The 2005 general election should mark a watershed for the UK Green Party and its strategy of promoting environmentally-friendly politics through incremental "assault" on the corridors of power.
As the environmental crisis grows ever more intense -something the Greens at least have the merit of being able to recognise - the contradiction between the urgency of that crisis and the snail's pace progress of the Greens' "parliamentary road" becomes ever more apparent.
The Green Party got 283,084 votes, averaging 3.4% in the 202 seats where they stood. This compares with 166,477 votes in 145 seats in 2001 (2.75% average).
The best result gained by the party was the 22% (9,530 votes) in Brighton Pavilion, but even here the candidate, local councillor Keith Taylor, came third and would therefore not be seen as the "challenger" in the next election.
Party GO SOLAR NOT BALLISTIC This contrasts with Respect's victory in Bethnal Green and the three seats where Respect came second.
The Green party was hoping to win Brighton Pavilion, having made the elementary error of using their vote in last year's Euro election in the constituency where they came top - to predict the general election result.
In Lewisham Deptford, the Greens doubled their vote and got 11.1%, but in their other target areas or where they have several councillors or even entered council coalitions, the vote was in the 4% to 7.5% region.
In Scotland, despite having seven members of parliament, the Scottish Green Party lost their deposits in 16 of the 19 seats where they stood, with a highest poll of 7.6% in Glasgow North, where they came fifth. Overall in the UK, the Greens lost 177 deposits out of 202, at a cost of £88,500.
This is not a good result for a reformist party, especially one that was hoping to capitalise on the anti-war vote and had, according to its website "every intention of securing a much needed, authentic, Green voice in the Commons at this General Election or, at the very latest, the one after".
The Green Party's manifesto for the election, "The Real Choice tor a Real Change" reflects their position on the left compared to European Greens.
Nevertheless, some issues the party has moved right.
In their March peace manifesto (see SR 24) they called for unconditional troop withdrawal from Iraq, while they are now calling for the withdrawal of UK troops and their replacement by "UN peacekeepers" (no mention of US troops, which is probably an oversight).
The section on immigration takes little account of the principle in their Manifesto for a Sustainable Society that "richer regions and communities do not have the right to use migration controls to protect their privileges from others in the long term" and no mention is made of their position on decriminalising cannabis use, cultivation and trade.
Most importantly, the manifesto says nothing on how they will deal with the multinational corporations that they so vigorously denounce (correctly) for climate change and the wars for resources that plague the world, aside from some tax measures and promoting localisation.
This gap must be a result of the parliamentary approach.
Green politics in Europe developed out of the German mass movement against cruise missiles in the early eighties. Soon the German greens were grappling with how to cope with electoral politics, with a The UK Greens have never been a movement split developing between (amongst others) the current foreign minister Joschka Fischer and Petra Kelly, both of whom were elected to the German parliament in March, 1983.
For Kelly at that time "Parliament is like the marketplace for us, or the building site. Parliament is not our goal, only part of our strategy. ... If the Party ceases to.be a movement it is nothing."
As we know, parliament won and Kelly's prediction came true.
The UK Greens have never been a movement. Respect has been part of the mass movement against the war and its electoral successes are based on that.
Hopefully, the Greens will now acknowledge those successes and finally engage in discussions.
As useful start would be joint activity around the G8 summit and the expected announcements of replacing the Trident WMDs and a new nuclear power programme. Preparing for °