should look.
By January 2012, it was clear that the Green councillors in Brighton were going to put forward a cuts budget, no matter how it was dressed up in spin. This was a betrayal of many Green voters in Brighton and of those of us in Green Left who had argued for a radical lead from the country's first Green council. A delegation from Green Left went to argue with them on this, but returned empty-handed. At a meeting of the London Green Party in January, we argued that there needed to be a debate with the Brighton councillors and put a motion to this effect. Only 5 members supported this, whereas 20 members sat on their hands and abstained. They had no view on one of the main political and economic issues of our time! This for me was the signal that I could not remain a member of a party whose membership put such low value on the issue of cuts in Brighton. One loyalist "my party right or wrong" member, argued that the Brighton councillors should only be invited to discuss the budget after it was implemented, to see how successful it was! However, I decided to remain in the party until the councillors actually passed the budget.
In the end, it was even worse than I anticipated. The Green councillors passed a budget cooked up by Labour and the Tories in an unholy alliance, and with even more cuts. This was dressed up in the usual verbiage of "we had to remain in office, as it was what our voters would have expected" or arguing that by being there they could ameliorate the impact of the cuts. At the party conference, their presentation of their budget turned into a rally - although Caroline Lucas openly stated that she opposed their decision to remain in office after their own budget had been defeated. A motion from Green Left to ask them to withdraw the budget was refused debate and a final motion supporting them was passed with a large majority. To me, it was crystal clear that the Green Party had given carte blanche to its councillors to support the cuts.
One of my warnings to the party, given at the London Green Party meeting in January, was a quote from the Chair of the Irish Green Party after their electoral destruction "we became part of the consensus and our voters were against the consensus." This would be my epitaph for my membership of the party. The Green Party should be radical or it is nothing. Brighton has shown that the Green Party, when in power, is unable to take a radical stand and push forward the frontiers of radical British politics. Unless the party learns this lesson, it is lost and will lose more members like me.