our policies more clearly in the public debate. On GPEx, we will continue to reflect, to recognise that we can work better together and to listen to the membership we serve.
As we step up to operate alongside the three parties that dominate English politics we are increasingly going to need this strong team of authoritative and articulate speakers – and they are going to need our support.