Whilst Greens consider if it's worth a legal challenge, its interesting to reflect on just how wrong the proposed televised leader debates might look. Not only is there an all privileged all white male line-up, but the announcement just after a whole pile of media fuss-and-bother over one turncoat UKIP MP just gets people thinking.
We know the lobby groups are the strongest, richest, best connected people in our so-called democracy. We know they serve only the 1%, and by contrast the Greens represent not just the well-being of our generations to come, but the weakest, poorest, least well connected 99%. It is therefore no surprise to find that these lobby groups are pushing with indecent haste to promote the next best thing to the Tories, because they see the Tories failing fast.
It's a bit late to be asking the media to be the bastions of democracy. The media have failed time and again to give the Greens their due, regardless of the inescapable fact that Green policies are the most popular in the country. The mainstream media prefers the populist mendacity of fake immigration claims and the opinions of derivatives bankers who only a few years ago brought this country to it’s knees.
The recent WWF report clearly stated that we have already lost half of our animal population, that we are cutting trees faster than they can grow, that we are catching fish faster than the oceans can restock, that we are using water faster than rain can fall, and we are emitting more C02 than the forests and oceans can absorb. And all the time we burn fossil fuels because the fossil fuel lobby is so powerful. All the time we allow the corrupt banking system to milk all but the super-rich, and all the time we allow policies to punish the poor for being in a poverty trap manufactured by government precisely to keep them there.
You don’t have to subscribe to far left ideals to see that the property developers will not build until the profit level is to their liking, it’s not actually left leaning to point out that the tax loopholes and havens allow our communal wealth to be siphoned out of the country, and it’s definitely not left wing to admit that it now takes 10 working days to maintain a household which previously managed very well on 5.
So when once again the Greens are barred from the leadership debates, it’s not because they have no stomach for leadership, it’s because the ruling elite of bankers, fossil fuel companies, big pharmaceutical companies and media barons have no stomach for a Green kind of leadership.In other words they have no stomach for democracy.
The fact that Greens would address our glaring inequality, and as Kate Beckett and Richard Wilkinson point out in their ground breaking work ‘The Spirit level’, make our streets safer, our health better and our society more sustainable, is anathema to the lobby groups representing the very rich. Green strategies to make this planet fit for the future could just make life a little more challenging for the fossil fuel companies and their shareholders.
Banning the Greens from the leadership debates is obviously wrong. We have had an MP for some years now, not just a few days. Greens find it hard to see the erosion of social justice and the gagging of anyone who speaks up for a fairer, more equal society, but the act of this ban shows quite clearly the tip of the monstrous iceberg of the corporate takeover of democracy.
The decision on these debates, as it stands, represents the self-interest of the elite no matter which way you wrap the rules, but the difference is that it's now blatantly obvious.