Red Light, Green Light. posted by Richard Seymour

Wish fulfillment ablaze in the title of his latest article for the Guardian, Peter Tatchell has set out on what he hoped would be a convincing demolition job on Respect, while puffing up his new party of choice, the Green Party. I'll give it the once over:

Respect was trumpeted as the spearhead of the radical left's revival. It was to have mobilised the votes of the millions of people who opposed the Iraq war, and its leaders confidently boasted they would win seats and "give Blair a bloody nose" on June 10.

I wish. Labour got a deserved drubbing, but Respect got total humiliation. In the European elections, it averaged a mere 1.67% of the vote in the nine English regions. The other radical left party, the Greens, polled nearly four times more, notching up 6.19%.

Not so, Peter. Noone in Respect seriously anticipated that "millions" would vote for us in our first election outing - a quarter of a million was a good start, however. And while the Greens certainly did far better than Respect in the European elections, could this have anything to do with the fact that the Green Party is not 20 weeks old - that is, has had time to build precisely in those areas of the country that Respect has yet to penetrate? We have done well in inner city areas - give us time to expand.

Even in London, where it invested huge campaign resources and benefited from a high-profile, nationally-known candidate in George Galloway, Respect managed only 4.84% of the European vote.

Peter talks as if 4.84% was a poor first result. The Greens, however, were pulling in results of 2.0% back in 1988. Doesn't this suggest that new parties need time to build, to create a record and a presence? Isn't this an obvious fact about psephological history that any passing insect would notice?

Whether we love or loathe Respect, its defeat is a wake up call to everyone on the left who is disillusioned with Labour. Two attempts to create a viable left-wing party - first the Socialist Alliance and now Respect - have now hit the buffers, and it is pointless deluding ourselves that the latter will come up trumps next time round. Get real. Respect is doomed, and it begs the question: what is to be done?

Part of me fantasises about an electoral pact between Respect and the Greens. In the PR list vote for the London assembly, the Green party won 8.57% and Respect 4.67%. Their combined vote was 13.24% - only three points behind the Lib Dems. A red-green alliance clearly has potential to be a significant player in London politics, and perhaps eventually elsewhere in England.

Steady on, Pete! We haven't been "defeated" yet. We've only just started! As for the fantasy about the electoral pact - well, we had a similar idea in Respect but were rebuffed by a Green Party adamant that it do fine by itself thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, Pete isn't serious. He actually thinks that:

An electoral deal between the Greens and Respect would, however, be difficult to broker. In every region of England the Greens were way ahead of Respect in European election. In some regions, such as the south-east and the south-west, the Green's share of the vote was 10 times greater than that of Respect.

Why should a 30-year old party with a strong local presence and a record of significant electoral success stand aside for a new political force that has weak community links and has failed to win a single seat?

Why indeed? Perhaps he could have a look at those London mayoral results and think up an answer himself.

Equally problematic is the vanguardist, hegemonic and often sectarian politics of many Respect leaders. They have, in the past, been unwilling to broaden their socialist agenda and share power with other progressive forces outside the orbit of the orthodox left, such as the women's, black, disabled and gay movements. Not a good omen for red-green cooperation.

That is a peculiar claim from a man who has recently joined a party which refuses, point blank, to cooperate electorally with others on the basis of their own ideological purity and projected success. But to suggest that we have not 'broadened' our agenda when we have moved to collaborate with Muslims across the country is odd, since 'broadening' our agenda is precisely what we are accused of by many of our critics. And how does he suggest we "share power" with women's, black, disabled and gay movements? Invite Outrage to the leadership? Rope in the Nation of Islam and ask Scope to be our fundraisers? Has the Green Party performed any better in this regard?

Reclaiming Labour for socialism is a fine aspiration, but about as likely as winning the German SPD back to the Marxism it ditched in the 1950s.

...

My conclusion? Labour is beyond reform and Respect is fated to remain in the political wilderness. For people who are fed up with Blairism, there is only one serious option remaining - the Green party. Unlike Respect and its forerunner, the Socialist Alliance, the Greens are winners. They have seats on local councils, the London assembly and in the Scottish and European parliaments. If left-wingers and progressive social movements united together in the Green party, it would become a hugely influential electoral force.

After three decades of moving from right to left, the Greens now occupy the progressive political space once held by Labour. They offer a clear alternative to Blair's pro-war, pro-big business and pro-Bush agenda.

The Green party's Manifesto for a Sustainable Society incorporates key socialist principles. It rejects privatisation, free market economics and globalisation, and includes commitments to public ownership, workers' rights, economic democracy, progressive taxation and the redistribution of wealth and power.

The heart of the matter, obviously. Since Respect didn't take "millions" of votes in its first showing, it must be a lost cause, while the Greens are "winners" for getting 6% of the vote after almost two decades of existence. But this is odd reasoning, since Tatchell joined the Greens before Respect turned in its rather good results in London, Birmingham and Preston. Presumably if Respect had even penetrated the small towns and middle-class areas that the Greens have no managed to, he would be arguing much the same.

The idea, however, that the Greens are the truly radical alternative to mainstream social-democratic parties has been put to the test and disproven with equal force across Europe, wherever the Greens have enjoyed success. In France and Germany, particularly, we have seen allegedly left-of-centre-left Green movements coopted into the mainstream, into privatisation and imperial misadventure even more quickly than we had any reason to fear. The sight of Joschka Fischer cheering on Nato bombers ought to have dispersed any illusions in the enduring radicalism of the Green movement. What is so uniquely different about the British Greens?